Editorial: Thick blue line

It's been said that everyone deserves a second chance. The person who deserves an 11th chance is far less common.

Somehow, though, Sheila McKaig's fellow New Jersey police officers found that much forgiveness for her. Over the course of 14 months in 2007 and 2008, the state trooper was pulled over 10 times while off-duty in Atlantic County's Hamilton Township, according to Newark's Star-Ledger. She acknowledged she had been drinking on three occasions, the paper reported.

And yet McKaig, who currently patrols the Atlantic City Expressway, has never been charged with a traffic violation or suspended from her job. That suggests that both the township and state forces suffered a systemic failure of impartiality and professionalism.

Astonishingly, 10 different Hamilton officers stopped McKaig but failed to dispense anything so harsh as a traffic ticket. During one stop, an officer described her as "pretty impaired and not fit to drive." Pulled over again two weeks later, she acknowledged having had "a lot" to drink. Both those stops ended with a police officer chauffeuring the trooper home.

The State Police didn't muster much of a show of disapproval, either. Internal charges were filed against McKaig a year later, but they await a hearing. (The Ledger uncovered the case in disciplinary records obtained under the state open-records law.)

The Hamilton police deserve credit at least for expressing chagrin in hindsight. Once the then-police chief learned of the multiple stops, he notified the State Police and made changes to prevent a recurrence, department officials say. The current police chief has said McKaig was treated "far too leniently."

But don't look for such a mea culpa from the State Police, whose statements about the case exhibit all of the backward clannishness that has gotten the outfit in trouble before in recent years.

One State Police official even defended the Hamilton police - who, it bears repeating, are not defending themselves - by saying the breaks they gave McKaig "got her sober." Another noted that the trooper is "a good person."

No reason has been offered to believe McKaig is not a good person, basically. And people with substance-abuse problems should be treated with as much compassion as possible. But the limits of compassion must begin where their problem endangers others.

New Jersey law requires at least $1,755 in fines and surcharges and a three-month license suspension for a first drunken-driving conviction. A third means six months in jail or community service, $6,000 in fines and surcharges, and a decade without driving privileges. And that penalty is for three convictions in as much as 20 years; McKaig's three reported alcohol-related stops were within three months of each other.

Imagine a hapless civilian pulled over on the turnpike for a repeat drunken-driving offense and facing the stern penalties prescribed by the law. How many state troopers would - or should - let him go for being a good person?