JAN 15 — It was a typical Homer Simpson moment. There were two stories in The Malay Mail yesterday involving boozing cops and wrong-headed parents — both accounts accompanied by disturbing pictures that trumped rational thought.

Two on-duty cops, said to be Kajang patrolmen, were pictured fast asleep in their parked patrol car with their sub-machine guns left carelessly on the back seat and the front passenger door left open. They had been drinking beer.

They deserve this Homer quote: “Beer is the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.”

Their infuriating indiscretion also earns the police force Homer’s shout-out: “Is there anything they can’t do?”

The parents who’d rather expose their kids to unsavoury conditions at a shutdown primary school in Kelana Jaya than send them to a spanking new one four kilometres away might have just endeared their young to another of Homer’s flippant thoughts: “Remember to rebel against the authorities, kids!”

Both the stories have the makings of a Simpsons episode about stupid risks making life worth living. And like Homer, they will hold: “I don’t think anything I’ve ever done is wrong.”

Are the 24 kids, who are now exposed to the scorching sun and confined to a makeshift tent, supposed to grow up and echo Homer: “Oh, so they have Internet on computers now!”

It is beyond the ken of decent people how the cops and parents could stoop to such deeply troubling conduct.

It is vital that the police have the utmost integrity and anyone who infects fear and enrages public-police relationship is not it.

So, why were the boozing constables merely reassigned to desk duties instead of being suspended pending an inquiry?

A SJK (T) Seaport student makes a quick exit from the makeshift tent classroom in Kelana Jaya.

I am told colleagues had in the past overlooked the transgressions of the patrolmen who purportedly drank too much and got into trouble. Perhaps, brotherhood courtesy got the better of their superiors.

Now imagine if these two patrolmen had pulled you over one night. Now imagine if law enforcement attitude toward drinking by on-duty personnel doesn’t change.

Law enforcers should not fail society just as parents shouldn’t let down their children. Security and education are non-negotiable.

Children must be able to trust their parents to put them through proper schooling.

In the case of Seaport Tamil School, the parents’ main gripe is that it would cost them more in transport charges to send their children to the new school.

It’s depressing that they would settle for volunteer teachers and stay put in the original school without water, electricity and learning aids just to prove a point.

If they go ahead today with their plan to forcibly occupy the 80-year-old school that has been closed down, then it surely must go down as wide scale failure by the parents.

Oppressed minority? Gold-star grievance entitling full victimhood status? I’m afraid it doesn’t cut the mustard.

Anyone who upsets society and destroys lives doesn’t deserve the role of a custodian because there is always the fear that they could sleepwalk over a cliff again.

Spoilt intransigence generates stomach-churning fright that falls within the sphere of irrationality and a contemptible audacity of logic.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.