At Why Now, the argument is put forth that Tony Baloney was not just given a slap under the wrist, that he was thrown under the bus:
The NYPD threw him under the bus because the City doesn’t want to be on the hook for the massive civil damages that will follow. The problem for the investigation is that the [official] policy [on the use of force] is actually written down and publicly available, and the other officers present are not going to put their jobs on the line trying to spin what happened when they know that nearly the entire world has seen one or all of the many videos of the incident.So Tony is now going to be subjected to a plague of lawyers. Seems fitting.
(H/T)
I still think it's a slap on the wrist. In the U.S. Civil Service, you could roll over your Annual Leave (vacation time) to continuously accrue up to 240 hours (or 260—hey, I've been gone almost 14 years, and I carried over a zero balance for 29 years, so sue me if I don't have the max right). 240 hours is 30 days, and is equivalent to six weeks of vacation.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't know what NYPD rules are for leave accrual and carryover, I do know that management in public service sacrifices the Sunday Pay, Holiday Pay, Night Differential, and overtime pay that line employees get for serving 24/7. Thus, often those managers scramble for each of them for the extra dough, and consequently don't take a lot of vacation time. At our facility, your best chance to see all the first and second line managers in the facility was on any Monday holiday.
What I'm getting at is Tony is likely out there on extra duty assignments scabbing up as much pay as he can get for the day to day. Whacking him for actual days would be devastating for him. But they're not giving him time on the beach (lost pay), they're assessing something from him he doesn't use—his accumulated vacay time.
He won't miss a paycheck, which is what should have happened. He'll just lose ten days of time tacked on to his service time when they go to calculate his annuity. i.e. instead of 32 years and 180 days of service, he'll be credited for 32 years and 170 days. It amounts to pennies on the dollar when calculated that way, and he won't even notice it when the check comes…sometime down the road.
I don't doubt for a second he's facing litigation, some of which, no doubt, will come out of his pocket. But the ten days A/L was definitely a slap on the wrist.
LRod
ZJX, ORD, ZAU retired
If you're still not convinced it's a slap on the wrist, consider this:
ReplyDeleteIf a demonstrator had walked up to Tony and squirted Tony in the face with pepper spray. he could be charged with a felony, or worse, assault a police officer. And he'd be lucky if al he got was ten years in the slammer — which is where Tony belongs.
gotials
Even a ten day suspension doesn't match that.
Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank