A senior criminal investigator has been fired after he allegedly flipped off an employee at a Tacoma restaurant for donning a Black Lives Matter button on her dress.
The Washington state Attorney General’s Office sacked Cloyd Steiger, a former Seattle Police homicide detective, after conducting a probe that revealed that Steiger reportedly wrote: “BLM button = no tip” and “That’s how socialism works” on the back of the receipt of a bill at the Fish Peddler Restaurant that he visited last month.
The Attorney General’s office concluded the investigation into the matter on Wednesday, October 7. The office stated that Steiger showed extremely poor judgment and “irreparably compromised” his credibility, as per The Seattle Times. Deputy Attorney General Todd Bowers mentioned in his termination letter that Steiger failed to meet the integrity standards of the office and had undermined the trust of the public and his fellow workers.
However, Steiger’s lawyer Steve Fogg called his termination a “mistake” and “illegal.” His lawyer said, “The AG is firing Cloyd not because he didn’t do his job (he did it well) and not because he didn’t tip a waitress and raised his voice,” Fogg wrote in an email as reported by Daily Mail. “The AG fired Cloyd for expressing political opinions as a private citizen with which some members of the AG’s Office disagreed.”
Earlier, Steiger, 61, was placed on administrative leave on September 8 following criticism on social media over a visit he made with his wife to that restaurant in Tacoma.
The incident allegedly unfurled when “a server, 19-year-old Reese Vincent, said she met the couple and led them to a table on the patio, where they ordered cocktails and appetizers. Steiger, she said, seemed ‘standoffish’ and anxious to leave. They asked for their check after a single round of drinks, she said,” reports The Seattle Times.
Many of Steiger’s former colleagues are disgraced by the behavior because it “demonstrates such extreme racial bias and prejudice.”
Sources: AWM, The Seattle Times, Daily Mail
