Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk decided to jump in on the Colin Kaepernick situation and zeroed in on law enforcement.

Here’s what he said in defense of Colin Kaepernick in an article titled “Kaepernick was right about police vs. cosmetology training”:

Before I could actually start the project, I received the letter to the 49ers and the NFL from the San Francisco Police Officers Association, and I noticed that the wide-ranging response to Kaepernick’s assertions did not include a challenge to his facts regarding police versus cosmetology training. Which told me that Kaepernick was factually correct; otherwise, the SFPOA would have pointed it out.

Indeed, he was correct. Police officers in California must attend (either before being hired or upon hire) an 888-hour Basic Police Academy, which requires roughly six months to complete. Cosmetologists in California have a 1,600-hour training requirementbefore they can even take the test required to secure a license.

Ok, I’m gonna bite on this write-up and go with the flow on Florio’s premise.

Here’s the real truth. Yes, California police officers must attend the course he wrote about. It doesn’t stop there. When recruits finish academy training and head back to their respected departments, they are paired with “Field Training Officers” or commonly known as “FTO’s”. San Francisco police department requires this after the academy:

Conducts a 17-week field training program for recruit officers who have successfully completed the Academy portion of their training and are ready to begin an assignment in patrol. During this 17-week period, the recruits are assigned to three different Field Training Officers who supervise, train, and evaluate the recruit officers during the application of practical field training.

That 17 weeks is another 680 hours of training which gives the new officer 1,568 hours of total training. 32 hours less than the “cosmetologists”. That cannot be denied or added up is the additional training hours law enforcement racks each year compared to cosmetologist.

Now, let’s talk reality. Kaepernick and Florio are just using this example in training hours because they don’t like cops. So Florio wrote an article for “click bait” and to take a jab at them. Florio knows comparing two radically different professions in just “training hours” is naive and wrong.

Police while at the academy are on a set rigid military structure while cosmetologist are in a relaxed classroom setting and go home at night. The class for the cosmetologists may entail hair coloring while the cadet at the academy is firing off a 1,000 rounds of ammo a day during some weeks. The cosmetologist, while still in class, finishes pedicure technique. At the same time, fresh out of the academy recruits are paired up with veteran officers and learning who the dope dealers of the neighborhood are.

In a sane world, I shouldn’t have to go into great detail about the difference of these two professions. But when mentally inbred people like Colin Kaepernick and Mike Florio try to tarnish the training of law enforcement, something needs to be said.

Florio just needs to pound sand.