Police Guild = Justice Denied

There are days when I just don't get it! You read time and time again about zero tolerance policies, especially in our schools. A little kid who may have a GI Joe with a gun tucked in the innards of his back pack is expelled. A disruptive eight year old is led off in handcuffs because a teacher felt threatened. By an eight year old girl!

Sex offenders have to register even if the crime was sex between a nineteen year old and his sixteen year old girl friend.

Appointees to high government positions pay their taxes only when the job may be at stake.

Now, the Spokane Police Department is back in the headlines. An officer gets reinstated with back pay after arbitration ruled firing was too stiff a penalty. For what? For driving his city assigned car after having been drinking and using his city issued cell phone to snap pictures of a bare breasted woman then having sex with her in her car.

According to arbitration, the penalty was too stiff. He deserved punishment but not dismissal.

Here's Dogwalk's take. There was no policy regarding cell phone pictures. Come on! It was city property. A Mayor was ousted for cruising gay web sites on a city computer!

He was nowhere near legally intoxicated. Just when was he tested? He's a police officer for crying out loud! What can I say?

Excited about his reinstatement he let it be known he didn't want to work anywhere else. Who can blame him? Spokane police, time and time again get a free pass! I give a thumbs up to Chief Kirkpatrick for firing him; a thumbs down for saying "That's our system of justice and I respect that." As for the officer, Spokane is welcome to him.

Unions. They protect athletes who cheat. They demand concessions that reduce companies to the verge of bankruptcy. Think baseball and the auto industry as examples. They protect police officers from punishment for behavior that would have landed the rest of us in jail.

Isn't it time we reassess the zero tolerance rules now on the books before somebody really gets hurt?