I am always kind of amazed on discussion boards that some officials seem not to support other officials. It is true that the officials may not have treated the officer with the utmost respect after they asked the officer to move the crowd back. Just because a police officer is treated with a lack of respect does not justify an arrest. There is still something in this country called the first amendment that allows citizens to express their opinions to public officials (freedom of speech). There is nothing in these actions that justified an arrest period, and certainly those two brother officials did not deserve to spend the night on a concrete floor. For some on this board to somehow say the officers were even remotely correct in this situation is an offense to fellow officials.
There is something called the Blue Line which implies that police officers will always stick together in these situations (often even when they are wrong). As officials we should follow their lead and have a solid Zebra Line. These officials deserve our support. I hope this never happens to me because some police officer perceives a lack of respect on my part.
1. There should be nothing like the "Zebra Line", just like there should be nothing like the "blue Line", ESPECIALLY on a board like this. This is a discussion board about officiating. That means dissecting what happened, and sometimes critiquing that, even criticizing, if it helps to improve the profession.
2. "Just because a police officer is treated with a lack of respect does not justify an arrest." That in itself is absolutely true. But there is also NO reason for the official to have ever treated the officer (or a coach, or a player or an administrator) with a lack of respect. If you want to be respected, the best way to do it is to respect others.
3. The First Amendment right to freedom of speech is not absolute, even against a government official. You do not have the right to say anything you want to a government official. Threaten to shoot the President and see what happens.
4. Was there something here that justified an arrest? I seriously doubt it. But I don't KNOW, there might have been. IF (and it's a major IF) some of the witness accounts are true, such as "ejecting" a police officer, the the officials overstepped their bounds. If they threatened the officer in any way, they they absolutely deserved to spend the night in a cell, and may have a few others as well.
None of us were there. We are only reading reports that come from different sources, all with thier own biases. Was the officer wrong? My OPINION is yes, he was absolutely wrong, and the Covington Police Chief and Mayor now have a disaster of a PR problem on their hands.
But were the officials also worng? Absolutely. No matter what form of "leave" they told the officer that was giving them a problem, their solution was to call over the game manager, and say, "Here is our problem. Either it gets fixed, or we are going to have to stop play until it is fixed." Obviously, they didn't do that, they took matters into their own hands, to at least some level.
You can call it a POURING contest, or too much ego, or too much testosterone, or whatever you want. NO ONE handled this well.