Cropped view of a young Hispanic police officer standing outside his patrol car.
Sometimes reality writes satire better than any comedian could dream. Enter former Scottsdale Sergeant Derok Roach, who apparently decided that police vehicles weren’t just for chasing down bad guys…they were also perfect venues for intimate encounters. Multiple times. While on duty. In both marked and undercover cars.
The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, clearly having seen enough inappropriate workplace behavior to fill a very awkward training manual, handed Roach a one-year suspension. For context, this is the same board that deals with officers who put gun muzzles to people’s heads and handcuff octogenarians, so they’ve developed quite the tolerance for professional misconduct.
But here’s where it gets interesting: another Arizona officer, Andres Angulo from Yuma, got a three-year suspension for his workplace romantic escapades. Apparently, there’s a sliding scale of inappropriate behavior, and having sex in police cars falls somewhere between “oops” and “really, really oops” on the disciplinary spectrum.
One has to wonder about the thought process here. Did Roach think the taxpayer-funded mobile office was just another perk of the job? Was there a clause in the employee handbook that needed clarification? “Vehicle usage policy: For official business only. (And no, that doesn’t mean that kind of business.)”
The punishment seems almost quaint when you consider that Roach lost his job anyway. A one-year suspension feels like telling someone they’re banned from a restaurant after they’ve already been thrown out and the building has been demolished.
Perhaps the real question isn’t whether the punishment fits the crime, but whether we need to start issuing more specific training materials. “Police Vehicle Operations 101: Lights, Sirens, and Why Your Patrol Car Isn’t a Motel Room.”