An Aurora, Colorado, cop will serve only a 1 week suspension for pulling a gun on a doctor in his own parking garage because the doctor honked at him for blocking him in with a police car. See story here and watch video of incident below. The doctor is Eastern Indian, so racism may have been a factor.
The Aurora police department has acquired bad reputation from a long string of notorious incidents (see list here), and earlier this year 3 of its officers were fired for mocking the 2019 choking death by police of Elijah McClain, a black man walking home from grocery shopping (story here).
Last week, Aurora police came under fire again for walking away from a mentally ill suspect who was exposing himself to children, in what appears to be a police protest against being restrained in their use of force (see TV news video clip here).
First he is a member of a union. Yes the Dr probably has fired employees for far far less, but his employees are likely not union members. Maybe they should be.
2nd Did the officer violate a specific violation of whatever code they use.
Person honks at a cop might get a weapon drawn on them.
3rd Was te officers training sufficient?
Poor training and you get poor results.
4th Aurora has put resources into this employee. Things like oh training.
You fire the officer for this and you loose all that public money invested in the officer. And the officer goes elsewhere. Does a few mea cuppas and unless there is some significant other issue he goes to work. And at this time I can’t imagine anyone choosing to go into law enforcement. So recruitment is likely down and replacing the officer maybe difficult.
And every department must have a Dirty Harry who does all the dirty jobs well this young cop is their Dirty Harry.
So 4 and 1/2 reasons why he was not fired.
4 1/2 reasons he wasn’t fired, none of them good ones. Here’s a good reason to fire him: He’ll probably do it again, and next time he may kill someone.