Cops by now know the vacation policy. If you’re feeling overworked, stressed, you need to kill someone to get a vacation. This reinforces that if they talk about the vacation/killing policy they might get fired. Snitches get stitches and all.
It looks like chief “I feel that no matter what context you try to take those comments in, the statements were inexcusable and inappropriate” was trying to do the right thing. But in a messed-up enough system, that can have a perverse outcome.
