Archive for December 21st, 2018

Things I have been neglecting.

Friday, December 21st, 2018

I really haven’t been doing a good job of keeping up with APD firings.

It isn’t that I’m in the tank for the police department now that I’m doing the Citizen’s Police Academy stuff: I don’t feel like I am, and updating you on firings and other disciplinary actions is a good way to show that the department takes these things seriously.

The problem is more that I’m busier now, both personally and professionally, than I have been in quite a while. I’m not complaining, but it does cut into my blogging time. Heck, as you can see, I’m having trouble even keeping up with obits.

But: when someone in a command rank at a major metropolitan police department gets fired, I kind of feel like I have to take note of this.

Here’s the story from the Statesman.

Here’s the official memo from the chief.

I’m not going into details here because the story has a lot of salacious elements: if that’s your bag, you’re welcome to read the less detailed Statesman article or the much much more detailed disciplinary memo.

The gentleman in question plans to appeal, and his legal representative accuses the chief of “inserting himself into the private life and figuratively the bed” of the officer. I can sort of maybe see that point: there’s a lot of stuff in the memo about whether his behavior, even if there was consent involved, is a violation of the law.

BUT: it seems pretty clear to me from the memo that the gentleman in question also tried to hide information (left his cell phone at another person’s house, deleted videos) knowing he was under investigation. That’s a huge violation of department policy, and (in my humble opinion) justifies a firing by itself.

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Obit watch: December 21, 2018.

Friday, December 21st, 2018

Donald Moffat, noted actor.

Mr. Moffat was rarely accorded top billing. But when he played Falstaff, Shakespeare’s bravest coward, wisest fool and most ignoble knight, in Joseph Papp’s 1987 production of “Henry IV, Part 1” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, he was the indisputable star. Mainly a comic figure, Falstaff, a sidekick to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V, embodies a depth more common to major Shakespeare characters.

…

On television, Mr. Moffat appeared as Dr. Marcus Polk in the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live” (1968-69), as Rem the android in the CBS science-fiction series “Logan’s Run” (1977-78) and as the Rev. Lars Lundstrom in “The New Land,” the 1974 ABC drama series about Swedish immigrants. He was also seen in episodes of “Mannix,” “Ironside,” “Gunsmoke” and “The Defenders.”

…

“All the Dead Were Strangers“. He also did shots on the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Mission: Impossible”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”, among many other TV credits. (Seasonally appropriate: he was “Dr. Chandler” in the horribly misguided adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” for the 1985 “Twilight Zone”.)

Among Mr. Moffat’s better-known film roles were as Garry, the station commander, in John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), about an extraterrestrial monster that terrorizes researchers in Antarctica; as Lyndon B. Johnson in Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff” (1983), about America’s first astronauts; and as an arrogant corporate lawyer in Costa-Gavras’s “Music Box” (1989), about a Hungarian immigrant accused of having been a fascist war criminal.

And “President Bennett” in “Clear and Present Danger”.

For the record, since I’m a little behind: Penny Marshall.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed