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Stopping someone is a car is pretty much the only way anyone with an arrest warrant is ever arrested, so police departments do have to be pretty aggressive with checking people out when they have the chance. |
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How about if you want to make sure you're with a dying relative, get there as quickly as possible. |
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Let's see - with your way, he missed about 10-15 minutes, with my suggestion, he would have lost about 30 seconds, if that. He took a risk (again, not just with time, but with community safety), made it worse by mouthing off, and lost. The officer discipline is a seperate issue |
Cop is a cocksucker on a power trip. It was an emergency situation and any reasonable cop would have let it go based on the situation. Even if he was just making sure, after the first nurse came out he should have let him go. The guy should be fired. Time to get rid of these scumbags.
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Cop acted out of line because he wanted to be an asshole after being put out by the family, the family acted out of love and concern for a relative about to die any second. Big difference, especially when the cop is the one who is paid to act professional and for the interest of all. |
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When has a traffic stop ever taken 30 seconds? That's bullshit. You're telling me that the same cop who didn't believe Moats's story at the hospital would believe it at a traffic stop. No, no way. |
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Again, he could have checked the warrant/insurance/everything while the guy was looking after his mother in law. |
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If it was that much of an emergency you should call 911 and have an ambulance take her... |
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Of course we don't know how many other risks and lives he put in danger during the rest of his drive to the hospital. If they had killed someone on the way we would be talking about another Dante Stallworth incident... Not to mention, how about if the cop pulled him over miles from the hospital... Then what is he supposed to do? |
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And risk having a desperate to elude capture suspect (since they would know the warrant would be discovered) loose in a hospital? Uh huh, been through lockdowns in hospitals before, that option doesn't fly. Last week we just had a knife wielding would-be carjacker (victim fought him off) try to escape by running across the street into a hospital but luckily ran right into an off-duty cop who stopped him. Next to a school, a hospital is about the last place on earth I want a suspect running loose. |
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Nice try, but there were two people (a nurse and a police officer) who not only vouched for him, but could have escorted him up to the room. |
It isn't that hard to solve. The officer accompanies Moates inside, finds his story to be accurate, leaves him and proceeds to write the ticket and check for outstanding warrants, comes back in an hour and delivers the ticket.
It's important to remember that most cops wouldn't have handled it this way. The cops in my extended family wouldn't agree with the power trip that guy was on. Ask ten cops and I bet nine would tell you this officer handled the situation poorly. |
The most telling thing here is that his superiors say it was handled incorrectly. I don't think you can argue with that.
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I'm pretty much with PFT here:
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The red stop light would have delayed him 30 seconds (rough estimate - it could have been 5 seconds). You're assuming he had no choice but to break the law. I'm saying that he followed the law, he would have gotten to be with his mother-in-law. Any traffic stop, as you point out, would have delayed him far longer than that. Any traffic stop would have cost him the chance to be with his mother-in-law, since we're talking about seconds, apparetnly. I think, just as a general rule, if you're in a hurry, speeding and breaking traffic laws don't save you the time that they're going to cost you, and the risk you thrust upon everyone else. These are a pretty extraodinary circumstances - what are the odds she would have died in those 5 minutes? That's really why this story is such a big deal. I'm sure 99% of medical "emergencies" are greatly exagerated by the lawbreakers when these kind of situations come up. |
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The nurse is irrelevant to my point however, she has no way of knowing whether there's an outstanding warrant or not. And I'm not clear on whether the second cop knew or not. But my point was more in a general sense, that you don't just let a suspect go roaming through a hospital on their say so nor the well intentioned word of people who may not know anything definitive about them either. |
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Umm, not that superiors have ever been influenced by political correctness or public relations. I'm not particular inclined to argue that he didn't make a mistake in his comment about being able to screw the suspect over (although that's damning him for being brutally honest) but I don't see a lot else here that doesn't come back to Moates behavior. |
When I was younger I had no problems with cops. But over the last several years the vast majority I have dealt with are empty headed insecure blowhards like the guy in this article. I'm not just talking about traffic stops. I've done quite a bit of consulting in police departments. In a social setting they are frat boys that walk around high fiving and telling stories about how pissed off they got someone at them.
Maybe it's just the Boston area cops, they were much better in New Hampshire. People who need respect and power but are incapable of getting it on their own become cops. Takes special character to fit both of those requirements. |
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Maybe the nurses were in on the conspiracy to help this hardened criminal escape the tortures of receiving a $50 ticket for disobeying a traffic light. |
This lady's mom is DYING. I find it amazing that people here cannot understand how someone might be feeling in that case. The lady said, "My mom is dying. Don't you understand?" I doubt I'd be nearly as calm as she was if my mom was dying. And I doubt I'd be very calm if an officer pulled a gun on my grief stricken wife, but then starts to hassle me about insurance. To me, it is incredibly baffling the kind of behavior that some of you are expecting from them, considering what they were going through. I honestly do not understand that at all.
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Well except for the fact that it is basically pretty clear to most people that the superiors are right in this case. |
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I still stand beside the cop was a jerk and handled things wrong, but as a citizen we also have to take some responsibility and try to act as calm as possible to protect all those around us including ourselves. |
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Now, THAT starts to get past 'extended unpaid vacation' into 'lose your job' territory. I was taught that you don't pull a gun you aren't willing to use. If that's not a situation where deadly force, or the threat of deadly force, is a justifiable one, he needs to be gone. |
No doubt both sides have some responsibility in this.
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This disturbs me, unless you were a police officer or something. I mean, I, for one, have never been taught anything about how to pull a gun on someone? Did I just grow up in a soft neighborhood or something? |
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Nobody's saying they should be locked up or anything. I'm sure the officer understood "SHE'S DYING!!!" as, "We have a sick relative in the hopital". Not that she was going to be dead in 90 seconds. I'm not sure exactly how much precise information the nurse was able to provide, but by that point, most of the time had passed. The cop should say he's sorry and we should all move on. If you go through life with the expectation that officers, and the rest of humanity, are 100% perfect and that you've been violated every time it drops below that, you're risking feeling violated. If you get pulled over when you were in a hurry, you should apologize for breaking the law, calmly tell the officer what the deal is, and request that things move along as fast as possible, you'll be golden 99.9% of the time. If you wave your arms and yell and mouth off, they will assume you're a liar, because their experiences have taught them that. |
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I'm not sure anyone is arguing that Moates shouldn't have been stopped. I'm fine with stopping him, running his license and giving him a citation. However, I don't see how you can watch the cop lecture Moates about his attitude knowing that a nurse just said the woman was going to die any second and not see him as a first rate asshole.
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I think everyone agrees with the last part of your last sentence. ;) |
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Seriously? That must have been a very soft neighborhood. Just off the top of my head ... -- Don't pull a gun if you aren't willing to use it. -- Don't point a gun at anything you aren't planning to shoot. -- Proper gun control means hitting what you aim at. -- Anything worth shooting once is worth shooting twice just to be sure. -- Aim for center mass, you're most likely to hit something that way -- EVERY gun you pick up is loaded until you prove otherwise (first thing about guns I taught my son) -- "Be sure to drag 'em inside", which has been replaced for practical reasons by "make sure you know how the local cops feel about dragging them inside". And that's just the obvious ones I can think of at the moment. |
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Running a red light is hardly a reason to suspect someone is going to run into a hospital to murder someone. Especially when he is with his wife and there are nurses telling the cops his mother is dying. |
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Couple of gun enthusiasts in the family. When I was younger, I went shooting with my uncle, and before he'd let me use the gun, he drilled a few things into my head. Treat every gun as if it's loaded, even if you're certain it's not. Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to use the weapon. Don't put yourself in a situation where you need to use a gun, but if you're in such a situation, don't draw a weapon you aren't willing to use. If the other guy is armed, it's a damn good way to get yourself killed. |
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Not ALL of what Jon said, but numbers 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 - yeah, those (or close enough as makes no difference), I remember hearing in my uncle's lecture 20-odd years ago. |
I feel like Noop all of a sudden.
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Good to know that some things are pretty universal. If you knew #3 then I'm a little surprised you didn't have some local variation on #7. And of course #4 (shoot twice) applies largely to people not animals, since the second shot usually not a clear one could damage the hide or the meat. And I don't even hunt ;) |
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Right, but there's lots of criticism as to how they acted, and I have a hard time believing that most people in this thread would have acted differently in the same situation. Quote:
The nurse said they were coding her for the third time, and the officer still didn't let him go. Then the nurse comes back with a police officer restating the urgency, and the guy STILL being an asshole - "Okay I'm just finishing up." Quote:
Big difference between being in a big hurry and "mom dying." Sorry, but I just don't believe most people in this thread would react as calmly as you're expecting the Moats' to have acted in this situation. I don't buy that at all. I'd be more likely to believe that MBBF wants to engage in nonpartisan debate of issues than that. |
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And if his assesment was that this was a dangerous situation that required the drawing of his firearm and keeping Moats for that long, he is too stupid to be a police officer. Let him flip burgers where his intellect is more suited for. |
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That is his job, and I think many of us feel he assessed the situation very poorly. And then after poorly assessing the situation, he acted like an asshole. I mean - "hazard lights, running a red light, pulling into a hospital by the ER". It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to read this situation properly. And that doesn't mean you don't still stop them, but it does mean perhaps you should approach the situation differently instead of threatening to shoot the lady who says her mom is dying. |
Am I the only person left on earth who knows that if you exit a vehicle when an officer tells you to remain inside that a gun is likely to be drawn? And that a drawn gun is exponentially more likely to cause serious damage than one that's holstered?
MJ4H not knowing some of the old standbys about guns is one thing that but people not knowing that "stay in the car" means stay ... in ... the ... car... can get your ass shot off. And that's your own fault if it happens. |
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don't worry, i'm just as sheltered as you are, and i'm pretty much perfectly fine with this fact. |
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I'm sure the community would have blamed the Moats for being unarmed and shot for running into a hospital to see their Mother before she died. |
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This is a ridiculous statement. Cop turns on his lights for a red light stop, car goes multiple blocks further, running stop signs going to its destination. Before the cop approaches the car, multiple extremely agitated people get out of the car and start yelling. Anyone who doesn't assess that as a dangerous situation is putting his life at great risk. The level to which the outcome is clouding your judgment is astounding to me. |
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I wouldn't say soft. Some neighborhoods don't need guns to handle their disputes. |
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As has been stated, several times, I doubt this woman was thinking logically. Your mom can only die once. I imagine it can be traumatic. Idiot cop should take this into account as she runs towards the fucking hospital door. Police offers are trained and paid professionals. Anyone can point a gun at someone without any thought of the situation and environment. I'd like actual police officers to be held to a higher standard than "monkey with a gun". |
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To be fair, I've heard most of that stuff, I was just making a little bit of fun of being taken aside and instructed about how to pull a gun on someone by a family member. |
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It would take 30 seconds to realize that this wasn't a dangerous situation and to let them go. |
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Yup. Seems extremely obvious to me. |
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And I've been saying since my first post... |
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Family members? Hell, I've gone over those things with family members, friends, cops, even a few enemies. |
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Or less than 30 seconds to wait at a red light and skip all this drama. I'm sure the officer would have done it differently if he had a chance. I think the driver + passenger also would have done things differently. |
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Did you watch the video, or just read the article? You're either uninformed or delusional. Seriously, watch the first 3 minutes of the video. Pretend you don't know the outcome or anything at all. How often does a traffic stop happen this way and have no further illegal activity aside from running the red light have occured? I am going to guess almost never. |
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Given the publicity whoring and calls for the cop's job, I don't really believe that's the case at all. They delusionally seem to think they were totally faultless here. |
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I was thinking that when I was typing, but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I think you're right. I think at this point, getting the cop fired is the most important thing in the world. Maybe a normal human reaction - replacing grief with illogical anger. |
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Mother dying, not thinking logically, just rushing to get there, ect. Your argument is silly and unrealistic. 30 seconds is an eternity in that situation. They are not paid or trained like cops to handle these situations. I'm sure if they had the cool mind set of distant and uninvolved message board posters, they probably wouldn't have run it. |
I say hooray to he proud heroes who can remain upright citizens and completely calm when their relative is minutes away from dying. You all are truly heroes. I salute you.
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#4 makes perfect sense, of course, but that's the sort of thing that gets included in the lecture when you're shooting at a police range, or facsimile thereof, not old coffee cans when you're 9 years old or whatever. ;) #7, eh, there might've been a local variation, but there's a lot of "guy" things in which I never really took a huge interest as a kid. Construction, auto repair, guns (beyond that one time taking potshots at a tin can with a rifle). Might they have said it? Sure. Do I remember anybody saying such a thing? Nope. Never went back to the range after that one time, either. I remember the stuff that relates to 'surefire ways to get your (or somebody else's) ass killed,' but not much really about what to do after said ass has been dispatched. ;) |
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Its a stressful situation, and as molson has pointed out countless times, no one is suggesting that the family should have been shot, arrested, or anything more than possibly getting a ticket. There's a MASSIVE difference in saying "shitty situation, that sucks" and as rainmaker said earlier that the cop is a cocksucker who shouldn't have a job. BIG difference. |
Being a cop I imagine is not an easy job. I am not their biggest fans but I think some of you are overreacting.
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No it's not. I couldn't handle it. That's why any idiot shouldn't be allowed to be one. |
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I watched the video. The lady looks to be explaining to the cop that her Mother is dying. They are right next to the entrance to the Emergency Room. I know most cops aren't Rhodes scholars, but this looks fairly self explanatory. I'll give him some leeway on the gun. But it's clear after 30 seconds that this was not a dangerous situation. The threats made by the cop show what his true intentions were. |
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Even his peers are saying he screwed up. You need to be high up on the ineptitude scale for that to happen. |
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Again, though, I'm not questioning the officer for stopping them (although I think he did a poor job of reading the situation) or for even giving them a ticket. But the judgment he showed in handling this after the initial stop makes me think he is not fit to be a police officer. |
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Well someone has to do it and those who do it are putting themselves at risk to serve the general public. I think there are more idiots per capita then there are bad cops. * I repeat I am typically not a fan of police in general. |
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I think people always want to blame someone. And ya, I wasn't blaming the driver, I'm just saying there's plenty of things he could have done differently as well. And of course, it could have also been far worse. The driver was smart not to run into the hospital, and he was at least somewhat composed. The officer allowed the two women to go inside. Shitty situation. Expecting perfection on all sides of a shitty situation is just unreasonable, it's not going to happen. |
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Tell me the reason for telling him he could "screw him over" and "take him to jail for running a red light". |
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Nobody's defended that. |
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I'm not expecting perfection. I do expect more from the cops than the family in this situation, but if the cop had at least let the guy go (or escort him in) after the nurse came down the first time, then at least his actions would make some sense. |
Hindsight is always 20/20
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Then what's the argument about here? |
Also, I think "the guy could have been dangerous" argument is a bit silly. The officer clearly doesn't think that, at least not after the first few seconds. He lets the guy walk around. There are other guys walking around near him. He doesn't pat the guy down or make him put his hands on the car. Later on in the video, the other cop asks about two other guys and if theyre allowed to leave. The response is, "I don't even know where he came from." I'm sure glad the officer is on top of this "dangerous" situation.
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Hey, maybe cities should ONLY hire Rhodes Scholars as police officers! |
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I don't know about that. I think a lot of us would run a red light in that situation. I think we'd expect that a competent officer would realize there was a reason for the traffic violation. Worst case scenario is you get a ticket. I don't think many of us would expect to be harrased outside the ER when our Mother is dying. |
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With the current job market, that might be an upward move for most Rhodes scholars. |
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If the cop thought it was a dangerous situation there would have been massive backup and Moats would have been on the ground handcuffed. |
My brother is a cop and I can tell you that he gets on that power trip. I just don't understand it. "Shut your mouth! Shut your mouth!"
Professionalism was out the window at the point the cop said that. Again, there's a big difference between reading the words and watching the video. I can put myself in their situation and the emotions they must be feeling. I thought Moats handled it quite well considering. |
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Edit: I might have taken your quote the wrong way. Cops find themselves in dangerous situations without backup all the time. I'm sure he didn't think this guy was going to run in and shoot up the hospital. Most likely, he was relying on his experience and training that people that act like that, at that time of night, have drugs in the car, or an outstanding warrant. He probably could have realized this was one of the exceptions, but it's very difficult for younger cops especially to go against procedure that like that. |
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I'm not taking the cop's side against the family. He didn't act perfectly. I have said 2 or 3 times now that I was greatly offended by the cop's actions towards the end of the video, and you're absolutely right in that that was uncalled for. But I am saying that both parties were put into a very, very high stress situation and things simply do not go perfectly in high stress situations. And, while its understandable why the family was under such stress, they are completely at fault for generating the high stress situation. The cop should have handled the situation better. But to call him a cocksucker who deserves to be fired is just awful. To say that he should have figured out in 30 seconds the entire situation and resolved it perfectly based on what we know actually was happening is flawed at best. |
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Cops don't call for backup in dangerous situations? They let the suspects walk around un-cuffed? What police manual is this one in? It's not an anti-cop stance, it's an anti-cop on a power trip stance. |
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You were quick on the trigger before I had a chance to edit. I took what you said to mean, "you can bet if the officer unreasonably thought he was in danger, he would have overreacted", which wasn't evident at all from what you actually typed, at second look. |
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I am giving the cop a free pass on the beginning of the situation. Honestly I would be a little cautious too and probably draw my gun in situations like that. My issue is with the power trip he went on after he assesed the situation. Threatening the guy over and over. I don't believe we should have cops like that on the street. These are people we trust with our lives and allow to make life altering decisions with firearms. He's clearly not in it to protect and serve, so I believe having a guy like that on the streets is a danger to all. |
To paraphrase Adam Corrolla in a podcast I was listening to today: "He's like a guy with a boullion cube at the Soup Kitchen."
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Not nearly as dangerous as not having him out there. I've never met anyone with a badge & a gun who wasn't capable of having that same moment at some point in their career. Like most of the rest of us they're human & prone to better or worse reactions to different situations. And I say that having had the privilege of knowing some incredibly fine officers over the years, some truly amazing people. Anecdotally one of those (without a doubt the best damn cop I ever saw) was murdered while making a routine traffic stop, another was killed by a shotgun blast from a concealed homeowner while walking up the driveway to serve a minor warrant on an otherwise peaceful Saturday morning. That sort of job environment brings a whole different level of stress than 99.9 percent of the rest of us have to deal with at work. |
I think the general sentiment around here is that at some point, the stressful situation and understanding what is going on has diminished. The officer has to realize this at some point especially at 13 minutes in when the nurse shows up. Yes, laws are laws, but there is any number of things that officer could have done to show some basic human decency after he has assessed the situation and determined that Moats was not a threat. Things like that coming out don't do the rest of the Dallas police force any favors in the court of public opinion.
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You're right. How dare the family's mother in law be dying when this cop has other citizens to harass. |
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And fortunately not all the idiots that try to be one get to be one... But there are always bad apples. |
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The main issue I want to bring up though is it's not the cop had just saw him run a light. The light was ran far enough away from the entrance from the hospital that the drive could have been making up the story and using the hospital has an excuse. |
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I've seen a few bad apples get rejected. They spend a year or two as a security guard somewhere, hang out and network with cops, and eventually break-in with another city. Anyone can be a cop if they are persistent. |
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Tell that to the group of guys I know that have been waiting 2+ years to get into the force in various cities. |
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John did you watch the video? he isnt worried about being shot when he turns his back to the suspect who is out of his car and un restrained and then does not address the situation while sitting in his car. there were more police 101 rules broken here than I can count. That said, had I been Moates I would have calmly and with my hands clearly visible walked into the hospital; he would not have been arrested inside. |
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It depends on the city. I've seen departments in Idaho so desperate for officers they advertise in California. I also remember being blown away by the number of applicants who started out the process v. those who actually became cops in one random Rhode Island town I worked for. |
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That's fine, but it was pretty clear once the nurse came out the first time that he wasn't bullshitting. Let the guy go build his ego as a mall cop. He has no business carrying a weapon and serving the people. |
My only bad cop story was when I was in college. My roommate had just had some oral surgery and was pretty drugged up for the rest of the day. He needed to go to Walgreens late at night to pick up some ice cream and some ice packs.
I took him and as we were leaving he apparently walked through the entrance way instead of the exit way and had to maneuver around the cop that was entering (this wasn't intentional, he was pretty loopy from the drugs and not the kind of guy that starts trouble). The cop shoved him from behind and yelled something about showing respect. My friend was on a good dose of vicodin and still woozy from whatever he had during surgery. He looked real confused and didn't say anything. The cop grabbed him by the neck and slammed him up against the brick wall. I thought maybe the cop thought he was drunk so I kind of jumped in and told him he's just out of surgery. The cop told me to shut the fuck up or I'd be arrested. The blow against the wall blew open the stitches in his mouth and he started bleeding pretty good from there. I think the cop realized he had gone too far and let go and told us to get the hell out of there. We went to my car and I was trying to get something for him to catch the blood in. The cop came storming out there then and told us to go straight home or we'd be arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest. I told the guy he needs a doctor as his stitches look to be busted open. He told us we better go home and not to think about going anywhere else. The cop tailed us all the way back to our apartment. The next day he had to get some stitches put back in. He also had a pretty big scrape along one side of his face from the brick wall. He filed a complaint but the cop denied everything and claimed he was drunk and fell down on the pavement. They didn't really take it very seriously anyway. It's not a big deal either now that I'm in Chicago. That kind of stuff here is normal for cops, usually much worse. This cop beat the shit out of some innocent bartender while his cop buddy looked on. They didn't charge him (despite the tape) until it hit the media a couple months later. YouTube - Chicago Cop Beats Bartender - abc news They also have a pretty good history of beating the shit out of women, drunk driving and killing people (then covering it up despite video tape evidence), and torturing suspects. YouTube - Chicago Police beat woman Tough to give them the benefit of the doubt when so much mounting evidence keeps showing up with them abusing their powers. |
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Again, complete horseshit. No traffic stop takes 30 seconds. Have you EVER been pulled over a night in a city? |
I think he said wait at the red light which would mean not breaking the law and thus not getting stopped in the first place. 30 seconds is a reasonable guess for that.
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As he's already clarified, he's suggesting he not run the red light in the first place, avoiding the traffic stop.
And he's got a point, difficult situation or not. I don't believe there's a mother-in-law dying exception in the lawbook. The question is whether the officer should have used his discretion to deal with this differently. |
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I think he meant 30 seconds if he would have stopped at the light and not ran it. |
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Ah, OK. My bad. |
Rainmaker, I know countless numbers of people (both black and white) who went through that stuff. I have myself mostly because of the car I drive and how I look (dread locks and the whole urban wardrobe) so much in fact what this jackass did was pretty damn tame. Molson post an article about people celebrating about the cop but to a certain extent I can see why.
I remember when a cop got jumped in high school, the guys that did it were hailed as heroes because that cop was known to fuck with people just because. I don't condone the murder of police but in the case of the officer getting jumped, he deserved it. |
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