Pepe Le Pew is an AGW

Gen Xers (and older) no doubt remember Pepe Le Pew, a cartoon character who was also a masher and a cad. He would paw the poor girl cat who’d had a white stripe painted down her back. “Come with me to the Casbar,” said Pepe, as he groped and fondled.

That was a cartoon. Chief Derick Muhammad is – unfortunately – very real. But finds himself on TeeVee, just like Pepe – where he can be seen shying away from a reporter asking him embarrassing questions about his pawing of “at least six current and former female employees . . . (who) have accused (Muhammad) of sexual harassment.”

The “chief” – who is at least not a “Colonel” or a “Five Star General” – stands accused of soliciting kisses and sex, using the implicit threat of job loss for “resisting.” Once the accusations made their way into the open, the “chief” denied the veracity of the half-dozen women who had complained about his unwanted macking and pawing, characterizing them all as “disgruntled employees.”

The “chief” – who wore a Face Diaper to hide his face from reporters attempting to ask him about his “serving and protecting” – has since resigned. But will he be charged? Will he forfeit the probably very generous pension and other benefits he was accruing as a “hero”?

More directly, who will end up paying out to cover the damages that will probably be awarded to the “chief’s” victims? It probably won’t be the “chief,” himself – as he is likely protected by the qualified immunity that lets badged-and-armed Pepe Le Pews escape being bankrupted in civil court the way any of us would be, if we Pepe Le Pew’d half-a-dozen people at the office, over whom we wielded the power to hire – and fire. To promote – or pass over.

The “chief’s” actions, if proved to be actual, are also indicative of something worse. If an AGW feels entitled to paw women he works with, what do you suppose his inclinations are as regards women he “pulls over”? Women he catches not wearing a “mask,” contrary to “mandates” – and so on.

This “chief” is a danger to the community made much more dangerous because he has a badge – and a gun.

It is the foundational problem that necessarily comes with empowering people with badges and guns – and then encouraging them to use both by granting them qualified immunity for using them abusively.

It may be necessary to have police. That is to say, keepers of the peace. It is at any rate a reasonable assertion to make and it can be discussed, reasonably. But there is ample reason to hold anyone given a badge and a gun to at least the same standard of personal accountability that everyone else, who does not carry a badge or a government-issued gun – is automatically held to.

Arguably, the standard of accountability ought to be higher, precisely because these people are endowed with a badge and a government-issued gun. Their tempers ought to be more even, their judgment cooler. And their knowledge of the law better than ours. All too many cases there are of “law enforcement” enforcing laws that do not exist – and making up laws, on the spot. Ignoring the actual law.

Some will say that ending qualified immunity is unfair – even “dangerous” – because it will cause AGWs to be more careful, perhaps at the expense of their “safety.”

Exactly.

Aren’t “heroes” supposed to be precisely the kinds of people who put the “safety” of others ahead of themselves?

Even better if they could learn to keep their hands to themselves, too.