My point is that I’m not sure you guys should criticize him until you can at least come with at least one workable idea for what he should have done. Call in backup? The start of the problem was that as soon as he started to ticket them they just started to leave. “You gals just stay here while I go to my car and call backup, ok?”
I agree that punching her doesn’t seem ideal. I just think there’s an awful lot of stupid armchair policing going on that doesn’t actually make sense. Being a cop doesn’t give you magical powers. He was attempting to control the situation through means that you suggest (i.e. hand-cuffing her) and failing.
You feel bad for a 180 pound guy carrying weapons trained in combat techniques punching a 150 pound, 17 year old girl in the mouth. For jaywalking.
I got nothin’.
You’re right about a couple of things. One, he did put himself into a shit poor situation. Two, he’s lucky he didn’t get jumped. In some of my old neighborhoods, we’d have killed that motherfucker on the spot.
I didn’t say it was police brutality. I’m saying it was completely unnecessary and will lead to a settlement by the city. Had he called in back up and handcuffed her we wouldn’t even be discussing this.
I’m also saying that had he been a 6’5 280 pound man, he wouldn’t have punched him, he would have done what he should have done to begin with.
No. He punched her after she assaulted him. Video clearly shows the woman in fuchsia top shoving the police officer. After he regains his balance, he controls her hand closest to him and then punches her.
Wow, really? So I guess the lesson for him in your old neighborhood would be, draw your weapon and start firing into the crowd, lest you be killed. And bring extra clips. Right?
Indeed. I’ll save my outrage for cases where the cops are clearly over the line. This is not such a case. Once she starts the shoving match, of course she’s going to get punched, or tazed. How else would anyone expect it to end after that?
I think cops should be free to choose from a number of graduated options suited to deal with the differing levels of threats from hostile suspects. I don’t think there is a 1 size fits all way to deal with all situations. I certainly don’t think options that may be warranted to control a 280-lb guy throwing punches should automatically apply to controlling a 90-lb high school kid, for example.
I don’t want cops given some kind of you-must-always-do-it-like-this kind of instruction. Guidelines, sure. Blanket polices, no.
I don’t know if a punch was the best way to defuse this cop assault situation, but it did defuse it.
This sort of thing points out how stupid it is to have laws where the offender is almost never caught, rarely enforced when they are, and only at police discretion. In that situation people will react badly when they get cited; if they happen to be minority and young they’ll react even worse; we’ve actively bred disrespect for the law.
On a side note, for some anecdata I’ve never even heard of anyone getting nailed for jaywalking in whitebread north seattle - only in downtown or black/asian south. IT IS A MYSTERY WHY.
Note that this not the first time that either girl has been charged with assault, one having previously assaulted a police officer.
To me it mostly just looks like a shitty situation that got out of hand but I find a hard time judging the police officer too harshly for what occurred given that the girls were resisting ticketing (then arrest) and were assaulting him. I just don’t see how he was supposed to magically make the situation better.
I think maybe taking a step or two back and trying to calm down everyone might have worked. I certainly don’t think having his arm shoved warranted him throwing a punch.
That was an expensive punch, too. I don’t know if it will cost the city $100,000, but it’s likely going to cost them legal fees and the cost of an investigation.
And finally, I don’t know if it’s Seattle police policy or it was just this officer’s idea, but handing out tickets for jaywalking doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. It’s going to inflame people.
Apparently they love handing out tickets for jaywalking, though. I’ve never seen or heard of that happening here in St. Louis. We simply enjoy having one of the top murder rates in the country!
Dude, in at least one of the neighborhoods I grew up in, the cops wouldn’t even come there. The Jamaican drug gangs owned that territory and those fuckers were crazy. So yeah, if he did it there (and especially to the wrong girl), he’d have been shot dead on the spot.
Simply put, cops don’t have the right to punch people because they were shoved. Whether she was wrong or not doesn’t excuse his excessive force. Cops are trained to deal with this kind of shit, and punching a 17 year old girl in the face for jostling with the officer isn’t the right force escalation.
Very relevant question. From the above referenced Seattle Times article:
My inference is the school was concerned about student safety and/or had been getting lots of complaints about students in the road(s). So they asked the cops to crack down on it, which they apparently were doing.
I just finished watching the video. You’ve got to be kidding me. If I was that cop I would have drawn my weapon. Did you see what happened after it was two on one and he hit her? The other girl jumped on his back. I would be fearful she would take my weapon at that point.
Not that this cop was not being an asshole, but these girls were way out of line. Take your ticket and be done with it. Jaywalking should not be an arrestable offense, but attacking a cop is. What if he cited them for say, smoking on the metro and they refused to take the ticket and/or started trying to get away?
I don’t know about where you live, Jason, but around here crossing a busy street not at a crosswalk is illegal, and I’m glad it is. It’s likely you will either disrupt traffic at best, or at worst be hit. I’ve read about and seen several people be hit by cars, and it’s so stupid because they are always no more than a hundred feet from a crosswalk where they could cross safely. You end up having pedestrians killed and drivers having to deal with that awful event just because someone was feeling lazy.
He should have broken the smaller girl’s wrist, radioed on his collar, given her a DDT and hurricane kicked the big girl in the turkeybox. Then he should have powered up his ki for a galaxy smash which scrambles cameras.
Honestly, he wasn’t doing anything wrong, that big girl involved herself physically in an altercation where an individual was resisting arrest. That’s one of those things that police use of force is for.
I will tell you this, after losing a fight to an old man and his dog so that they could really bond, being in a situation where you are justified popping a fat lady in the beefcatcher is probably my number one favorite fight to dream about.
Seriously, dude? I can agree with Anax’s argument that spouting vulgarities at a cop is undeserving of arrest in itself, but shoving a cop most certainly gives him the right to kick your ass. I know I’m taking you out of context, but you took yourself out of context here. He was shoved/antagonized by an outsider while attempting to arrest someone else.
And this wasn’t happening in the Fallujah, South Side Wisconsin Reprazent areas where you roam the streets, so try not to bring up some bullshit about a cop being shot if he did this, because this situation never would have happened in the first place on the mean streets of whatever lower-middle class suburban paradise you grew up in.
