Mark Wright’s Blog

Professional conduct is always an important aspect of business.  How you dress and present yourself goes a long way to making a good initial impression.  We are always being judged on how we conduct ourselves, whether it is at work or socially. 

I recently read about a situation in which unprofessional conduct not only created a bad situation, but cost someone his job.

Many of you might have heard about the recent incident involving Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats.  Moats was rushing to the hospital with his wife and another passenger because his mother-in-law was literally dying in her hospital room.  At one of the traffic lights, Moats checked to see if there was traffic and went through the red light.  He had his flasher lights on while doing this. 

Moats arrived in the parking lot of the hospital as did a police officer who saw him go through the red light.  The officer got out of his car with his weapon drawn.  Moats’ wife and passenger got out of the vehicle and started walking into the hospital.  The officer told them to stop and the wife told him that her mother was dying and kept going. 

Moats repeatedly tried to explain the situation and that his mother-in-law was on the verge of death.  This was confirmed by another officer.  Instead of doing the compassionate thing and cutting him a break, he continued to write the ticket and lecture him.  He even threatened to take Moats to jail.  Well normally this would be a he said, he said situation.  However, the officer had his video camera on and everything was caught on video tape.  By the time Moats made it to the hospital room, his mother-in-law had passed away. 

The incident became public and needless to say the Dallas police chief was none too happy.  The officer resigned and issued an apology to the Moats family.  It is amazing how much contrition someone can show after the fact.  Moats accepted the apology.

Now by the letter of the law, the officer didn’t do anything illegal.  However, he showed incredibly poor judgment and embarrassed his department.  He is now unemployed.  I feel bad for the guy but I feel like if this hadn’t happened, he would have continued to use poor judgment.  Hopefully he will have learned from the incident.  I hope that one day he can get back into law enforcement with the lessons he has hopefully learned.