Letting people off the hook in exchange for foot stuff an entirely different problem. I think the focus misplaced.

Where do you live where cops licking feet regularly makes the news??

What does a ticket cost? I'd let any1 lick my smelly feet for 20 bucks.

Right, because its the mainstream acceptable stand-in for "weird fetishes" and it fits in the mainstream because its NOT scary.

I think the story is more about the damn skeezy cop(s?) than their specific kinks tho

That's uh...that's wild. I suppose it's true though, you dig deep enough into just about anything and depravity will surface one way or another.

When i was in college, there were reports of people, who took their shoes off at the library while studying for midterms, putting their foot back in to find them filled with jizz.

It happened enough we got a campus wide email that said to not take your shoes off in public spaces lol

Well, there was Rainfurrest, which was so bad that I know the name off the top of my head without even being in the furry scene. From what I've heard it was an outlier organized by people who'd been banned from other conventions so by no means typical.

But it's not like I've never heard of a furry convention going wrong.

Oh yeah there are a ton of bdsm conventions, major cities will often have multiple a year. And there are issues and drama for certain, but we generally try to police our own and our problems tend towards being that well established members of the community who do a lot sometimes utilize the trust and respect they have to be predatory, especially to new people, just like every other community.

Foot fetishists' misbehavior is the stuff like you described, though they're really outshone in awfulness by body type fetishists, who do the same stuff and so much more

And tbh I think foot fetishists' big problem is their misbehavior comes from the shame and awkwardness they have about it. And i bet you can find similar stories with far more common body part fetishes like breasts and butts. Like, I'm a breast fetishist for sure and don't get the appeal of feet, but I know some folks who are all about feet and are totally respectful people and I know plenty of folks who can't act properly about tits.

I mean, I'm comfortable considering the folk you're citing outliers. They may all be outlying the same creepy way, but they're not part of our distribution curve dammit

Hey look everyone, someone found anecdotal evidence of something. Therefore that applies to literally everyone!