Serial Screw-Up Cop Strikes Again In Philadelphia

Article

Thomas Schaffling is a cop with the Philadelphia police department, and “a perennial problem child for the Philadelphia police”, as worded in the above article. This guy lives up to his street cred too. While the article describes Tom’s numerous bad judgment calls, and the Philadelphia PD’s apparent attempt to facilitate his actions by not bringing his career to an immediate halt in the name of the people of Philadelphia, (Tom is on desk duty now), the article as linked above got attention for another reason.

Tom Schaffling’s latest run-in with the boss at work was connected to a visit he made to the Yik Yak Club. That’s right, it is a bar room. Anyway, Tom’s gun ended up being fired a couple times by Tom after what Tom said was an unprovoked attack against him by other bar patrons. No injuries, but here’s the problem with it:

Once again, we have a cop carrying a gun at his side and an alcoholic drink in his hand at the same time and place. Tom seems to be ready, willing and waiting to beat and mace people, anywhere, including a baby shower where women and children were injured by him, (see the article), without the assistance of alcohol. No, this is not just one incident, Tom’s exploits go back to 2008 in the record, but any prior greatest hits were not revealed. This story clarifies the education cops need to insure top-quality job performance, as demanded by, but not delivered to, the citizens of Philadelphia.

The Only Solution A Cop Can Understand

Cops need alcohol-detecting ankle bracelets as a universal and permanent part of every police uniform in the United States. As Tom Schaffling recently showed, cops have this odd habit of wanting to say they are off duty but still act like an on-duty cop when it comes to shooting people they disagree with. We must remember that a cop gets his balls from his gun, so if we let him be off duty and still pack, he WILL abuse the use of that weapon. But----if you add a few drinks and a tavern setting to a cop’s firearm, you have a guarantee of some bullets flying. America cannot allow a cop’s gun and alcohol to combine any more than MADD wants drinking and driving to mix.

Cops are quick to accuse a citizen of being “impaired”, therefore guilty of some form of disturbing the peace or threatening danger to others, especially all cops, when alcohol is present, but that same cop walks into an alcohol-induced scenario while armed, and we are all still safe and sound, right? No.

We need ankle bracelets for all cops all the time. If a cop doesn’t want to give up his drinking for the sake of the job, as well and the safety and security of the citizens of his town, county, state, or anywhere else he may find alcohol, he has not properly sworn himself to uphold the law. It is bad enough to understand that a cop has no clue when it come to combining alcohol with crashing a vehicle into a citizen’s car, or a pedestrian at a cross walk, or a tax-paid utility pole, or even another police vehicle. With all the above happening regularly, how can we allow a cop to tank up while carrying a weapon he is authorized to use against us and at his discretion?

Possible Alternate

You know, it might be a bit more understandable if we all, EVERY ONE OF US, carried. I heard of a small town in Texas that required the purchase and carrying of a sidearm for all citizens, but I can find no information on it. If anybody can send me a link, please do. With that solution nowhere in sight however, we have to attack this from the other end. Stop cops from drinking. We do it with an ankle bracelet.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know the purpose of it is to establish a Citizen Review Board with Hire and Fire in every city and town in every state in America. Without H&F, we are just taking a leak into a low pressure system, as so many attempts at a meaningful CRB have already shown. Look at Portland OR, Springfield MA, Philadelphia, NYC, San Francisco, any city with a history of a review board. How many cities are happy with the effectiveness of their CRB? None. How many of those CRBs can hire and fire? Zero. That’s math anybody can do.

Effective police oversight would put Thomas Schaffling in his place, (or should I say bar stool), with quick efficiency and he would be replaced with a dedicated cop who accepts the importance of an ankle bracelet for the sake of the uniform, the integrity of the police department, and the effective performance of his job in the eyes of the citizens. BTW, Tom is only in his mid-twenties. He’ll find something else to do.

Cop pride grows from The Badge and The Gun. We need to raise a generation of cops who will proudly add The Bracelet. Let’s trade in “Protect and Serve” for “Clean & Sober-24/7”