Priorities
Because it's what women are for, right?
I mean I don't honestly know. I can't, once again, that's, in my mind, reading over the manual numerous times and all this stuff, I mean I don't know. I've heard numerous times you don't ask out victims, you don't ask out DV victims at any time, you don't do a lot of stuff. But when a normal citizen in a neighborhood comes up to you and talks to you and says they wanna meet you and everything else, I didn't think I was using my position for anything other than to, you know, that's what I said last, last interview, I know tons of people in this exact same way... I have a lot of witnesses to my character that definitely, if they knew what was going on here, 'cause I can't tell them, they know something's going on, they would be here meeting with the Chief or whatever, in a heartbeat, 'cause I'm not, this is not me. I mean I don't go around...and maybe I'm saying too much, well, I don't know, but...
Because when a normal citizen in a neighborhood wants to talk to you about policing, the first thing is to check if she's a woman, and the second is to find out if she's available.
Former Seattle Police Officer Mark Henry retired amid an investigation that would inevitably have seen him fired.
Ansel Herz↱ of
The Stranger offers the silver lining:
"The sequence of events leading up to Officer Henry's departure, after 28 years on the police force, represent an example of the department's often-criticized accountability system actually working quite well."
And this
is good news. It's about time. In fact, it's well past time.
But here's another downside:
If you think your job affords you time to hit on the ladies, because, you know, how else are you going to meet women,
then go work someplace where that is part of the job.
That is to say, if you want to offer me your hot dog on a stick, you better be working at Hot Dog on a Stick; sure, it's inappropriate, but I'll let you down easy because I get that such behavior might be symptomatic of the fact that you're stuck working at fucking Hot Dog on a Stick. But I'm also a guy; if you say that to me, well, I do come from a generation in which chatting up another man like that would be a mortal risk.
Because, really, in this case, if you're a police officer?
Herz reports:
Questions about his conduct first arose in March, when the woman, a former Tacoma police officer whose first initial is K., first complained to the SPD's Office of Professional Accountability about the lack of patrols in her area. (March happens to be the same month that O'Toole fired another officer↱ for sending propositional texts to three women he encountered on the job.)
Because, you know, if a woman complains about crime and the lack of policing in an area, what she really wants is a date.
The records also show that Officer Walt Hayden, representing the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), sat in on Officer Henry's interview with the OPA and tried to cast aspersions on the woman who made the complaint:
She had sour grapes over a number of people who made sure she didn't get on this police department. She went to Tacoma. She was at least from what I know, fired from there for being dishonest. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but just the mere fact that, you know, Officer Henry cut off—he heard some of these stories—and he had no further contact with her after he had this lunch date with her, and I'm assuming that's why she filed this complaint, because she's vindictive.
In fact, K. hadn't mentioned Officer Henry at all in her initial complaint about the lack of patrols in Magnolia.
Apparently seeing the writing on the wall, Officer Henry was allowed to retire in August; Chief O'Toole, conveying to him the OPA finding, asserted that had he not retired he would have been fired.
Still, though, SPD's willingness to scandalize sexual harassment victims is not encouraging. Sometimes it's not about relying on stereotypes of the vindictive woman; sometimes it really is about professional conduct.
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Anecdotally: A friend recently conveyed what really should seem among the strangest of stories; unfortunately, there really isn't anything new about it.
Imagine please that you need to take your father to the hospital. Imagine it is a life-threatening need.
So the hospital manages to stabilize him and keeps him overnight.
When you return to the hospital the next day, instead of discussing test results and other medical information, the doctor is more interested in your contact information and whether or not you might want to go out on a date.
And, you know, all things considered, whether or not your father dies is probably more important than whether or not they put too much mustard on your hot dog on a stick.
Just sayin'.
For some of us, work is work and not a place to be hitting on anyone. Others, however, would like to reserve some portion of their professional lives to chasing tail, and see no problem with this; after all, how's he supposed to meet women?
Even in that case, though, one wonders at the notion that it's all the same.
There was a night in which my mother encouraged me to flirt with a waiter, and what a handsome young man he was; the sort to evoke shivering lust at the thought of that gorgeousness fucking me into sublimity all night long. And it was hard enough to decide to hit on a guy while he's working. And, you know, while I was annoyed at the time about the sudden slapstick routine my mother went through as we left the restaurant to physically block me from approaching him, hindsight tells me to not be so annoyed at her neurotic "it's okay to be gay, but not too gay" routine because it really would have been inappropriate despite what seemed his obvious interest. Not only might I be reading him wrong, honestly, he just doesn't need that kind of bullshit at work.
The complication, of course, is that I'm a guy. My kinship with women's sexual experiences only goes so far; we might chuckle about a guy's particular quirky move that he thinks makes choking on his penis feel that much sexier, or share the number of creative ways we've been called a bitch (as a compliment, apparently) mid-coitus, but in the end it really does seem as if it's still different. Nonetheless, this is all an issue for understanding what any episode means; I doubt either he or I could tell a woman accurately what it's like to endure that sort of sexual harassment on a regular basis.
Still, though, a bit of flirting is often customary in the serving and consuming of drinks; even as such, there is a difference between flirting and proposition, right? After all, the number of times we might encounter a defense of sexual belligerence and harassment as some manner of innocuous flirting―because, you know, how's he supposed to meet women―suggests room for both custom and cautious consideration. It is sometimes hard to delineate the boundaries, and the question of propriety remains to be settled, but effectively at this time, yes, a bit of flirting is often customary in the serving and consuming of alcohol.
How about in hospital medicine? You know, like saving your father's life?
Maybe in crime prevention?
Something about priorities goes here.
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Notes:
Herz, Ansel. "Seattle Police Chief Fires Officer for Hitting on Female Crime Victims". Slog. 13 March 2015. TheStranger.com. 16 December 2015. http://bit.ly/19l38Ql
"Seattle Police Officer Resigns Rather Than Face Firing Over Romantic Texts". Slog. 15 December 2015. TheStranger.com. 16 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1IURLPm