Boys will be boys, but cops should be grownups.

Those weren’t grownups behind the wheels of a couple of Spokane County sheriff’s vehicles in downtown Spokane early on Oct. 3. They were adolescents with badges and guns. Arguably, at least one of them could have become a corpse.

In what’s been described as horseplay, deputies leaving a routine traffic stop on East Sprague and headed for the Public Safety Building staged an impromptu chase — a marked patrol car on the trail of an unmarked Ford Mustang.

Their predawn path — during which they reportedly violated not only department policy but also the law they’re sworn to uphold — took them along Sprague, Division, Spokane Falls Boulevard and Post before a spike strip laid by Spokane city police officers blew out one of the Mustang’s tires. Before the episode was over, it had diverted scarce city police resources from legitimate patrol duties and caused an estimated $2,000 in damage to a city police car, plus a ruined tire. In the confusion, guns were drawn, heightening the tension and the potential for tragedy.

The incident is under customary review, but the deputies involved have not been suspended from work while the investigation is under way, raising doubts as to how seriously department officials are treating the incident.

Indeed, Spokane police Lt. Dean Sprague — a spokesman for the agency whose on-duty officers interceded to help out in what looked to them like a legitimate pursuit — summed the deputies’ antics up this way: “They were goofing around. You just kind of go, ‘Come on, guys.’ “

Reasonable citizens deserve to hear more from public officials than, “Come on, guys.”

Law enforcement in a free society can’t be effective if the public at large loses faith in those who are authorized to police the rest of us. The childish behavior witnessed on Oct. 3 does not instill trust and faith. Not only did such conduct not protect and serve the public, it put the public in potential danger. And when the non-uniformed deputy in the Mustang failed to obey police officers who drew their guns and ordered him to “get on the ground,” he set up a situation where the wrong move could have gotten him shot.

At a time when Spokane police are so thin-staffed that they cannot respond to many crime complaints in the city, what would have happened if, say, a domestic violence call had come in while several officers were tied up with the deputies’ hoax?

Sheriff Mark Sterk and the officers in charge of the investigation owe the public an assurance such an incident is intolerable. If the investigation bears out the facts as initially reported by authorities themselves, there should be no margin for second chances. The situation, as described, calls for dismissal.