>>Here’s my take. That had better not have been a written directive by command staff or council person. That could get Helen Thomas epic level ugly.
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Good. We agree it was retaliation. The only question is who ordered it, or which officers conspired to do it. Obviously the ones on the video.
That reflects extremely poorly on the department.
I’m sure you are a good, honest cop. But I hope you also know that police are RAPIDLY earning the distrust of the people who pay their salaries.
If all this gets swept under the rug, should people feel better or worse about police in general? You tell me.
I do not agree specifically or definitively that it was retaliatory. I will agree that has the appearances of such. I will not agree with your assessment that the officers depicted in the video were directly responsible for enforcement, absent supporting documentation.
This may reflect poorly on THIS police department. But there are over 17000 other agencies, and not all would agree or even disagree with how this situation was handled.
Why are you certain this will get swept under the rug? This makes national venue so a police adminstrator is pretty much forced to act. I don’t think the officer will get fired. Forced to go to some training, absolutely. But fired, no. Unless the political expediency gods step in, and in which case, the morale of that particular agency is going to suffer. Morale can be directly proportional to the number of citizen complaints that come in.
People should feel good when the police do their duty. They should be disappointed when officers fail to meet expectations.
Let’s not make “sweeping” generalizations about the state of the entire law enforcement community. It is over 900,000 men and women.