They’re being denounced as ‘racist’ for a game involving an ‘innocent hand gesture’.
Who’s right?
Lives are being destroyed for the flimsiest of charges.
Is it time to reign it in? Or was there these suspensions justified?
The ‘process’ they used to decide whether the punishment was legit will make your head spin.
Jasper Mayor David O’Mary confirms 4 police officers have been suspended w/o pay for the gesture in this photo published last week in the Daily Mountain Eagle. Many know it as the ‘Circle Game” but some say it’s racist & means ‘White Power’. @abc3340 pic.twitter.com/86gxnP7k8g
— Stephen Quinn (@StephenQ3340) July 16, 2018
On one hand, the usual suspects who have called everything right of Lenin ‘racist’ and have even denounced Milk as somehow ‘racist’ have also made the same claims about the ‘ok’ sign with thumb and forefinger in a circle.
On the other hand, there is a popular game that uses the same sign as a ‘gotcha’ for people.
Four cops have been suspended for two weeks — and one week without pay — because someone only knows ONE of those meanings.
The Internet is nothing if not a storehouse of ‘fads’. That Ice Water challenge was one of a series of ‘dares’ that swept the internet.
Plenty of people have found themselves ‘Rick-rolled’.
There was something else called ‘the game‘ where the point was to ‘not’ think about ‘the game’ and thinking about it meant you lost. Don’t look for it to make sense. That’ll just frustrate you.
The ‘circle game‘ is basically a modified version of the game. One guy makes the sign you see in the picture. If the ‘victim’ looks directly at it, he loses. If he notices it by peripheral vision and says he won’t look at that, he wins.
Is it dumb? Sure. But it’s harmless.
And now, 4 cops have been suspended without pay over it.
The photo was published in the Daily Mountain Eagle last week after an arrest by the department’s drug terrorism task force in the Frisco community. The mayor said he organized the photo because he wanted the officers to receive credit for their work. He said he has not spoken to them since to ask what they meant by the gesture. He said it doesn’t matter.
“That’s contradictory to how we run our city. That’s not our mindset. That’s not the way we do things and they used poor judgement.”
The officers, whose names have not been made public, will be suspended two weeks and lose a week of pay according to O’Mary. He explained part of his decision process,
“We talked to two senior African-American law enforcement officers that are on the City of Jasper’s payroll and they think it’s fair and that’s a pretty good sounding board.”
Source: ABC
Ok.
They didn’t ask the people who MADE the sign what it signified.
They didn’t Google ‘circle game’ to see whether there is an innocent explanation.
No. But they DID ask a couple of people who had nothing to do with the incident whether it was offensive.
Some might argue this is precisely the kind of trivialization of racism that waters down more serious allegations of REAL and MALICIOUS racism.
Two weeks suspension for four cops who just made the kind of arrest that warrants a celebratory photo? And a week of that without pay? Yikes!
The officers’ names aren’t released, but their photos are. They’ve basically been ‘found guilty’ of being perceived as racist before their friends, families, and community.
Should these cops lawyer up for their loss of pay, and harm to reputation?
Is This Political Correctness Run amok?
The discipline these cops face:
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