Need a boat? Try a career as an East St. Louis police officer.

Should we condemn the thin blue line in East St. Louis just because they are getting a little fat on the bottom line? Should we deny these blue knights the comfort of a vacation home and nice boat to go with it?

Shame on anyone who thinks that these fine officers are anything other than the hard-working champions of law and order.

There is plenty of evidence of that hard work. Eleven of them topped $100,000 last year by working scads of overtime. Sgt. Mario Fennoy made almost triple his base pay thanks to overtime, landing at $199,716 in pay.

We play off to poor judgment the fact that St. Clair County prosecutors will not take cases from the fine Sgt. Fennoy because of "credibility issues." Who wouldn't trust a cop who works so hard that he nearly triples his pay?

Consider that to do so, we calculated he needed to work 4,685 hours in 2017. Most of us slackers work about 2,000 hours and take a vacation for the rest.

With 11 cops working so hard, and those mean prosecutors refusing to trust at least two of them, it must be stressful on top of tiring for the impoverished city's police officers. Management is no help, with three former chiefs going to prison.

All this must explain why the well-rested criminals in the city committed 35 murders last year in an area where only one in four murders gets solved: Killers get past centurions who work so hard that they are just too tired to give chase.

Maybe the best thing is for some mandatory rest time for these officers. Maybe rather than napping at their vacation homes, they should spend extended time at the Graybar Hotel.

This story was originally published May 14, 2018 at 3:31 PM with the headline "Need a boat? Try a career as an East St. Louis police officer.."