On Friday, April 16th I received a written reply from the Chief of Police.
I got what I had originally wanted from him, which was an admission that his officer (whom we nicknamed 'Officer Thumper') was attending the area near the Senior Center just to deliver a letter to me. This removed the possibility that the officer could later pretend that he had been attending there in response to any suspicion of crime, which could have given him an excuse for a 'Terry Stop'.
The Chief of Police did not express any concern about his officers' time being taken up in this wasteful manner, nor about the behavior of his officer in assaulting a senior citizen. This was not the first time that I had noticed a unhealthy degree of tolerance among City managers for the shortcomings displayed by their staff. I recalled that I had shown the Senior Coordinator's dishonest 'spit' email to a whole gaggle of City managers, who had appeared blissfully unconscious of any deeper problem it might indicate.
And then the penny dropped. What do you do if you are a dishonest employee, but you work for an honest outfit? Well, if you can, you 'straighten up and fly right', but if you can't do that, then you make damn sure you don't get caught, because it's goodbye to your job, benefits and pension, as well as prospects for employment elsewhere if you are exposed.
But what do you do if you are an honest employee, but you find yourself working for a dishonest outfit? As a subordinate you are not going to have enough influence to be able to sort out the ethical problems of those above you, and when the s - - - hits the f - - you'll go down with them, tarred with the same brush. You're better off out of there just as soon as you can arrange alternative work.
Over time, dishonest outfits tend to fester and worsen. The scofflaws and incompetents coast along uncorrected, but nobody who is decent or good can thrive there, and quickly leaves.
'Officer Thumper' was the second city employee I had encountered since coming to live here here for whom 'Doing The Right Thing' and 'Obeying The Law' were alien concepts. First the Senior Coordinator, and now this police officer. And in each case, when the example of the employee's misconduct was brought to the attention of his manager, there was no indication in the manager's reaction that they saw anything to be concerned about. Did they feel that the misconduct was entirely consistent with the culture of their whole organization?
I was faced with a choice. Should I start up another complaint in addition to the one against the Senior Coordinator, but this time against the loose-cannon cop? If the outfit running the City really are dishonest, then I could spend my entire retirement in taking down these clowns one at a time, without effecting any real improvement in the City's moral climate. The bums higher up would just recruit more scofflaws and misfits to send out onto our streets and into our community centers. The better strategy would be to find the highest 'bad apple', get him replaced with someone honest, and then hope that the principles of decent and honest public administration which the replacement modelled would trickle down the hierarchy to the others, who would then have to either shape up or ship out.
But who was the top bad apple? Well, the Chief of Police was the highest official I had contacted so far. He had shown himself to be no more concerned with the misconduct by 'Officer Thumper', one of his direct reports, than the middle-level Recreation Manager had been, when she was shown evidence of misconduct by her Senior Coordinator.
But apart from just passive tolerance of wrongdoing, was there anything in the Chief's letter which indicated that he was as rotten as the Senior Coordinator and 'Officer Thumper', in his own right? . . .