The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are the Arizona Department of Public Safety, collectively, for employing Officer Michael Fields for as long as they did, along with Lt. James Warriner, DPS spokesman, for offering up an unbelievably asinine comment while attempting to defend his agency's long-time reluctance to cashier Fields, a statement that we'll discuss shortly.

(For clarity reasons, we should specify that DPS is basically the Arizona State Police.)

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, the organization that licenses law-enforcement officers in the state, has seen fit to yank the certification from DPS Officer Fields after the latest of the eight complaints (God only knows how many other people were too intimidated or scared to file allegations of their own) recorded against him during his nine-year career came to light.

According to a story in Wednesday's Arizona Republic (no Web link because, curiously, the print version of the article isn't posted online, unlike every other news article. We wonder why that is?), Fields was on-duty and riding his department motorcycle when he noticed a black man driving down a street while smoking a thin cigar. Mistakenly believing the cigar was marijuana, Fields pulled up beside the man, pointed his handgun at him, and a transcript of the incident records him as barking,

"Is smokin' your frickin' weed worth that? Put your hands on the dashboard. I'll frickin' blow you full of (expletive) holes, bitch".

After realizing his mistake, Fields apparently gave the man a ration of crap for smoking, and then proceeded to ride off with the parting words of "I'm trying to go home. Have a nice day".

This latest incident occurred approximately one year after Fields was charged with disorderly conduct for making inflammatory comments towards a woman while high on alcohol and painkillers at a salsa festival. (Fields was placed into a diversion program for that little escapade, naturally).

Fortunately for us Arizona residents, Fields resigned last September before this latest investigation into his outrageous actions was complete, and the POST board's subsequent stripping of his license pretty much guarantees that his law-enforcement career is over.

Now, for Lt. Warriner. After the article informs the readers that ex-Officer Fields was suspended a total of five times in his nine years with DPS, Warriner responds publicly that:

"Warriner said the number of incidents involving Fields wasn't particularly alarming, but the agency has started to put measures in place to identify problems with DPS officers before they reached a critical level."

WASN'T PARTICULARLY ALARMING? Fields averaged an unpaid suspension every 21 months during his tenure with DPS, and this goofball Warriner doesn't think that's "particularly alarming"? What, pray tell, would be, short of Fields actually being caught in the middle of committing a homicide?

One thing's for sure. Having Lt. Warriner as an agency spokesman isn't helping out DPS at all.

We've got news for the good lieutenant. The situation with Fields reached a "critical level" about three suspensions ago. We're still not sure if DPS was ever going to fire the rogue cop, except that the POST board apparently finally stepped in and said "enough is enough".

If Michael Fields represents the kind of "professional" that DPS believes should be wearing their uniform (and who is worthy of so many chances, at the expense of the public), our respect for that agency just fell into the basement.