A 20-year veteran of the Colorado Springs Police Department was recently reprimanded over something that he posted on Facebook.
The officer in question posted the following to a local news channel’s livestream of a Black Lives Matter protest.
The officer in question was suspended for 40 hours without pay and reassigned away from his specialized unit. Not fired, but ‘reassigned’.
The Chief of Police defended Kaptian Kill Em All saying that he won’t “deprive the community of a good police officer and his services because of an isolated incident of an error in judgment.”
But how often are these incidents really isolated? Is it only considered isolated because the officer had never been caught before? And can it really be called an ‘error in judgment when the officer allegedly created a fake Facebook account to leave the comment? That could show premeditation in making such questionable comments online depending on how long the fake account was being used. The only way the Colorado Springs Police found out about this was that an anonymous tip was sent to the TV station that livestreamed the protest.
People like this don’t develop these kinds of attitudes overnight. I would even imagine that this belief was held for a long time before finally being made public. Yet, all he gets is a week vacation and a shuffling around in the department, still free to carry a gun and mete out justice as he sees fit. Even if he was fired, a neighboring jurisdiction would more than likely be happy to give him a job.
And therein lies the problem. Because of the protections provided by police unions and just good old fashioned cronyism, too many bad cops are never held responsible for their actions.
The Trench Reynolds Report 