Sign Fail

This is, obviously, appalling. See Patrick Nielson Hayden and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

It’s possible, of course, that some prosecutions of rank-and-file cops for ticket-fixing can be plausibly described as less than ideal prosecutorial practice; if they’re under orders to do it, everyone does it, and they prosecutors are happy to prosecute the rank-and-file cops and aren’t making an effort to go up the ladder, they’ve caught a legitimately bad break, and some sense of sympathy and perhaps expressions of solidarity might be reasonable. Obviously, the behavior of the police described in the story goes well beyond anything that might be reasonably described as a reasonable and appropriate expression of solidarity.

I would also encourage whoever’s behind those signs to contemplate a) why the phrase ‘just following orders’ resonates in the public consciousness, and if they really want to associate with it in such a manner, and b) if “its been going on since the time of the Egyptians” is really something they want to treat as a sufficient condition for non-prosecution.