Posted on 07/09/2008 1:00:54 PM PDT by PurpleMan
With [15] minutes left in the last shift of his 35-year New Orleans police career, Sgt. Bobby Guidry received a call from a supervisor telling him he had been suspended for wearing the wrong uniform shirt, the veteran officer said. Instead of the standard-issue all-black uniform, Guidry, a veteran officer in the city's Uptown 2nd District, chose the powder-blue uniform shirt that he wore to work for more than three decades.
He viewed it as a simple statement, not an affront to rules or department leadership.
"Eighteen people died in the line of duty in that powder-blue shirt while I was with the department," Guidry said. "I went to each of those funerals. I wore that shirt on a Saturday, on my last day, out of respect for them."
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
If the knuckleheads in charge could just get out of their own way. I weep over such stupidity in a city I love.
They are supposed to wear a “uniform”, not a “different”.
This is beyond stupid. How much will the appeals and the likely lawsuit cost along with the public ridicule?
Just wear the correct uniform Dumazz. I’m sick of people’s “statements”.
Totally stupid overreaction. The guy should have worn the regular new uniform, but this was a sort of sentimental touch on the day of his retirement, and I think it could have been overlooked.
What’s with the all-black uniform? Do they look like waiters or like storm troopers?
Its New Orleans.
Nothing else to say...........
According to my maps, New Orleans has always been located about 25 miles beyond stupid and it seems to be drifting even further away.
Superintendent Warren Riley, (idiot with the M-4 on the left) who could not be reached for comment, was apprised of the investigation, Young said. 
Riley, in what some in the Police Department call a move to boost morale, recently announced that the department would revert to powder-blue shirts, probably by the first of the year.
Ya know, it really does seem that the more of an azzwipe a person is, the higher they will be promoted in a gubbermit organization.
Guidry got worse than the black cop who brushed another cop with his car, led them on a 90 m.p.h. chase, and then slapped a cop.
Because an all-black uniform in the middle of a Louisiana swamp in the summertime makes just sooooo much sense...
15 minutes to go and they suspend a 35-year-vet on his last day for a simple uniform violation. Way to back up your rank-and-file, NOPD. They’ll sure stick their necks out and go the extra mile for management that’ll shank ‘em in the back like that. Yep.
}:-)4
“I shot you! You’re dead!” “NUH-UHHHH!” “UH-HUHHH!” “NUH-UHHHH!”
}:-)4
Black uniforms in a sub-tropical city tells you all you need to know about Riley’s lack of brainpower.
I wore Woodland BDUs* for 13 years in the Army. I don’t know how many soldiers were killed in battle wearing it, but I’d bet it was more than eighteen.
*(Yeah, I know...six-color DCUs during the Gulf. Even so...)
If they’d let me back in today, I know they’d want me wearing that grayish digital thing, and would frown on me showing up in Woodland.
To paraphrase my favorite SECDEF: “You go on duty in the uniform you’re issued, not the one you want or wish to wear.”
“We are talking about a big boy here who is supposed to go out and make sure everyone else is playing by the rules, and he can not even wear the outfit he is being paid to wear?”
Yeah, by all means screw the guy because he wore a different shirt on his last day of a job he held for 35 years.
You freakin’ “zero tolerance” bureaucrat wanna-bees don’t mind screwing with a 35 year veteran over a stupid shirt. Makes me sick.
I agree but, the retiring officer should have just cleared it first.
I can imagine that the anal-retentive supervisor might have been a bit more tolerant of the change after having it explained.
Isn’t New Orleans pretty hot anyway? Then put your men in all black. Are they asking to give the guys heat stroke?
The act that was taken by the chief considering the circumstance was petty and inappropriate..
Now if in his last fifteen minutes of work he went out and committed illicit activities that is a different story...
no one should be punished for showing honor to those he served with....
but you are entitled to you patronizing opinion. Unless you can cite for me where his act was so egregious that it warranted a reprimand I believe this was a petty act by a petty person
“When he took the job he knew he had to follow the rules but now he thinks he is too good for that. The next time he willfully breaks department rules he should be fired on the spot.”
It was the last 15 minutes of his last day of work after 35 years of service.
He spent 35 years of his life protecting idiots like you. God bless the man.
As for the likes of you, you couldn’t carry his jock.
I completely agree with you, and his “statement” is just so useless. Honor can be appreciated by the living, not the dead, but also, how about if he decided to wear a skirt because several of them were women. Sorry, spur of the moment example.
I view his meaningless statement as useful as lefties going naked for some cause. What’s that got to do with it and how’s it going to help?? What if every LEO in town decided to wear some other uniform on any given day to “make a statement”
That being said, this suspension is WAYYYY over the top and unduly punitive.
Perhaps the supervisor had to get his quota of suspensions in, and damn who ever gets in the way.
You’re post was the biggest stretch since the rubber band was invented.
Because he broke some rule, now you have him breaking federal law and doing all sorts of nefarious things. And fire him. ROTFLMAO.
What part of “IT’S HIS LAST DAY” did you miss???
It’s not that he was so right, it’s that the punishment did NOT fit the “crime”
Absolutely agree. So what is unprofessional about wearing a police uniform shirt that is blue instead of black?
I could see them making him come in and change his shirt for the remainder of his shift (all of about 5 minutes), but that's as far as this should have gone. I do wonder why they bothered when the guy only had 15 minutes left on his shift on his last day of work. Almost makes me believe the brass had it out for this guy, and this was the only thing they could get him on.
Cops in Phoenix, are suing the taxpayers for payment for the time they spend getting dressed up in their uniforms.
Next the cops will be suing the taxpayers for not getting paid for making individual fashon statements.
When I see a cop sitting in a speed trap on my way home, I'll decide how sorry I feel for this guy.
I take it school bus Nagin didn’t pull the trigger after that photo was snapped.
Then maybe they should consider getting rid of plainclothes, undercover and unmarked vehicles (fine with me, BTW).
The next time? Go back and actually read the article.
In the military we had a name for petty tyrants’ petty rules: Chickensh!t.
We are talking about a 35 year guy going through the motions on his last day before retirement.
Sheesh!
Wouldn't want them to be mistaken for looters, now would we. Oh, wait...
The people of NOLA (including several of his fellow officers are highly PO'd at "Chief" Riley -- and "Mayor" Nagin.
I agree with the guy who said they should just open the levees and give the whole stinking mess back to the alligators and nutria...
But, first, they should ride Nagin, Riley, and the rest of their cronies out of town on a rail -- complete with tar and feathers!!!
Thanks for the picture of Guidry....that explains it all.
This is why cops say the law is meant for everyone.
Sure it is a trivial mater, but so is going 58 in a 55.
...and his finger was on the trigger, too...
...and his finger was on the trigger, too...
Usually I just called them sir...... Calling an officer ChickenS*** would usually get me in trouble :)
Storm Troopers. All the better to confiscate your firearms.
As an attorney, I once kept a public official, with another governmental entity, from doing something similarly petty, vicious and stupid. When he smugly told me that his attorneys (the one's his agency hired with taxpayer dollars) told him that it did not violate the law for him to do what he was planning to do, I told him, "Yeah, but it violates the Leno Rule."
He looked perplexed, and asked "What is that?"
I said: "You violate the Leno Rule when you do something that, even if legal, is so unfair, so preposterous, so incredibly lacking in good judgment, that if Jay Leno hears about, he will make fun of you in his monologue on The Tonight Show.
The official didn't speak to me for a couple of years, but he also didn't break the Leno Rule.
ok.....
Isn't this the police department which used to have officers who served for years supplementing their salaries by performing professional hits for mobsters? Good to see that they are strict about the important things, like shirt color!
Even though they are both idiots, they don't seem to fear those particular “high powered assault rifles that only have one purpose, to kill as many people as possible”.
I suppose he could have worn a black armband in memory of his fallen fellows -- but that would not have been "uniform" either -- and it would have been invisible against the required black JBT shirt...
I agree with some of the NOLA.com posters: he should run for Chief of Police during the next election...
What terrible muzzle awareness. What a stupid photo.
Maybe the powers that be thought officers in New Orleans weren't warm enough.
but the looter cops got a pass...
Supt. Riley:
Any questions?
Not a one. I fully understand.
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