Watching Mark Geist talking at the NRA Leadership Forum. Calling Trump the greatest president ever. I do this for you. Until it kills me.
Not a shooting thank god, but damn the police response is way over the top
Police were conducting a time-consuming search of a suspicious package in downtown Milwaukee when a man broke through the perimeter tape and emptied the bag, presumably so everyone could get on with their day. Inside were a coat, water bottle and other items commonly carried by commuters.
After the man had finished their work for them, a group of three cops who had been too fearful to approach the bag ran up and tackled the man, knocking him to the pavement.
They arrested him. What crime do you suppose they charged him with?
Making the cops look foolish?
The most dangerous crime in America: disrespecting a police officer.
Don’t praise him! He could have caused WWIII (or something).
Yea, from now on the cops should encourage bystanders to test possible explosive devices while they back off to a safe distance. That would save taxpayers money and maybe get things moving faster. A win win for everyone.
Is anybody really defending this idiot?
I just want to know what crime he committed to get arrested. When you just shove past police tape, what exactly are you doing? You have to have a crime to tamper with evidence, so it’s not that since it’s just a duffel bag. Maybe impeding a police investigation or something.
Stupid or not it did make for an amusing video which would have been, granted, not amusing if it did blow.
I imagine some misdemeanor for getting in the way.
Pfft.
I understand your response though, and it’s not just because I watched Patriot Day a handful of weeks ago which is a movie based on the Boston Marathon bombing.
When I first read it, I assumed the guy actually owned the backpack and was just proving it had nothing in it. Today, followups are sketchy. I can’t find anything definitive. I would love to see someone who actually interviews the guy.
But it’s not a matter of defending, it’s how they tackled him. “hey I just proved that this doesn’t contain anything harmful, give me a high five!”…“oh shit” when they tackle him to the ground & draw guns. What part of this seems OK? At a minimum, I would have thought the cops would have laughed it off (probably after ducking behind their cars) and had a good story to tell at the donut shop. So serious!
Not defending the idiot - he did cross a barrier and empty a backpack that was being investigated after all.
Attacking the police for their response? Yeah, definitely. They could have easily talked with the guy instead of tackling and drawing weapons. It’s classic police idiocy and exactly the reason why this thread exists. The police overstep their appropriate authority over and over and get away with it. That’s not ok in the America that I expect.
My best guess if I’m being extremely generous is they overreacted in order to make a point to everyone else… you know, for safety! “Don’t do this at home, kids!” (the reality is they were probably just jerks on an adrenaline high)
Maybe they thought he planted the pack with a device in it and was running in to detonate it (e.g., when it didn’t detonate on timer as planned)? Watching the video, I think that view isn’t completely unreasonable.
Not a shooting, thankfully, but rather a reminder to police that body-cams can be used to protect righteous cops as easily as they can be used to catch dirty ones.
I haven’t seen the video, my computer here at work is running on ancient software and I am surprised I can even post here, but do you think the cops might have thought he was (a) destroying evidence or (b) adding to the possible threat somehow?
Odds are they had no idea what was going on and were trying to secure the scene of what they thought was a potential bomb. Even after he ran out and showed it wasn’t they were still in that mindset/playing it extra careful.
I think the lesson here is that running a police line isn’t a great idea. They might have overreacted, but it’s a fairly bizarre scenario and I can easily see them seeing him as a legitimate threat in the moment, even if in retrospect he was just an idiot.
Yeah, I can actually see that interpretation.