Reported in today's Arizona Republic: Mesa police intend to discipline an on-duty uniformed police sergeant who made an obscene gesture at pro-immigrant protesters while driving by in a marked police vehicle.
Police spokeswoman Holly Hosac felt the need to explain that his gestures were "due to general distaste for protesters" and not out of an anti-immigrant viewpoint, and that the sergeant didn't even know what the protest was about.
This gives me a couple of distasteful choices. I can believe that Mesa has a police sergeant driving about with uncontrolled distaste for the peaceful exercise of civil rights generally and who is so unobservant, even while on duty, as to fail to notice the signs carried by protesters he is flipping off or so dim-witted as to be unable to intuit from these signs what the protest is about. Or I can believe that Mesa has a police sergeant driving about with uncontrolled distaste for the peaceful exercise of civil rights specifically around immigration and who further will along with his police spokeswoman then blithely lie about his observations and understanding to the public. (Leading one to ask, because the stakes are oh so high, does this mean this officer will fib about other things he has observed? How about under oath? As a witness to a crime?)
I find in my personal life that telling fibs and lies eventually catches up to me and causes me much more anguish than had I faced reality from the get-go. The same experience applies to government. Please, stop lying to the governed. It is a step down a road that it serves no one to tread.
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