EDITORIAL: Hiring Yant to police union post disgraceful

Hey, hey, ho, ho, integrity has got to go!

How outrageous is the Las Vegas police union’s hiring of Bryan Yant, the disgraced Metropolitan Police Department officer who almost single handedly inspired major reforms in the use of deadly force? Imagine if NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell hired Ray Rice to head the league’s domestic violence prevention efforts.

Yant didn’t just kill unarmed, small-time pot dealer Trevon Cole in 2010. He screwed up the warrant and nighttime raid that led to the shooting, and provided testimony that wasn’t consistent with evidence. In 2001, he shot to death Richard Travis Brown, and in 2003, he shot and wounded Melvin Gilchrist when he mistook a baseball bat for a gun. Or so he said. Yant’s version of events didn’t match up with evidence in those shootings, either.

And so Las Vegas police finally adopted new training, new policies and new accountability measures to better hold accountable officers such as Yant.

So what’s Yant’s new job with the police union? As reported Sept. 21 by the Review-Journal’s Mike Blasky, part of Yant’s new duties include advising officers who shoot people.

This is like a hospital hiring Dipak Desai to teach seminars in infection-control practices.

There is not a more toxic figure in local law enforcement than Bryan Yant. Why doesn’t the union just build a sign at its office that gives the middle finger to taxpayers? The police union has publicly declared that its top job is protecting bad cops — and getting them pay raises to boot. What a shocker.

Here’s hoping the rank and file of the Metropolitan Police Department have the good sense to do what the union won’t: Stay away from Bryan Yant.