Renton Police, lacking other duties to occupy their time, are now busily engaged in a witch hunt to uncover the identity (even serving a search warrant against Google) of an anonymous satirist posting a number of cartoons about the adventures of an unnamed police officer in an unidentified police department at an unspecified location.
Not just lacking a sense of humor, but anything resembling a sense of prudence, Renton Police officials (after being turned down by the County Attorney) got an apparently addled city prosecutor (to steal a line, "is that the sound of prosecutorial immunity flying away on tiny little bat wings?") decided to rush out and announce that the depicted wildly dysfunctional police department was, in fact, the Renton Police Department.
Not satisfied with announcing their own dysfunction quietly, they chose to do so with great vigor - claiming that because the cartoons might hurt various folks delicate feelings such that the cartoons qualified as cyber-stalking under Washington Law (RCW 9.61.260) - somehow forgetting about the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (and Article I, Section 5 of the Washington State Constitution) - and talked Judge Bruce Cayce into signing off on a questionably constitutional search warrant to be served on Google to produce the identity of the poster of the parody.
Witch hunt well in progress, things began to unravel - with journalists of various stripes taking glee in ridiculing Renton, with little more effort than publicizing Renton's actions...which are sufficiently absurd and vindictive as to largely speak for themselves. And to provide top quality material for editorial page cartoonists and late night talk show hosts across the land.
Mr. Fiddlesticks, whoever you are, I salute you! Not just for the gracious gift of a fair amount of evil laughter, but for exposing a level of dysfunction at a mid-size police department that indicates a desperate need for the light to shine on in, but for then cleverly provoking said department and city officials into not merely self-identifying, but self-identifying in such a way as to bear out every allegation hinted at in the parody cartoons and more. My hat is off to you, sir or madam!
Enjoy the cartoons below!!
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I lived in Renton for about 10 years and always had the feeling that any applicant for state, county, nearby municipal, or wackenhut employment was assured a job as a Renton cop. Literally the dumbest bunch of LE guys I've ever encountered.
ReplyDeleteUtterly (or udderly) ridiculous... But good media fodder :-)
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