An error?  Another officer drove into two trees, flipped upside down and landed in someone’s front yard, in a truck full of booze bottles, and the “young deputy” fails to have the driver tested for intoxication?

An error?

Please!  That’s professional courtesy run amok!

A crash on Choctaw Road this week in which a West Baton Rouge Parish
reserve officer struck two trees and landed upside down in a front yard
was mishandled by a young sheriff’s deputy who failed to have the
driver tested for possible alcohol use, West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff
Mike Cazes said.

“It was a young deputy that
made an error,” Cazes said, explaining why the vehicle’s driver, Joseph
W. Anderson, wasn’t cited for any violations or tested for alcohol even
though residents who rushed to the crash scene said full and empty beer
bottles tumbled from his truck.

The bottles were cold – some were full, and some were empty, but the “young deputy’s” report somehow failed to mention that little detail.  I’m not a big fan of professional courtesy.  I know it’s done all the time, and I know the reasons for it, and I understand them, even though I don’t agree with them.  But the people I know and care about who are law enforcement officers also know that if one of their fellow professionals is acting in a manner that obviously endangers the lives of those whom they’re sworn to protect and the public that employs them, they are not to be let off.

This was blatant.  Hardly an error.

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