Some commenters in today’s Morning Roundup have been talking about this article on the front page of this morning’s Washington Post, and we have to agree it’s a distressing read. The lengthy story by Mary Pat Flaherty and Sari Horwitz (read the whole thing, as the cool kids say) examines what appears to be a significant amount of Metropolitan Police officers who are being paid full-time, tax-free salaries while on medical leave for job-related stress that, on paper, appears to be caused not by out of the ordinary circumstances, but rather some pretty common workplace issues. There’s a lot of examples laid out in the article, such as this one:

Officer Debra A. Domino collected full, tax-free pay for 18 months while off work — roughly $80,000, according to city pay records. She had been a crossing guard coordinator in the 6th District in Northeast but was reassigned to a beat in late 2002, a change she objected to. When she confronted her supervisors with her objections, their reaction added to Domino’s stress, she said, and left her unable to work. Domino, 41, returned to full duty in July 2005 after being threatened with retirement, according to records.

If only we could all stop working whenever we were asked by our bosses to do something we’d rather not do. Now, the last thing we want to do is paint the entire MPD with the same brush. We all know that the majority of our police officers have been working forced overtime since July and are genuinely concerned with protecting the citizens of this city. We are honestly hard pressed to think of a more stressful job than that of a police officer in a crime-ridden city. But you’ll forgive us if we start throwing heavy objects around our office when we read paragraphs like these:

When the number of unavailable D.C. officers peaked in 2003, one of every five was claiming stress as the problem, police records show.

Officers and the union attribute the stress to several factors, including poorly trained managers, heightened terrorism fears and the cumulative effect of a difficult job on an aging force.

But also, Cockett said, “word got out that you could get away with just about anything, and they thought there was a gravy train rolling, and they jumped on it.”

New standards were implemented in May 2005 to prevent these sorts of abuses, but it seems clear the department still doesn’t have the situation under control. And these revelations come during a time when we’re spending an extra $10 million on police manpower during an official crime emergency. It’s outrageous.