Epic Hole Management Fail

Apparently America's favorite mass e-mailer is willing to take his lumps like a man for calling Skip Gates a "jungle monkey" to the Boston Globe, and then getting suspended for it.

...Or not.

Justin Barrett, the Boston police officer suspended from the force for his e-mail likening Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., to a “banana-eating jungle monkey,’’ has filed a lawsuit against the Police Department, police commissioner, and mayor, saying the city violated his civil and due process rights.

The 18-page lawsuit accuses the three parties of “conspiring to intentionally inflict emotional distress and conspiring to intentionally interfere with the property rights, due process rights, and civil rights of the plaintiff.’’

First rule of hole management is when in said hole, stop digging. But no, apparently suspending an officer for racist comments is a violation of the civil rights of the guy making the racist comments.

According to the lawsuit, the mayor and commissioner’s actions caused Barrett pain and suffering, mental anguish, emotional distress, posttraumatic stress, sleeplessness, indignities and embarrassment, degradation, injury to reputation, and restrictions on personal freedom.

Barrett, on the police force for two years, requested that they be enjoined from decreasing, terminating, or withholding any wages. He also asked for money damages to compensate for the emotional and physical pain he suffered, attorney’s fees, and punitive damages.

The suit also contends that Davis and Menino’s treatment of the officer is “disproportionate to the allegations against Officer Barrett given he has not had any meaningful opportunity to prepare any defense to the allegations based on [their] statements.’’

Barrett had no prior disciplinary history; and no investigation has begun for his termination, but Davis said at a press conference last Thursday that a hearing would be scheduled within the next 10 days.

Well, let's hope that somebody's at least read the Boston PD employee handbook. Somehow I see Officer Barrett losing this case in a rather total manner. However, if he's going to sue, let him have his day in court. He's trying to become a hero of the reverse racism movement, but I just don't see too many people willing to defend a guy publicly who sent out a mass e-mail to a newspaper with such impressively hateful vitriol in it. He wants us to pity the guy who got suspended and faces disciplinary hearings for writing a Freeper screed and then sending it to everyone he knew...and the media, too.

When he's lost everything because of it and he becomes no longer useful to the Pretty Hate Machine, they'll pretend he doesn't exist, or pillory him along with the rest of them. I almost pity the guy.

Almost.

EPIC FAIL.