If you saw a few uniformed cops throwing around a football with a kid on the Fourth of July in Bronx, you would:
A. Check to see if you had inadvertently stepped through a portal to the 1950s?
B. Smile.
C. Yell at the cops, remind them that they are being paid overtime, then refuse to drop the whole matter when two of the cops appeal?
If you picked “C”, congratulations! You must be Deputy Chief James McNamara, who disciplined four cops in 2010 for playing a game of catch with one 7-year-old kid in Bronx. (Two cops took their medicine; two–Catherine Guzman and Mariana Diaz–have appealed.)
Unless there were mitigating circumstances–a full two-hour game, complete with tailgating and celebratory beer chugging with the kid–it’s obviously an absurd occasion of policy trumping common sense.
