Three months after a Milwaukee police sergeant roughed up the oldest photog he could find at a house fire, city officials have admitted Clint Fillinger did nothing wrong. That is to say they’ve dropped all charges against the Fox 4 photojournalist. Readers will remember Fillinger as the – ahem – seasoned lenslinger who responded to a house fire call only to be accosted by an oddly hostile cop. “All the way back!” the sergeant barked, as he and a fellow officer walked the accredited photographer away from the news scene. Fillinger protested as he backpedaled, until finally the cops put him on his ass. When they did, his camera took a hard bounce but it did capture the sixty eight year old community menace being unceremoniously cuffed and stuffed.

At the time we issued a stern Schmuck Alert, a move met with stiff indifference by all parties involved. We’re cool with that, though one of the core tenets of The Lenslinger Institute is that clashes between The Fourth Estate and first responders would not occur so readily were certain people not so insistent on being absolute douche-bags. It’s even written in our by-laws. So, you can imagine our delight at hearing the city of Milwaukee have reconsidered their position and expunged Mr. Fillinger’s record of any and all cooked up charges. Hey, being publicly identified as a forty five year old veteran of television news is enough to live down. No one needs a rap sheet they didn’t earn.