Chris Pretty is one of the West Midlands' most experienced detectives and has brought to justice criminals of uncompromising repugnance.
Detectives like Pretty investigate offences that make your stomach churn. They walk, from time to time, in the sewer of humanity, and confront those aspects of human behaviour we would rather not recognise, let alone face.
Pretty's caseload has included stabbings and shootings, street attacks and doorstep slayings, and all manner of acts of mindless violence. One inquiry required him to bring to book the killers of a man whose body was chopped up and fed through a kitchen mincer. Pretty, at one stage, led the force's crackdown on inner city gun crime. The victims of some of these shootings, let alone the perpetrators, are not the sort of people you or I would invite round for Christmas drinks.
But for the dedication of detectives such as Pretty, the West Midlands would be a far more dangerous place for your children, partners, parents and friends.
What a brilliant idea then to launch a formal investigation, backed by the full might of West Midlands Police's political correctness unit, into what Pretty may, or may not have said, at a leaving bash. The gunslingers of Aston and Handsworth must be laughing into their wraps of cocaine.
West Midlands Police, still haunted by the ghosts of the discredited Serious Crime Squad, persists in thinking it is a good idea to move its best officers out of the jobs they excel at. This explains why Pretty was moved to head of training, a post every seasoned murder squad investigator must relish. It was while moving from this post and being sent, literally, to Coventry, that the officer is claimed to have put his polished brogues in it.
Pretty, apparently, is a fan of model cars and on unwrapping his gift, and seeing it was a BMW, is alleged to referred to the toy as "black man's wheels". If this is true, I am fairly convinced Pretty will wince at the repetition of it. It is one of those idiotic "jokes" that people are prone to blurt out at times of acute embarrassment - and it's harder to think of a more embarrassing experience than your own "leaving" do.
Some officers took exception to Pretty's blooper and the bureaucratic sausage machine purred into life. Pretty was reported to the force's Professional Standards Department. They referred the case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, who then bounced it back to internal affairs, presumably on the basis that the force should stop behaving like a bunch of ninnies and sort the problem out themselves.
Now there will be a full-blown investigation, no doubt incurring inordinate public expense by way of the taking of witness statements, legal representation, officers' time, form filling, secretarial support, travel expenses, counselling for the offended individuals, and tea and buns for the misconduct panel.
Quite what one of the West Midlands' most respected officers is doing in the meantime is a mystery. Pretty hasn't started his duties at Coventry yet. The force's press office thinks he may be holed up in Lloyd House, the police headquarters in Colmore Circus. Whatever he is doing, it doesn't seem like Chris Pretty is being allowed to do what he does best - nailing criminals and methodically compiling the evidence to lock them away.
I make no excuses for the officer's ill-judged alleged remark at the force's Tally Ho! training base, but I fail to see how it can constitute a hanging offence. What was required was a good old-fashioned bollocking, and a contrite word of apology. West Midlands Police, though, is foreign country - they do things differently there.
As an employer in an ethnically diverse population, the force rightly has taken steps to boost recruitment among the black and Asian community, and worked at curbing the Neanderthal canteen culture that discriminated against women. The force also states, quite correctly, that it will not tolerate discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, faith and sexual orientation.
However, these are legal obligations that apply to all employers, and employee rights are protected by a sea of legislation.
Does then West Midlands Police really need a Diversity and Community Cohesion Unit, staffed by a force diversity co-ordinator, a project manager, a diversity research officer and an integration and community cohesion officer? Does it need "diversity champions"?
Image and perception are everything in modern policing. This means the rebranded West Midlands force no longer has uncomfortable discussions about "stop and search". The so-called "sus" laws attracted frightful publicity and the force has renamed "stop and search" as "encounters," some of which are brief.
Meanwhile, the force's detection rate stands at 26 per cent. Three-quarters of criminals are never caught. And a few more will slip through the net while the PC Police work out what to do with one of the region's finest officers.