This just in from the New York Daily News:

A highly decorated cop got canned because of his Web site, NYPD Rant – a forum for disgruntled cops that is brutally true to its name.

Operating under the name Polecat, Police Officer Edward Polstein allowed his Finest brethren to take shots at Mayor Bloomberg, top cop Raymond Kelly, pompous bosses and even the police union.

Police brass weren’t amused – bringing departmental charges that have led to the dismissal of Polstein, a housing cop for 18 years. Now unemployed and trying to figure out how to support a wife and three daughters, Polstein defiantly says he did nothing wrong and is gearing up for a legal battle in federal court.

"The Rant was my diary; it was how I felt at the moment," Polstein, 43, told the Daily News yesterday. "It is my constitutional right to vent."

His lawyer Jeffrey Goldberg said the ex-cop has the First Amendment on his side. "If the Web site had said Kelly wasthe greatest police commissioner there wouldn’t be a problem," Goldberg said, "but Kelly’s thin-skinned, and he didn’t like the content."

Polstein ranted that the NYPD was run like the Nazi Party and posted a photo of Adolf Hitler addressing his storm troopers. Click on a photo of Kelly and it morphed into the cartoon character Popeye.

Polstein created NYPD Rant in 1999 as he became increasingly frustrated at being passed over for specialized units because, he believed, he didn’t have a "hook," police lingo for a high-ranking mentor.

He’s apparently touched a raw nerve in the blue ranks: The NYPD Rant message board averages more than 60,000 visits daily, and last month it recorded 126,048 visits the day a new police contract was announced. Some of the posters reveal their discontent with names like The Job Is Doomed, Burnt and NYPD Blew.

"A lot of cops don’t have avenues to vent and rant," Polstein said. "If you keep it inside, bad things happen."

Polstein was told the Internal Affairs Bureau was monitoring the site, but he continued his diatribes and remained an active cop. On his own time, he offered a free course to housing cops on spotting concealed weapons.

During a visit to Police Headquarters after 9/11, Polstein wanted to show how easy it was to smuggle weapons into the building. Flashing a bogus police ID card, he walked past security carrying a gym bag containing plastic knives, a stun gun and a mock pipe bomb.

Then he revealed his ruse to the sergeant on duty, offering to help with training. He didn’t hear back until October 2003, when the IAB slapped him with charges of "posting language and remarks" that were discourteous to police brass and elected officials, describing on the site how he "smuggled" weapons into headquarters, and using the NYPD logo on the site without permission.

He was convicted of all three charges, but he signed a settlement last
October allowing him to retire if he agreed not to sue the NYPD.
Polstein agreed, but after he was approved recently for a tax-free
disability pension, Polstein was deemed in violation of the settlement
and was fired.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne noted that Kelly still gave him a chance to
retire with a pension even though the trials commissioner had cited
Polstein’s lack of judgment and remorse and called into question his
fitness to remain a cop.

Excerpts from NYPD Rant, an Internet bulletin board for cops that
police brass found so objectionable they threw its creator, Edward
Polstein, off the force:

PROSAY

Subject: NYPD Rant

[Department brass] fear this board … they loathe this board

63Delayed

Subject: Fire lieutenant brought a pipe bomb to fire house

it goes to show you the members of the FDNY would steal just about anything.

Door Kicker

Subject: Perps