An interesting column by one of my favorite commentators, Prof. John McWhorter. An excerpt:
Seems reasonable to me, and indeed I expect that most government employers should and would forbid their employees from using profanity in an angry or aggressive way when speaking with the people they serve. (Certainly the First Amendment doesn’t generally bar government employers from imposing such restrictions on speech that is part of the employee’s job.) I appreciate that police officers may sometimes need to signal a form of aggressiveness; “drop the gun or I’ll shoot” is aggressive, but justified. But I suspect that aggressive profanity generally adds a needless level of tension, hostility, and indignity to most situations.
Of course, mentioning the word in the course of describing facts (e.g., “In that altercation you were describing, who exactly was the person who said ‘fuck you’ to you?”) is a completely different matter; and I also agree that there should generally be tolerance for some casual nonhostile profanity, given modern norms: “Fuck!” as an expression of surprise, or of annoyance at one’s own minor mistake, is still unprofessional, but probably not an occasion for firing or serious discipline. But those, as McWhorter notes, are separate questions.