Just stupid enough to sue

Perhaps you've already heard about Lee Paige, the DEA agent who shot himself in the foot while giving a gun safety presentation to a classroom of children? If not, watch the video, taken by a member of the audience and then handed over to the DEA.

This is wrong on so many levels:

• The officer comes off as a blowhard. Sounds like he's trying to impress them with himself, not the danger of guns.
• He's just talking about how he's the only one in the room professional enough to carry the gun he's showing when it goes off, shooting himself in the foot.
• What in the world was he doing, giving a presentation on gun safety with (a) a loaded gun, and (b) the safety off? The firearm safety presentations I've heard always say "treat every gun as if it's loaded at all times."
• Having lost all credibility about how to safely handle a gun, he decides to go on with the presentation. After recovering a bit he says, "did you see how that accident happened?"
• In one breath, he says "now I'll probably never be able to show guns again", and then asks for someone to hand him another gun. Anybody who was still listening is now either yelling "no!" or rolling on the floor. (That's not all you won't be doing again, Officer Paige.)
• When the video starts to make the rounds, rather than let it go he files a lawsuit, claiming that his career has been crippled and he's become a laughingstock. Seems to me, that course of action was set in motion as soon as the hammer hit the pin.
• In his lawsuit, Paige points out he will be unable to work undercover anymore. If he was worried about protecting his cover, why was he allowing a member of the audience to videotape him at all? Apparently, the DEA isn't too concerned about breaking his cover or they wouldn't have released the video.
• For that matter, nothing says "look at me!" like filing a frivolous lawsuit. It's only when the lawsuit made news that Paige really became well known. Before that, he was an anonymous curiousity, like so much other random strangeness you find on the web.

Hopefully, Paige was exaggerating when, in the lawsuit, he claims he was "once regarded as oen of the best undercover agents, if not the best, in the DEA." If he represents the best of the best, it's no wonder the war on drugs has taken so long.

[via Office Pirates]