Extremely poor professional judgment...

... and that's a severe understatement.

Four Mesa, Arizona police officers (one a female) have been placed on administrative assignment (desk duty and the like), and along with a supervisory lieutenant are being (very rightly) investigated for their handling of a situation in that city last Monday.

The officers (along with EMS) arrived at a motel room in response to a 911 call about a woman miscarrying her unborn child, the development of which was estimated to be of 12-14 weeks' gestation. The cops apparently showed up to find the fetus wrapped in a paper towel.

What happens next is the subject of some confusion. One story reports that the officers were unable to reach the on-duty supervisor, Lt. Lynn Young (that sort of inaccessibility of a watch commander is scary in itself), for advice as to how to proceed. Another report claims that an officer at the station (it isn't clear from the story whether that officer was Young or not) told the officers what to do. Regardless, the next step apparently isn't in dispute:

One of the four officers flushed the fetus down the room's toilet, apparently without consulting the woman beforehand.

We realize that there are times when a police officer needs be given some degree of latitude should they have to make a split-second decision, even one that may seem incorrect on its face, because their actions may ultimately be ruled to be reasonable once the totality of circumstances of a given situation are taken into account (for example, an officer shooting a teenager, after which it's found that the teen brandished a toy gun as if it were the real thing).

We're very confident that this isn't one of those times.

They flushed the fetus down the toilet.

What in the world is wrong with that officer? Don't they realize that what they so casually disposed of was someone's child?

There is no rational reason whatsover for unilaterally taking that course of action. None. There was nothing split-second about this incident. We don't care if they were rushed, in a hurry to dispense with the situation or if another call had just come over the radio. Leave the scene to EMS, then, if that's the case. How dare that officer make such a boneheaded decision, one that will have such a profound impact on the rest of that woman's life?

Mesa Police Chief George Gascon, although claiming to be "transparent", isn't releasing the name of the specific flush-happy officer (Why not? It would presumably remove the black cloud from above the other three), but it was one of these individuals:

Kristen Johnson
Nicholas Webster
Robert Buquo
Glenn Pearson

One fervently hopes that it wasn't Ms. Johnson, but we're not assuming anything at this point.

Of course, no cop can be accused of any lapse of professional judgment, no matter how obvious and sickening that lapse may be, without the local head of the police union going to bat for them, while also cautioning us Monday-morning quarterbacks not to get ahead of ourselves:

"Fabian Cota, president of the Mesa Police Association, said it's important that the investigations are allowed to run their course before placing blame in either case. 'There are so many missing pieces. It's really premature to rush to judgment,' Cota said."

The only thing "missing", Mr. Cota, is the fetus that one of the public servants you're covering for, let us remind you, flushed down the toilet.

We can think of a number of situations where a police officer deserves to have the benefit of the doubt.

This isn't one of them.

In our view, the person who pulled that lever has unequivocably shown that they completely lack the common sense and judgment-making ability to be a police officer, and they should be immediately bounced from the department, if not criminally charged.