Disclaimer: I play a police officer in real life but no where near where this took place and know none of the players.
I think the most likely candidate for what happened is the officer is relatively new and/or niave and some of his fellow officers, when he asked them what his responsibilities were as field security, jokingly responded, "Oh, you keep everyone off the field, including the refs, until the coach can verify they are not on his strike out list."
Personally, I think the crew that was initially confronted with this handled it beautifly. The officer has the legal authority to prevent you from entering any part of the school he has instructions from school staff to exclude contract workers from. That does not mean the ramifications from his actions acing on behalf of the school security do not happen. Even as a fellow LEO, I would have merely taken the officer at his word and turned around and started walking back to the locker room after hopefully having come up with something as brilliant as the crew in the original post.
If this instruction was actually from the coach, I can most assuredly confirm that school would be on my 'no' list (strike out list). Around here, coaches can 'no' up to 10% of our board's officials, and we can 'no' up to 10% of the schools. Even after going round and round on Monday after a game once with a head coach and Althetic Director over the ejection of a star player, I was not 'no'ed at the school and any school that 'no'ed me would likely be a blessing
So either:
A) The cop has a Napoleon complex because of the badge and came up with this hair brain scheme on his own, shame on him and whowever was paying him that night should be informed of the conduct.
B) The cop was working for the school as either a contract or jurisdictional employee and was following lawful instructions from a supervisor to control entry and access to the field. Shame on the school and the school board should be notified of the bone head move.
C) The cop was duped by prankster co-workers into believing this is what he should do. Everyone involved should take a deep breath and accept a sincere "I'm sorry" from the chap as I doubt any adult with real life experience has not been embarassed by pranksters misleading them.
My money, if I was a betting man, would be on 'C'.
[Edit for Irefky:
Tell them what we tell the officials here when they get black balled. "Look at their record, did you really want to do their games anyway?" Because the only schools around here that actually exercise their 'no' option are schools that if I had a choice, I would rather not be assigned to anyway. I just won't intentionally do something to get 'no'ed by them
I know that is light hearted and of little help to someone that is truly affected by such an insult, but there is no moral or thought police, thank God, so if a coach exercises his option, while I think it is short sighted, there is nothing the official can do about it. In the end, the school suffers the most because they either get weak officials or officials that are easily imtimidated and both of those cut both ways in a game.]
[Edited by BulldogMcC on Oct 27th, 2005 at 12:08 AM]