This one almost sneaked completely by, with only a report on KHOU’s blog:
Tom Nixon, the Houston police officer who voiced his opinion to the media about how police chases should be handled, was fired Friday. Nixon gained notoriety when he spoke to the media about how chases should be handled after a chase ended with the car being chased crashing into a car with two passengers and a child.
That’s it… the entire report. However, the Chronicle has a bit more information: yes, he was fired for being too outspoken.
Chad Hoffman, Houston Police Officers’ Union attorney, said officer Thomas Nixon received an 18-page letter of suspension outlining the reasons for his firing, which centered on his criticism of the department’s pursuit policy.
“We knew that it was coming,” Hoffman said. “We knew that the department intended to terminate him for those comments.”
And some people wonder why I blog under a pseudonym. As for Nixon, he echoed a common complaint heard from local law enforcement officers in the last few years: that sensitivity over police chases has made the department back off too far.
Nixon said the department’s policy wasn’t tough enough. He said officers should have rammed the suspect’s car before it became a threat to motorists. “I don’t think officers should be ramming vehicles ad hoc, what I feel is that officers need latitude to bring a chase to a stop,” Nixon said Friday.
Nixon was reassigned to desk duty after making inflammatory comments about HPD chase procedure on a radio program. He said he would disobey lawful orders from superiors if he thought they were arbitrary.
That kind of blanket statement disturbs me when I see it in the press, because it screams that there’s an awful lot of context that’s missing. What is “arbitrary” to officer Nixon? I get very suspicious of the writer’s motives and viewpoint when I see a quote that makes the speaker look negative tacked on at the end of a paragraph. And what does the very next paragraph lead off with?
Why, the favorite subject of some folks: Can you fire these people for anything?
He later filed a lawsuit claiming HPD violated his constitutional right to free speech and retaliated against him. Nixon said he will seek reinstatement.
A new justice matters
by George Will 06/04
Last Tuesday, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, noted that the court has held that government “cannot condition public employment on a basis that infringes the employee’s constitutionally protected interest in freedom of expression.”
I’m fairly certain that will be used as a cite in Nixon’s case, but that doesn’t mean it’s a winner. Without more information, it’s impossible to say if the opinion was meant to be drawn narrowly or broadly; in short, did the court say that it was allowable to criticize one’s own department and policies, or just to speak out in general? The distinction could be important to Houblog also… At what point does criticizing the policies of the political leadership step over the line into insubordination?
The way that I look at it is, I’m entitled to say what I think, as long as I do what I’m legally ordered to do. That’s where officer Nixon may trip up; he said he might disobey an arbitrary but legal order. However the Chronicle chose to paint it, that could be insubordination. Could be, but not automatically is. After all, being ordered to dance a polka while on duty might be legal, but I think I’d disobey something that arbitary too.