Sticking To Your…Hat

Walt Longmire is PISSED.

PINEDALE, Wyo. –  The new sheriff of a Wyoming county has banned his deputies from wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots, a change that led one longtime deputy to retire rather than give up his Western attire.

Sublette County Sheriff Stephen Haskell imposed the new dress code in the western Wyoming county that includes Pinedale, which True West magazine recently named a true Western town.

Haskell is requiring deputies to wear black trousers, a tan shirt, black boots and a black ball cap, saying the change is for safety and uniformity….

The change led Deputy Gene Bryson to retire last Friday after 28 years with the department and about 40 years total in law enforcement. His uniform included a brown cowboy hat, brown cowboy boots and a leather vest in the summer or a wool vest in the winter.

The uniform change is “kind of the reason why I retired,” Bryson told the newspaper. “I am not going to change. I’ve been here for 40-odd years in the sheriff’s office, and I’m not going to go out and buy combat boots and throw my vest and hat away and say, `This is the new me.’ ”

 

This is just sad. Seriously? In Wyoming? Land of Walt Longmire?

The increasingly paramilitary nature of American policing is a serious and dangerous trend. This is just a superficial symptom — but a highly symbolic one.

Raylan Givens thinks the policy is entirely un-Justified.