Police union boss flips out over cartoon showing kids telling Santa, "Keep us safe from the police"

Enter Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 President John McNesby.

In a scathing letter yesterday . . . McNesby demanded an apology from the Bucks County Courier Times for the cartoon.

“Surprisingly, you have at least one reader of that excuse for a newspaper you run,” McNesby wrote. “The one reader forwarded a copy of your disgraceful and highly offensive ‘cartoon.’ . . .

“There is a special place in hell for you miserable parasites in the media who seek to exploit violence and hatred in order to sell advertisements.”

The paper then issued an apology.

If we had recognized prior to publication that the cartoon would have caused unintended offense, our editors would have selected a different one for Sunday’s newspaper. Editing a newspaper is not easy and we don’t always get it right.

An apology might have been in order for the fact that the cartoon wasn’t particularly funny, original or poignant. But offending the sensibilities of law enforcement in the midst of a national uproar over the unnecessary killing of people by law enforcement isn’t something for which a newspaper should be apologizing. And it just gets worse from there.