There's A Right Way And There's A Wrong Way

From JSOnline:

A Milwaukee police sergeant has been suspended 20 days without pay for sending a text message to other supervisors urging them to tell officers to stop making traffic stops until problems with the department's new digital radio system are addressed, according to police documents.

Sgt. Willie O. Murphy is scheduled to begin serving his suspension April 15, according to a police department personnel order.

Murphy sent the text message to 33 other supervisors Sept. 23, according to a complaint filed against him. Murphy was off-duty and used his personal cell phone to send the text message, the complaint says.

Murphy sent the message "in an attempt to initiate a protest related to the slow transition to the digital radio system" and wanted to "force the administration to immediately address concerns related to the radios and officers' safety," the complaint says.

I don't have a problem with the sergeant trying to bring attention to what appears to be a faulty communications system. He was simply trying to point out what he felt to be a serious danger to his fellow officers.

Besides, it would be hypocritical of me to criticize him when one considers the multitude of posts that I have written about how screwed up Milwaukee County can be.

The problem lies in the way he did it. There are better channels that he could have chosen than to text his peers encouraging them to basically put the public in harm's way by having the police not do their jobs, even if it is hindered by a poor system.

A very interesting side note to this story is how this can make some conservatives finally realize that taking twenty days unpaid leave is hard for a family and that unions aren't all bad after all.