Louisville PD Needs to Pull an Atlanta

Let me begin by stipulating that the Louisville Police Department has a lot of internal problems.  Let me further stipulate that the Breonna Taylor shooting is a bad shoot and that Det. Hankinson deserves some sort of criminal sanction, although nothing that will satisfy the BLM mob.  

That said, the rank and file officers deserve better than this:

LMPD officers were ordered to remove riot gear

One of the things that is overlooked by many critics of policing in America is how awful the leadership is at police departments that have a lot of problems.  And the leadership at LMPD is simply terrible.  Poor leadership leads to poor morale which leads to poor performance by the subordinate officers.  

Asking officers, particularly officers who have faced mob violence for weeks the way that the officers have in Louisville, to clear a protest area where a murder just happened without their tactical gear is simply insane.  

The rank and file police officers have tried the accepted methods of protest.  They held a "no- confidence" vote against their previous chief.  Dozens of them walked out early in the current troubles when the mayor came by to make a speech to officers who were getting ready to deploy to face the mobs.  

It's time for them to do the unacceptable.  Every officer who is eligible to retire should do it.  Tomorrow.  And then the rest of them should not come in for a couple of days the way Atlanta PD did.