Making a Federal Case Out of It

If anyone out there still doubts the truism about power corrupts, there was a report out of Polk County, Florida this week that should lay those uncertainties to rest. According to a story online from The Ledger.com website a Polk County sheriff’s deputy responded to a call from his wife saying that a local Burger King had messed up her order by driving to the restaurant while on duty, interrogating the manager and the drive-through attendant, and demanding to see their identification. Upon realizing that the Burger King in question was actually in the city of Lakeland (and therefore under the local police jurisdiction, not his), the deputy called a friend on the Lakeland PD out to the restaurant and tried to get her to proceed with the investigation. On learning the actual details, the police officer decline to get involved in what was essentially a civil matter, and bowed out. Which would have been the end of it, had the Sheriff’s Office not gotten wind of the story, upon which they suspended the deputy for two days without pay. At his pay grade, the $10 fast-food meal ended up costing him well over $300…

Now, it’s no secret that I have had my own run-ins with the Burger King organization over the years. I found it particularly amazing to have once purchased an order of “sliders” (miniature cheeseburgers) from a nearby Burger King, only to arrive home and discover that the top halves of the buns had been left off of them – a story I promised the company I’m going to keep re-telling until it stops being funny. Accordingly, I have no difficulty imagining some of the things that a Burger King location could do that would make the wife of a peace officer mad enough to call him over to arrest everyone in the place. What remains baffling to me is that anyone who has actually completed the training to become a sheriff’s deputy (let alone a 6-year veteran) would have behaved in the manner described. Even allowing for an absolutely preposterous level of arrogance, entitlement, and belief in his own power and immunity, the deputy in our story had to know that law enforcement officers are public officials, and consequently their actions are generally a matter of public record – and so are their reprimands…

I don’t expect to see too many recurrences of these events; this case is unusual if not actually unique. However, it would seem that there are at least two lessons to be learned here. First, as people in general become more connected and less patient, it’s only a matter of time before somebody who is given the wrong food (or something completely inedible – which happens sometimes) calls in people with guns who will actually use them. Being more careful with the orders won’t prevent this – crazy people with guns are going to do what they’re going to do – but it might keep the occurrences down a little if these mistakes weren’t as common. It might also help to have more security in public-contact businesses, especially those that involve cash purchases…

Second, it might be a good idea for local law enforcement to start cracking down on officers and deputies who would do something like this. Because the days when this sort of bully-boy behavior would be ignored by the public are long gone – and the days in which it was possible to cover up this sort of behavior are on their way out. If business and local government work together, it might be possible to put a lid on the worst of the crazy times in which we find ourselves living. But if they don’t, I can almost guarantee that there will be more incidents just like this one – and that more and more law enforcement agencies will find themselves racing to the bottom…