It’s extremely satisfying to see good news about the police for a change.
I’ll believe it after the fat lady sings.
As with most of these cases, expect to see him hired back after the arbitration hearing. Those almost always seem to find in favor of the cops in everything from beatings, to perjury and homicide.
You’re probably right. Still, would they try it after it’s been covered by the media?
It is important to note that the officer involved is not from the Seattle Police Dept. (which is currently under a DOJ consent decree) but a King County Sheriff’s Deputy. Deputy (formerly Sargent) Saulet has got a bad enough history to have been already been demoted and dumped into the transit police division. This isn’t anywhere near an example of being fired for a first offense. A Seattle PD officer was also disciplined in this incident.
The Stranger is an alt weekly in Seattle that has expanded from arts, music, and culture writing to very impressive local news reporting often breaking stories before the major local paper.
???
First Pat Roberson disavows a young earth creationist for being an asshole and making Christians look dumb, and now a cop is fired for being a blatantly abusive corrupt piece of shit? Is there some mad scientist wandering around making pigs fly or something?
Two Points:
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King County != Seattle
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“Saulet has long history of misconduct, with approximately 120 allegations against him and 21 cases of sustained misconduct (more than any other officer in the department).” I would guess he is getting fired as much for being the biggest problem child in the department as for one incident. It shouldn’t take 21 cases of misconduct to get someone fired.
I suspect it was mostly for lying to the boss.
Guys like this don’t reform just because they lost a job. Getting canned is never their fault, always someone else’s.
Next question: what department where will hire him now? Maybe he should try Palm Beach, or somewhere in Vermont. Hawaii is right out, though.
Firing him for lying to his boss is actually a start. You will always get apologists for terrible police behaviour saying that police have to be able to do their job, and make hard decisions in stressful situations etc.
OK, assuming we give the cops that (and I don’t entirely), there is still no excuse for lying about what happened after the fact. As long as they can’t get away with that, it applies a gentle restraint on the worst of police misbehaviour.
It’s the same as when you make police keep live video footage of their activities, the number of random beatings and racist abuse drop sharply for some reason.
I’m going to make a guess and say that he probably got fired for lying to his boss rather.
“Saulet underwent three performance-improvement plans, two training sessions, and two multi-visit sessions with a social psychologist, coaching sessions with supervisors, and 80 hours of time off without pay.”
They say that you can’t fix stupid; but it looks like they couldn’t fix authoritarian asshole, either…
Merely the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.
I wonder how long it’ll take deputies Shook and Mikulcik to respond to a call of assault and battery involving this clown as a victim. He did lie to the boss after all. And he seems to have been the precinct asshole/asshat. I’ll stake a couple of dollars his fellow officers [whose actions he lied about] are willing to let him sweat an hour or two before showing up to take his report.
What I find most surprising about this is that the two other officers that he tried to get to back him up, did not.
I don’t know about the pig thing but I’ve sent a research group to check the temperature of Hell.
But the end result is the same. Accuse one, and the entire machine moves to protect him. Single headed, or multi, the end result is the same. “Protect our own.” It can also be argued that a non centralized structure brings the evil-doer closer to the top level of his individual tree by the sheer redundancy, and that a monolithic head is more insulated from certain issues.
Both systems are equally complicit in not protecting victims, while shielding those responsible.
EDIT: We’ve gotten a little off topic. Didn’t mean to threadjack.
No Black Legend plz.
There is no entire machine of Judaism, Islam, or Buddism for that matter.
Actions committed by someone in one Islamic sect will be condemned by another, and so on.
There’s no meaningful culpability of a group that has no way of knowing what another group does, has no way of taking action if they do know, and don’t support negative actions when they become aware of them.
Holding “Orthodox Judaism” responsible for abuses in some sects would be like holding all pet food makers responsible for tainted pet food made in China. They can be categorized together, but there’s no logical reason to spread responsibility beyond actually transgressors.
“It’s okay guys, I sound know like a bigot, but I am actually a secular humanist, so my vague, blanket statements are totally okay!”
