The Attack of the Jelly Bellies or "You Gotta Fight, For Your Right . . . To Eat Doughnuts?"

I have written previosuly about obesity regulation in the workplace, but there are some things that are sacred within any police department, and then there are doughnuts.  Pity this poor chief of police who sought to attack his doughnut-eating bretheren and paid for it with his job:

Police Chief Paul Goward was tired of looking around his department and seeing blubber hanging over the belts of some of his officers. So he sent out a memo exhorting the "jelly bellies" to shape up.

In the end, the department lost 190 pounds -- all of them belonging to Goward. He was forced out as chief because some of his officers took offense at the memo.

The October 11 memo bruised feelings on the 80-member force, drew at least one anonymous letter of complaint from officers about the chief's management style and made his department the butt of jokes about fat cops and doughnuts.

Well, at least as this post points out, jokes about fat cops and doughnuts are not easing now because the police chief got fired for:

[P]rovid[ing] a list of 10 reasons police officers should be in shape. He said overweight police poorly represent the profession, poop out when chasing suspects and might have to resort to "a higher level of force" if a criminal got the upper hand in a fight. He said out-of-shape cops are a liability to the city and their families.

In fact, the real joke is that this man got terminated for making sensible recommendations about how to improve the police force.  Nevertheless, I would think that he would have no First Amendment protection in writing this memo under Ceballos, as this would probably be considered "official-capacity" speech.

No, let me restate what I said before: Ceballos is the REAL joke.

PS