Editorials

He made the right call

When it’s time for a police chief to resign

It doesn't matter if it's not fair. Some folks are just held to higher standards than the rest of us. Take a look at the front page. If you're a politician holding public office in Arkansas, or trying to, and you take two homestead exemptions when you're only entitled to one, it's going to make the papers. The rest of us would just get a note in the mail.

For most of us, driving like a bat-out-of-a-stump-hole would mean a ticket and maybe a chewing-out. If you're a state senator, and take deputies on a miles-long chase, you'll make the news. Several times. Including at your sentencing. Which is as it should be.

Clergy, teachers, doctors, lawyers, prominent athletes, and, yes, even lowly newspapermen . . . . All have certain responsibilities, all have lines they better not cross, and consequences should they cross them. Public servants like the police--who are there to protect and serve--are no exception.

It seems a dust-up between the chief of police in Jonesboro and the local newspaper went way beyond a spat. It went beyond the usual, natural and unavoidable tensions between press and police, given their different roles and responsibilities--and sped right by unprofessionalism doing 80. Result: The chief was suspended by the mayor last week. It seems to have got the chief's attention. Because now that his attention has been caught, he's done the right thing and fired himself. That is, resigned.

At first, most regular folk reading the paper may have thought all this was just one of those police-newspaper things. Cops get into it with reporters all the time. Trust us. Or rather, trust the news side of this outfit, which deals with the cops daily. Those who gather the news, and those who might not want some news gathered, don't always see eye-to-eye. But their differences seldom make it to the point where the differences become the news story itself.

This time one did.

A reporter quit The Jonesboro Sun early last week after the police chief, Michael Yates, insulted her on his Facebook page. The reporter, Sunshine Crump, which sounds like just about the best name for a newspaperwoman ever, right up there with Brenda Starr and Dixie Land, said she felt scared and that her job had been put at risk. Also, she added, the conflict wasn't doing the newspaper any good. Because she was getting less and less information from the police department.

At first, the chief started talking up his First Amendment rights. And some of us thought he might need a civics course in addition to that class on online behavior the mayor had ordered him to attend. The chief didn't seem to understand that the First Amendment is there to protect private citizens from the government, not the other way around. The police chief had got things exactly backward.

Then the strangest, most unexpected things started to appear: propriety, responsibility, self-discipline, ethics. All those good things.

News started trickling out Monday afternoon that Michael Yates had resigned as chief of police. Not only that, but in a dignified, self-respecting way many of us haven't seen in years. The note he sent to the mayor made for remarkable reading. As in, somebody should remark on it.

None of this "if anybody was offended" business. None of the old passive-voice Mistakes Were Made dodge. No excuses or explanations or evasions. Not even a promise to quit later--at the end of the month, maybe, or the end of the year, or at some other indefinite point in the future. But now. Right now. Effective immediately. How about that?

Michael Yates' letter of resignation was up-front, short, and completely correct. In his formal letter to the mayor, he took responsibility for "saying a number of things that are unacceptable given my position." He noted what everybody else had some time ago: He'd let his anger and pride override his judgment.

If the mayor made the right call to suspend now Citizen Yates, the former chief made two right calls soon after that. One by resigning. Another by resigning the right way. Sir, our respects. And good luck to you in the future.

Editorial on 08/27/2014

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