Rob Forrest
Nate Rau at The Tennessean reports that the Employee Benefit Board is looking at reducing Rob Forrest’s pension by $45,000, the amount of overtime he pled guilty to stealing from the city, by taking overtime pay when he was with the mayor for fun.
Former Sgt. Rob Forrest appeared Tuesday at an Employee Benefits Board meeting, where the panel indicated it will reduce his pension calculation by at least $45,000.The meeting was just a study session, and the board didn't take any formal action after quizzing top Metro Department of Law officials about their options for reducing Forrest's pension.
I want to believe this is a good thing, but I keep thinking how hard it is for men to come forward when bad or weird shit happens to them. And I keep thinking about how hard it would be for a high ranking police officer at the pinnacle, and toward the end, of his career to come forward and say if something bad or weird was happening to him.
After all, he’s a cop. If something weird is happening, he should know he can go to the police. Except, he’s a cop. So, he’s seen the downsides to coming forward. And he’s trained! Certainly he could say “no” and make it stick, force someone away if necessary. Except you don’t put your hands on your boss and he couldn’t have known how his “no” would be met. Would he have lost his job? Would he have been transferred somewhere else?
There are lots of moral reasons not to have affairs, which I’m not interested in hashing out.
But there are some very good practical reasons for not fucking your subordinates. And this is one of them. He had a job he loved. She controlled whether he had that job and what he would be paid for doing it. How is anyone from the outside supposed to know those two things and feel certain that he was freely and willingly having an affair?
Because if this is two people who thought they were pulling one over on the rest of us, then I’m all in favor of him losing part or all of his pension.
But if we’re taking money from a guy who felt like he had no choice but to go along with and keep going along with something his boss told him he had to do in order to keep his job? Then I feel like we’re watching the continuation of a very bad thing happening to him. And I don’t like it.
