The Chief Commissioner of the Victorian police force is suggesting criminal charges for cops who use offensive nicknames for their internal investigators (the Ethical Standards Department). I posted a comment on the article, but they never published it, which I've included below.
I'm pretty sure that people facing criminal charges for calling authority figures nasty names is a fairly standard trait in military dictatorships. Now I can understand taking some sort of limited disciplanary [sic] action, but criminal charges are insane.
Now I'm sure there a plenty of ESDs who are good cops, and without them we'd all be in much more danger from the occasional corrupt cop, but if they think calling them a nasty name warrants criminal action, well calling them "filth" is rather mild.
I think I maybe could have worded the last part of the last sentence better (needs an extra "then"), and I spelt "disciplinary" wrong, but reading some of the other comments they allow neither of those are serious mistakes. Also the politics don't seem that far out, so I have no idea why it wasn't accepted. Oh, well such is life.
Another thing I didn't think to include is that this could cause problems in the future for the rest of the population. Soon the cops could get used to insulting nicknames for the people who police them resulting in criminal charges and will start expecting the same result when the general population calls them "pigs" for instance.
