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There is a difference of perspective between those who have spent their careers responsible only for their own actions, and those who have done that and then been given responsibility for managing the actions of others. What sounds like a great idea in the first case often doesn't always look anywhere near as good in the second.

During my career, my agency managed and responded to any number of extrajurisdictional incidents when emergencies (bombings, active shooter incidents, etc) required lots of manpower in a hurry, but NEVER without authorization, continuous communication, and active involvement by the supervisors on duty. We would most certainly have taken strong and decisive action against any officer who went off the reservation without authorization. No one had any doubts about that, and consequently we didn't have any problems with it either.

However good the university officer's intentions may have been, his chain of command and responsibility to follow his department's policies and procedures didn't evaporate just because a major incident occurred outside his assigned duty area. If he had thought he was doing the right thing, he would have reported what he was doing to dispatch. Plain and simple, leaving his post without communicating because he didn't want to take a possible "no" for an answer wasn't his call, but he made it anyway. It is also a strong indication that he knew he was violating policy but still decided to do what he wanted on his own. When one does that, he owns the results and has little basis for complaint.

If the officer had communicated that he was responding and was told to break off, the responsibility and consequences for that decision would have rested on the supervisor who made it. If the incident scene really was just a few blocks away instead of a few miles (there seems to be disagreement on this point and I don't know the area) a good supervisor might very well have authorized him to continue and would likely have responded as well. In this case, the supervisor wasn't given the opportunity to make a good decision because the officer didn't carry out his part. In fact, the officer insulted his chain of command by apparently presuming they weren't capable of making as good a decision as he was. I hope most folks can see there's an issue here.

Supervisors, policies, and procedures are in place to protect the public, the agency, and the officer. They don't always work perfectly in any individual circumstance, but in a well run agency they usually do a pretty good job of guiding police actions and minimizing undesirable consequences.

Faced with a blatant violation of policy, an agency either has to ignore it and set a precedent that can be used to undermine any policy enforcement decision that follows as discriminatory, or take disciplinary action in accordance with its policies and practices. Any well led agency will take option 2, even when it is unpopular. In the long run, it's the only viable choice.

Whether the sanctions take the form of reprimand, suspension, or termination is determined by policy, past precedent, and the officer's disciplinary history. I don't have any information on the specifics in any of those categories, so I can't comment on whether or not termination was the best choice, but the agency was certainly obligated to take strong action to maintain internal command discipline.

In principle, I still think the agency did the right thing.

AEA wrote:SAD.

I hope he is hired by another Agency quickly. I know I would want him to respond if I was in that situation.

No one would criticize an officer for an emergency assist to an injured officer if the action taken was reasonable - e.g., the incident location was very nearby and the officer notified his dispatcher of his actions. If not countermanded by a supervisor, he's good to go in that case.

Listening to a scanner, leaving an assigned post or district and self dispatching to a call in another part of the city without notifying dispatch sounds a lot like somebody who's looking for excitement that he doesn't often see and knows that his supervisor wouldn't allow him to go if he knew about it.

Houston is a big city with lots of well trained officers - I'm sure the response was more than adequate without the additional presence of a university officer, who couldn't even communicate with the Houston officers whose radios were on another frequency (remember he heard the call on a scanner, not on his own radio).

From the information provided in the brief news article, I see the action taken was appropriate.