Police Caught Playing Pokémon Go while working
But walking is good for your mental and physical health...right?
Earlier this week news broke that two Commerce City, Colorado police officers are now facing discipline for well, playing Pokémon Go instead of actually working.
The officers were caught by one of their supervisors in unusual places and it was quickly determined they were chasing cartoon characters and not any actual criminals.
This announcement comes just after last week’s announcement that the Department of Justice has agreed to look at the departments police practices. The department decided to participate in the DOJ’s new program aimed at police reform.
The Commerce City, Colorado police department has faced years of complaints from the union, officers and citizens. They have recently dealt with officer misconduct and in 2011 the police union for the department presented the department with some concerns, two of which were poor management and cover-ups.
The city brought in an investigator to look into the union’s claims but that didn’t go so well because as it turned out that particular investigator was accused of having a conflict of interest and long story short is, since then the city has face several lawsuits, which of course they settled them rather than go to court.
It’s also worth a mention that union chief Tom Boskovich says turnover among officers in Commerce City is pretty much off the charts.
The Justice Department’s Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance which is volunteer by the way, works to analyze a police department’s policies, training and practices.
The DOJ claims that the program keeps an eye toward finding the specific problems that are causing it trouble in the community.
Quite frankly, since the program is new only time will tell so we'll have to wait and see if the DOJ can handle what’s coming for them with the recent findings in Boston, Oakland is still a mess, Cleveland, Portland is trying to take a step in the right direction but who knows.
Then look at Chicago, which granted has a huge number of shootings, they also have an equally large number of issues with regards to police misconduct, New York had a cop who was also a pimp, in Texas a cop was also a member of the Mexican Mafia in uniform...that’s just the tip of the iceberg considering stories are becoming more readily available. Daily.
In looking at some of the DOJ’s past history with investigating some of these departments and the outcome of those investigations, not only were some of the departments (like Oakland) still a problem, the investigations took forever but it also, ended up costing taxpayers a lot of money.
I just have this one nagging question...
Will the Justice Department’s Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance prevent cops from playing Playing Pokémon Go while on duty or does that not fall within the scope of "problems that are trouble in the community?"
Cristal M Clark
