It was a quiet Saturday morning at St. Andrews Catholic Cemetery in Richmond, Indiana when Sarah E. Lawrence was out for a stroll and noticed something peculiar. There was a Richmond Police cruiser parked on a narrow road with the engine running and when she looked inside she saw two uniformed police officers sleeping in the front seats of the Dodge Charger. Naturally, she took some pictures and put them on Facebook with the caption “Check out what we found this morning.”
As of this writing, the Facebook post has more than 1,000 reactions, more than 100 comments, and more than 8,300 shares. As you can imagine, most of the comments are quite negative pointing out that it looks like the cops were sleeping on the job. Not to mention the crime they could be missing by being knocked out while on duty. However, there are a few people defending the sleeping officers saying they’re only human.
"Obviously, it's not OK," Richmond Police Chief Jim Branum told local news outlet the Palladium-Item. "It's certainly something that's not encouraged. We're aware of it and we're going to launch an internal investigation and in all likelihood, there'll be some discipline."
Barnum also stated that the Richmond Police Department has a policy against officers sleeping while on duty, and we certainly hope every police force in the country has a similar policy. "I think it's common sense; I wouldn't want to call for police action and have an officer sleeping somewhere," Branum said. "And people with any other job would not be allowed to sleep while they're working."
No matter what disciplinary action is taken against these two officers, they should just be glad they didn’t take a nap in a Ford Police Interceptor Utility.