On Friday afternoon, Lieutenant Regina Smith walked away from the Lucille Baller fiasco with a five-day suspension for bringing discredit to the Dallas Police Department.
It seems a fair enough sentence for conduct that, while demonstrating hilariously bad judgment, did no real damage to anyone save for those of us who listened to her rap.
Smith disagrees. Her attorney told the Morning News that she is an exemplary 25-year DPD officer and that she was merely struggling to cope with the loss of her husband, Senior Corporal Norman Smith, who was killed in the line of duty. And in disciplinary records obtained from the department, Smith writes that she never meant to besmirch the reputation of DPD, nor does she think her sideline gig as Lucille Baller had that effect.
Smith explains that she had established Big Rush In Global Media and begun developing the associated website last spring. One of the things she posted to the website was a six-minute video clip ("what the entertainment industry refers to as a sizzle reel") titled "Broken Blues."
"It depicts my struggles as I try to move forward from the grief and pain of tragically losing [Norman Smith] by engaging in an outside business interest that happens to bring me some realm of joy."
It was created, she writes, "with hopes of becoming a reality television show."
Smith isn't quite sure how the site became public. She had hired a web developer to work on the site but hadn't finished editing its content and did not mean for it to go live. She was as surprised as anyone when internal affairs began asking questions last November and has demanded to know who tipped them off.
Had she known the site was viewable by the Internet-surfing public, she might have thought better of including lines like this: "Don't mess with me or I'll shoot a motherfucker cuz Lucille Baller, she been to hell and back." Or this: "You know what I would do to somebody who tried to take advantage of me? You see this bullet right here? I'll stick it from the rooter to the tooter and bring it out."
Although, to be honest, she doesn't seem to regret that last one too much.
"In the sizzle reel, I interjected the hyperbole 'from the rooter to the tooter,'" she writes. "This is an old country saying which was harmlessly mentioned in an effort to add humor and personality. Any reasonable person should easily see it is an impossible feat for anyone to carry out and should never have been seen as a threat or criminal act."
Because bullets are always delivered by hand and, clearly, no one's arm is long enough to reach all the way from the rooter to the tooter, or vise versa for that matter.
Internal affairs investigators didn't buy it, concluding that, regardless of intent, Smith made the department look bad. The video she made will continue to do so, courtesy of the Internet and the Morning News:
