I agree that a substantive lie on a police report is a huge deal. But in this instance, it did not end up being substantive. The officer made it dramatic, he exaggerated, or he straight up made stuff up - but it did not change the outcome of the interaction and did not have long term consequences. Perhaps the officer was considering worse behavior, but that didn't happen and we don't punish people for considering bad behavior. It isn't a "nothing" and we don't want it to be a norm, but I also don't think we want to open on a lane to scrutinizing reports/logs for reasons to fire officers.
Substantive whoppers speak for themselves, but a habit of lying about anything and everything with impunity says a lot about character.
Just because he didnt Holtzclaw her doesn mean we just forget about it.
Even the police chief knew he should have been fired:
Police Chief Bill Citty settles for lower-level discipline so that he has a paper trail if future problems arise.
"When I try to prove lying out of this, I'm going to tell you right now from my 40 years experience and my 14 years as being chief, I will have this shoved down my throat by an (police union) arbitrator," Citty said.
"I've had some really serious, serious events overturned by arbitrators," he said.http://newsok.com/little-discipline-for-okc-officer-who-said-cyclist-wielded-license-as-weapon/article/55818