John Chevilott found a loaded revolver while doing his job, alerted his foreman, and later turned the gun into police.  His first inclination was to turn it into a police patrol, but didn’t see one that day.  Instead, he took the gun to his local police department after leaving work.  Most people would think he did the responsible thing, including your truly.

Apparently the city of Detroit doesn’t agree.  Mr. Chevilott has been fired and his foreman was suspended for 30 days over the incident.
The only thing I could have seen him do differently was to not touch the gun, stop working, and insist that his supervisor contact management to get the police to come and get it immediately.  If the gun was evidence of a crime, leaving it lie would have kept his fingerprints and such off of it, and not touching it would also have kept his hoplophobe management from having a PSH attack*.

Even though he didn’t do that, he did the responsible thing.  He secured the gun, and turned it into the police.  He broke no laws as far as I can tell.  His foreman knew the circumstances of how he found it, and if the way things were being done were wrong, then he should have called for the police and informed higher management.

This man did the right thing, and now he’s being punished for it.  I hope this wrong is rectified, and I hope that his example does not deter those who find themselves in similar situations from doing the right thing.

*Do y’all think it would be impolite for me to send a package of clean underwear to the director of public works in Detroit?  He seems to be needing one over the presence of a lump of metal.

Update – Fixed the link.  Thanks to Christina LMT for spotting the broken link!