ywtf: *Most women, I assume, would feel uncomfortable parting their legs for someone known to have dealings with pornography. *
Interesting, that’s never even registered on my discomfort screen. I just sort of assumed that all, or at least almost all, men have at least some interest in pornography, and that includes my male gynecologists. Wouldn’t freak me out at all to think that the guy inserting that nasty cold speculum liked to relax with porn off duty, or even that he distributed some to other people. To be honest, GYN exams seem tremendously un-sexy and un-pornographic to me, and I’d bet that most gynecologists feel the same way. (Now if he had a porn mag in the office, or made any kind of porn-related comment while doing the exam—MAJOR freak-out, including vociferous complaints to his employer.)
Same thing with a cop who thinks it’s funny to make fun of another man’s murder, and do it replete with stereotypical props and in blackface, no less. Would I trust that man to NOT overact in situations involving black people? Would I want to entrust that man with the job of protecting me and people like me? Can’t say that I would.
This carries more weight with me than your GYN example. As betenoir said, is it even possible for a decent cop to treat murder and hate crime as a joke? (This is assuming that the officers were indeed deliberately race-baiting from bigoted motives, not just misinterpreted in a stupid prank as the article I linked to argues.)
On the other hand, how many citizens would be aware that these guys were actually on the float?
Cops do get bounced for “conduct unbecoming” all the time. Every time Playboy or Penthouse runs a photo shoot of some police officers, one or more of them wind up having their jobs threatened. If the NYPD (and FDNY) have clauses in their contracts that imply that they are always “representatives” of the force, then they are imminently open to firing. Absent such a clause, I would say that free speech takes precedence.
Go read Scylla’s Apology for a bigot. Can we say, for certain that Scylla’s grandfather did not enforce the law fairly?
I tend to agree that the amount of stupidity demonstrated by the trio indicates that they ought to have to retake the admissions test, but barring actual on-the-job demonstrations of racism (or a “propriety” clause, as mentioned above), I don’t think their actions warrant dismissal. (I would have no problem with that action showing up in their next review and rate follower. However, firing is overkill for a stupid prank, absent other indications that they are abusing their positions while on duty.)
Legally speaking, MGibson nailed the distinction. These guys were employees of the government, not private employers. Private employers can (generally speaking, except for discrimination on the basis of race/religion/gender/etc.) fire their employees for any reason or no reason at all, including their speech or personal beliefs. The government, on the other hand, may not punish people on the basis of their speech or beliefs. These officers–assholes, all of 'em–were fired by the government on the basis of their speech and beliefs. Ergo cogiter sum, the government action violated the First Amendment, which is a restriction on government action, not the actions of private employers.
Well, they have a name and probably a face. New Yorkers, what’s the volume of TV coverage there?
Not parallel cases. Strange as it may seem, there’s a difference between thinking that black men are “evil monsters” and laughing at one of them getting dragged on the back of a car. It’s fairly clear to me that Scylla’s grandfather would not have done so. Trying to save a black man from drowning when people would not would sorta require the sensibility that would not laugh at this sort of crime. Scylla’s grandfather made it clear that he took his oath to protect and serve far more seriously than he took his racism, when the rubber hit the road. I also think it’s clear that the NYC cop in question didn’t, because he thinks a racially-motivated crime is a joke.
But enough from the peanut gallery: Would Scylla care to comment?
For the cops, that may be true (depending on their specific jobs and how much direct contact they have with the public). I’ve never bothered to buttonhole a firefighter in the midst of an emergency and asked “Are you so-and-so?”
I was not drawing a direct parallel between Scylla’s grandfather and these guys, only noting that a lot of different attitudes can go into a person that may–or may not–have a direct bearing on how they perform their jobs.
The police making mockery of a heinous murder on a float along with loaded “code-word” props, fried chicken and watermelon. To me this one falls under the yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater, and so I don’t think they have a right to engage in this kind of speech or even this kind of behavior. Many of them work in communities of color and with that kind of sensibility, what kind of treatment can those communities expect from these officers?
I think this is the issue. The city already has a bit of race-relations problem, and these guys just made it worse. IMO, they have made it more difficult for cops to do their job and weakened the public’s confidence in those paid to protect them. They have deliberately embarrased the department.
That’s not to say, by the way, that the government has no power at all to police the speech of its employees. The Supreme Court has been remarkably inconsistent in this area. It’s clear that the state can proibit employees from engaging in partisan political actitivites, but in general, the Court has decided to balance the interests of the state and the interests of the employee on a case-by-case basis. Thus, it’s difficult or impossible to predict how an individual case like this one will turn out.
And people are not going to distinguish between individual firemen or cops when taking out their hostilities. Failure to fire these people would have been one more reason for angry/jerkish people to heave bricks at firemen on the scene of a blaze or attack cops doing their job. Whatever the courts find, the city was doing the right thing.
And Al Sharpton, Surprise Witness, was following the one consistent rule of his life - Publicity Uber Alles.
Would you say that the comments that LAPD officer Mark Furman made while off duty, tape recordings of which later surfaced at a controversial trial, affected his job in that the jury no longer could treat him as a credible witness to the state?
On further thought, I guess I wouldn’t feel all that uncomfortable with a gynecologist who sells porn. My analogy was probably a poor one because porn is not really comparable to the antics we are discussing here. The question I’m really trying to get at is how much control should the employer have over the image his/her employees project, even if they aren’t on-duty? Absolutely none? Or just a little bit?
I also sort of look at it in these terms: if I were a male gynecologist applying for a job at a women’s clinic and under work experience on my resume I had “porn star” and listed the titles of more than 50 movies I’d acted in, wouldn’t it be legal for the employer to discriminate against me because of this? If it is, then why is it illegal for him to fire me because of something like that coming to light after I’m hired?
by tomndebb:
If they did this at a Labor Day parade, they weren’t exactly being secretive. Even the KKK was smart enough to wear masks when they did their business, but these dumbasses went out in broad-daylight in the middle of New York City to advertise how they felt. I guess they were hoping that since they were out of uniform, no one would connect them to their place of employment, but that sort of reasoning is sort of like Clark Kent thinking all it takes is a suit and a pair of glasses to hide his Superman identity.
Would you feel the same way if one of the supreme court justices was out there? Or if it was Trent Lott? Or the president of a prominent university? Why or why not?
I don’t think it would take that long for a community to find out if one of the firefighters or police officers in their district had been on that float. Between the TV news and all of the newspapers servicing New York, it would just be a matter of time.
But as someone said earlier, I don’t even think it would matter if you couldn’t identify the float participants. Just the idea that the firefighter or police officer serving you could have been on that float would be enough to make you frightened and/or angry. These feelings shouldn’t be evoked by people trained to deal with life and death matters. So I can understand why it would be prudent to fire these people. They were bad PR for the city.
On the news last night, the ACLU lawyer brought up the hypothetical: What if it had been the police commisioner on that float? Would he have lost his job with the same amount of swiftness? I’m thinking he definitely would have but the lawyer didn’t think so. So I’m not sure.
I think the police commisioner would have lost his job more swiftly, not less. The more authority one has, the less free they are to act like bigotted idiots in public.
This is kind of a rehash of what’s already been stated, but I think that a) as citizens they have the participate in something like this, but b) as police officers it interferes with their job and is grounds for dismissal. SC_Wolf brought up the Mark Furman incident, where his comments basically invalidated his testimony to the jury. But I recall a case in NYC where cops saw a suspicious individual, he ran, they caught him, searched his car and found drugs and weapons. They searched the individual’s car based on the fact that he ran from the cops. The judge threw the evidence out because, based on past precedent of police behavior in that neighborhood, he would’ve run from the cops too and that by itself wasn’t suspicious. This float incident could give justification for non-compliance with the police officers as well as potentially prejudicing a jury.
IANAL so please correct me if I’ve said something untrue.
Agreed, agreed, and agreed. What these assholes did was abhorrent. However, I can’t see any way for them to be fired without violating the Constitution, which in this case is unfortunate. If nothing else, this event will hang over their heads the rest of their careers (if there is a forced rehire) and will cause major problems with their abilities to do their jobs, which I guess could be some sort of justification for their firing.
As disgusting as the float was, I’m going to have side with free speech, and I think they shouldn’t have been fired. I know I’d ask internal affairs to keep an eye on these pricks for racist actions on the job, though.
This will be an interesting case. If it’s found in favor of the cops, I wonder if it will invalidate clauses in work contracts that make provisions for out-of-work behavior. I hope so, those always made me uncomfortable.
Of course it’s different, most importantly in that my gynecologist is not a government employee. While they shouldn’t be fired for their exercise of free speech - firing for failure to exercise any judgment and extreme stupidity (which seems to be the city’s case) is a different thing.
(And second, so long as the porn was not “Scenes from the Stirrup Table” taken of patients without their consent, I don’t think the gyn should be fired either.)