{"id":5074,"date":"2016-05-16T09:48:08","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T14:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/?p=5074"},"modified":"2016-05-16T09:48:08","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T14:48:08","slug":"on-loyalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/general\/on-loyalty\/","title":{"rendered":"on Loyalty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my &#8220;real&#8221; job I work with law enforcement agencies virtually every day. I have enormous respect for the vast majority of them, not because they &#8220;<em>lay their lives on the line every day<\/em>&#8220;, which in my opinion is the sort of hyped up nonsense used to justify unjustifiable acts, but because they work at a largely thankless job in which they genuinely try to ensure the safety of the citizenry they serve.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, law enforcement has a truly terrible systemic problem which their culture routinely promotes as a positive attribute, namely &#8220;<strong><em>Loyalty<\/em><\/strong>&#8220;. How can I possibly consider loyalty to be such a negative attribute that I deem it to be a \u201c<em>truly terrible systemic problem<\/em>\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t.\u00a0 Loyalty is an important character trait \u2013 when it is both earned and deserved. \u00a0When loyalty is neither earned or deserved, or is earned but not deserved, it becomes misplaced. \u00a0Which is precisely where law enforcement agencies make a fatal error \u2013 they consistently fail to make the distinction between <strong><em>earned and deserved loyalt<\/em>y<\/strong> and <strong><em>misplaced loyalty<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 When a law enforcement agency closes ranks around an officer who has grossly abused the public trust the entire agency is tainted by the wrongdoing of the officer to whom they are displaying misplaced loyalty.\u00a0 That is the terrible and systemic problem to which I alluded earlier.<\/p>\n<p>If law enforcement truly wants to regain the public trust then they must stop abusing it by protecting people who should be punished.\u00a0 No, I\u2019m not talking about wayward members of the public \u2013 I\u2019m talking about officers who abuse their power and authority. \u00a0Such officers do not deserve the loyalty of their departments \u2013 they deserve to be held accountable and to face the same legal consequences any member of the public would for acting in a similar fashion.<\/p>\n<p>{P.S. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/improvingpolice.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/16\/this-is-awful-it-cannot-be-lawful\">This is Awful \u2013 It Cannot be Lawful!<\/a>\u201d inspired this post, thank you.}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my &#8220;real&#8221; job I work with law enforcement agencies virtually every day. I have enormous respect for the vast majority of them, not because they &#8220;lay their lives on the line every day&#8220;, which in my opinion is the sort of hyped up nonsense used to justify unjustifiable acts, but because they work at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[240,321],"class_list":["post-5074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-loyalty","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}