Too Fat for the Fuzz, Cont’d

After I microblogged this morning about overweight Indonesian cops, a treasured reader reminded me that Microkhan had covered this territory before. In July 2009, I wrote about the case of Chris Parent, a police officer in Bellevue, Nebraska, who was fired for being too large to perform his job properly. (See video above, which was Exhibit A in his department’s decision.) Parent contested his termination, however, and apparently was vindicated, as this story about the retirement of Bellevue’s embattled police chief makes clear:

Stacey, who has worked for Bellevue since 1978, has been involved in several controversies in Bellevue in recent years. He fired Police Officer Christopher Parent for being overweight, saying it violated a department policy requiring officers to maintain a high level of physical conditioning. Parent’s termination was overturned by the courts.

After the city paid Parent more than $103,000 in back pay, Stacey placed him on indefinite paid administrative leave. As a result, the city paid Parent about $170,000 in salary and benefits without his working a single day.

The whole story is worth a read, if only to marvel at the intrigue in Bellevue’s police department. It’s like a miniature version of The Wire over there in eastern Nebraska.