I received a lot of flak over my views on off-duty policies. Here is some of it:
TREY RUSK, RETIRED TEXAS ALCOHOL BEVERAGE COMMISSION LIEUTENANT
You're way off base on this one! For instance, take your last sentence. [Respect by the public is not based on off-duty behavior, but on the ability of the police to provide for the public safety.] In fact, respect by the public is greatly based on an officer's off duty behavior. Sgt. Suro should be disciplined for conduct unbecoming a Houston Police Officer. As vague as the charge sounds she must be held to a higher standard. Where was she during the academy when this topic was covered. I'll wager her oath of office touched on maintaining an unsullied character.
Any disciplinary decisions she makes of a subordinate will forever be challenged, especially if it concerns inappropriate behavior.
As it stands now, her future testimony won't be worth a damn. You can rest assured that most criminal defense attorneys will find some way of introducing her conduct before a jury just to paint her as a person of low morals and to take the spotlight off their dirtbag client. All it takes is one juror to be swayed and the criminal walks.
Her career is ruined. However, after an intense study of her photo she may have another career to fall back on.
GREG ‘THE GADFLY’ DOYLE, AUTHOR AND RETIRED UPLAND, CALIFORNIA POLICE SERGEANT
While I understand your sympathy for this Houston sergeant, I believe her particular choice of off-duty behavior does denigrate and compromise the image of the law enforcement profession, not just her department. And as a supervisor, she has a greater responsibility to her subordinates to set a better example, not a lesser one. She was wrong on so many levels to make this particular choice.
Unfortunately, perception is reality. In fact, in law enforcement perception is what the public believes. I cannot fully express the indignation I have experienced through comments made by the public (against me personally) for the unwarranted actions other cops from other agencies, who got caught disengaging common sense from their sworn duty. This is not a Puritanical edict on the part of law enforcement agencies, but the highest expectation of public trust. For peace officers are granted amazing power that few others in this country possess—the power to take away the freedom of others through arrest; the power to search and seize property; the power to collect incriminating evidence against another individual.
The image of a peace officer is compromised whenever those sworn to the highest civilian duty forget that duty when they engage in foolish and unauthorized pursuits on and off duty. The public expects and deserves the best. That is not Puritan, it is virtuous.
That Houston sergeant is an embarrassment to the profession, pure and simple.
MY RESPONSE
Points well taken, Greg. But let me repeat that ‘if all the cops who “engage in any activity, including unlawful activity that would degrade or bring disrespect upon the employee or the department” were to be caught, there would be hardly any police officers left to protect and serve the public.’
Make no mistake about it, I do not approve of the off-duty behavior I described in this post even though when I was a cop, on occasion I’d get drunk off-duty and also drove under the influence a few times.
Let me give you three more examples of off-duty behavior I personally experienced. (1) We had a Riverside County peace officers association that would meet from time to time at one of several restaurants. We would have a happy hour in the bar before having our dinner. During on of those meetings, a chief of police got drunk, I mean really drunk! His officers had to help him into the dining room set aside for us. Then he promptly threw up over the place-settings and table cloth before passing out. His officers picked him up, took him outside, and dumped him in the back of a squad car. Two hours later, as I was leaving, I saw him still crapped out in the car. (2) I belonged to the Southern California Burglary Investigators Association. We had monthly meetings to exchange information between departments. The meetings would alternate between Los Angeles and San Diego because they had bars at their police academies. Those information exchanges were something else, almost comical. For the first hour they were OK, but as the evening progressed guys, who by that time could barely stand up, were slurring their speech and were almost unintelligible. And they had to drive long distances back to their jurisdictions too. (3) In 1969, the California Narcotic Officers Association, of which I am a proud life member, had its annual conference at a first class hotel on Pleasure Island in San Diego. Our guys got drunk every night. Some of them shot at swans in the hotel pond. Some of them went to Tijuana and got up on stage to take part in a live sex show before a large audience. The hotel had a lot of circular drives with beautiful flower beds – when the drunks returned to the hotel they drove right through the flower beds. Of course, most of the conference attendees didn’t get shitfaced, but a substantial number did. Now these three examples are ‘an embarrassment to the profession, pure and simple.’
I too suffered the indignation of being berated for the actions of other officers, but that was by people that I stopped or arrested. I know that the general public is aware of the bad behavior shown by many officers, but I am convinced that their respect for the ‘law enforcement profession’ is neither raised or lowered because of off-duty misbehavior as long as they feel the police are protecting the public from criminals. The loss of respect is more likely to come from on-duty misdeeds, such as cops beating up on people or raping women in the back of a squad car.
As for Stacey Suro, I don’t think she ‘denigrated and compromised the image of the law enforcement profession..’ If anyone did that, it was her fellow officers who passed those pictures around the internet and identified her as an officer once they had recognized their sergeant. Suro did not identify herself as a cop on the ModelMayhem website and none of her racy poses were in a police uniform. I’m sorry Greg, but I don’t see Suro as an embarrassment to the profession.
Let me conclude by repeating my point that ‘a puritanical policy that cannot be enforced unless a miscreant is unlucky enough to get caught is a policy not worth keeping.’
GREG’S RESPONSE
The issues you stated from your experiences are exactly why off-duty conduct policies are needed and should remain in place. Just because peace officers carry a badge and a gun does not give them license to lose themselves in reckless behavior off-duty. That is a clear double-standard, which those entrusted with such power should not abide. That was instrumental in my personal decision to stop drinking alcoholic beverages 25 years ago; so I could model the right behavior, especially for my children.
But I take issue in particular with the Houston sergeant. She was in a position of leadership and compromised herself. No one forced her to get naked or pose provocatively before a camera and publish those pictures. That the photos were circulated by subordinates clearly shows her poor judgment and lack of propriety. What did she think would happen when she publicly displayed herself that way? If she wanted a job as a pin-up then she should have chosen a different profession from which to launch that career.
But if she is posing in bondage photos, perhaps discipline is something she prefers.
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