In any traffic stop where the doors fly open and occupants start spilling out, the cop would be pretty dumb not to draw his weapon. The recent events in Oakland should make that pretty obvious.

This cop obviously screwed the pooch here but taking out his sidearm was not wrong in any way. I bet you would have a hard time finding a cop that would fault him for that. His subsequent actions are where he was out of line.

It appears that this particular officer arrested the wife of another NFL player last year for making an illegal U-Turn.

Another allegation surfaces against Dallas police officer - ESPN

That cop should find a new profession because being a police officer doesn't seem to be his calling.

Does this jackass arrest everybody he stops?

So...he wrote five tickets against her, and four were "dropped." I'd love to know why. Especially that 'running a red light' ticket, since that seems to be common ground between the two cases.

The story that focuses specifically on the Thomas allegations has a statement from the lawyer saying that arrests on multiple violations isn't uncommon, but I have to ask - this isn't like, say, a domestic violence case where there might be multiple charges filed based on claims made by witnesses or the abused.

This is, theoretically, a police officer who saw the violations *in progress* and yet...four of the five were dropped?

Denmark. Rotten.

I don't know anything about the case, but it's very common for someone to plead guilty to one charge, in exchange for others involving the same incident to be dropped. Especially in a license/insurance situation where you'd rather have someone get in regulation than collect a fine.

For example, a plea offer for the 5 charges like that might be - plead guilty to all 5 charges, and sentencing will be set out. If you get your license/insurance/registration current by sentencing, the state agrees to dismiss all of those charges, and the red light violation, leaving you only with the u-turn ticket. That saves everyone a lot of time, and you encouraged the driver to hustle and get shit taken care of. If they get in regulation, they get off easy. If they don't, they get hammered with 5 charges at sentencing.

A enormous % of criminal charges are dropped/reduced. Neither prosecutors nor police have access to infinite resources.

In one typical prosecutor's office, the max amount of misdemeanor jury trials that could be held in a week because of staff/scheduling limitations is 3. Where that same week, maybe 500 cases are actually set for jury trial. The criminals have the bargaining advantage with those odds.

I did that when I was cited for a couple of violations as a dumb kid. The court allowed me to go watch boring traffic videos for eight hours rather than face fines/points on the license. However, it was somewhat like probation, in that I couldn't do that again for 5 years if I got another ticket. I'd have to pay the piper after that.

The problem is that no one gets arrested for what she did. They were minor traffic violations and this guy went on a power trip. He's a pile of shit. Let him go play ego-maniac in a mall or something.

I'm sure Maritza Thomas was just as polite as can be when he pulled her over as well.

In Texas people get arrested for that. Every state is different. In Idaho, it would be illegal to arrest her on those charges unless there was some question about identity, or some other reason that court appearance couldn't be assured. With FIVE charges (and the insurance/DL/registration probably weren't infractions, but misdemeanors), arrest isn't all that surprising, she probably even had to post bail.

The fact that she pled guilty to even one charge tells me we don't have all the facts beyond what they're alleging.

People get arrested for making illegal U-Turns in your state?

No, not u-turns, I was referring the license/registration/insurance charges.

That can be a tough predicament for an officer. How can you know someone's going to show up for court when you can't even sure of their identity? That's a big issue in communities with a lot of immigrants ("Oh no, that wasn't me, that was my brother Hector, he uses my name sometimes"). Officers would prefer not to arrest in general (it takes them off the street for a while), and in Idaho, it's pretty common for them to release people with suspended licenses and no insurance, who of course then have no choice but to illegally drive away from the traffic stop if they don't have someone to pick them up.

There's a big difference between infractions (u-turn/speeding/red lights) v. misdemeanors (driver's license/insurance/registration). Some of the later categories might be infractions in some states if it's a first offense, or if it's just an expiration issue.

Her identification had an old address on it. Nonetheless, you don't get arrested for Class C citations unless it's an extreme case. The cop is a douchebag, even his own superiors have said so, so why keep defending this idiot?

This particular cops seems to exude class. He felt bad about roughing up a mom in cuffs in front of her 7 year old daughter.

SPORTSbyBROOKS » Cop Who Harassed NFLer REALLY Likes His Job

Moats has issued a statement and accepted the apology.

I have to say, overall I am impressed with how he has handled this situation. No call for the officer's job, no suit, no real whining.

I cant help but think this officer is either a high school dork who got hung in the lockers a few too many times or lost his wife to a professional athlete...seems to be a bi of a pattern.

Houston is a city of HOW MANY PEOPLE? and he haas 2 complaints from immediate family of the what, 200 (being generous) athletes in the city...

hxxp://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4026897

I wonder who he lost her to, Martina Navratilova?

Refuting the 30 second stop/compassionate cop argument, this guy got stopped for an expired tag with his mother in the car.

I'm sure the officer "was just doing his job."

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...hort-man-says/

Absolutely. I liked him when he was an Eagle, now I like him much more. I think he has handled this situation remarkably well.

I agree. He could have gone on some anti-cop/racial crusade and had a lot of followers, and caused a lot of problems for society. There's a lot of flames of hatred to fan and he's declined to do so. He could have dropped his name and NFL status at the traffic stop. He's showed a lot of character.

And I agree with how it appears he views it all: a sad situation, caused by poor judgment of a police officer, though not indicative a corrupt national police conspiracy against citizens.

And he is now an ex-Dallas police officer.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Pow...epartment.html

That's good news. Maybe he can move on to a mall where he belongs.

Here's another one...this time a doctor stopped on the way to the hospital and was detained after using his badge to enter the employees only parking lot.

http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=10147075

I find it hard to get in an uproar over this one. Guy was speeding, got out of the car, officer pointed a gun (you get out of the car, this is going to happen which I even agreed with in the Moat's incident), officer verified and let him go.

Seems to be a theme here. Don't break the law by speeding, running lights, etc. And don't get out of the car when you are pulled over. Very difficult things to follow...

And yet it bears noting that theme or no theme this encounter ended vastly different than the topic of this thread.

There was more to this story. The guy apparently had multiple citations out for him which led to the extended stop. After the initial story came out on the news, you never heard anything else on it.

I remember hearing the guy on the 10 o'clock news and said to the wife that if your mom collapses and you have all those citations, you just call 911, you don't bother putting her in the car and driving her to the hospital for exactly that reason.

Hey, he ain't never did nutin' wrong!

I have no sympathy for that guy. He is running lights and endangering the lives of innocent people. He shouldn't have kicked him in the head but that guy isn't someone we should be making a stink about.

You don't have to have sympathy for the criminal to express anger at the police officer. The criminal should go to jail and the officer should be fired.

I normally defend officers of the law, but that cop should be arrested on assault charges. The guy was on the ground for a good 5 seconds and instead of doing his job, he ran in just to kick him. It could have endangered his other police officers by doing that kind of crap and could have easily killed the criminal.

Edit: I missed the high five at the end, what a douche bag.

What also astounds me is the complete stupidity displayed by this officer. I mean, maybe it's the quietest helicopter in the world, but it is a high speed chase, and if you don't think that someone is videotaping it, then you're too stupid to be a police officer.

I don't have sympathy for him either, but cops should not be doling out their own justice. That's up to our court of law.

Took over a year for the department to fire these guys.
Birmingham police beating video Video - al.com

That's a pretty horrifying video.

If someone tried to kill me with their car I'd definitely try to bash their skull in if I had the chance (at least if that chance occurred seconds after they tried to murder me).

Maybe there's a human on earth that wouldn't have, but good luck finding 750,000 of them to risk their lives to be police officers.

I'm sorry you have so much hate in your heart. I could start a thread of all the bad things black people do and get completely overwhelmed and see that evil everywhere. There would thousands of examples to prove any awful point I'd want to make. I'm very glad that I haven't been "lost" in that way, like you are towards police officers. It's a vicious cycle. You will find evil in the world, in any group, if you become obsessed with your own rage, victim complex, and sense of moral superiority.

So those guys got fired, and guess who will replace them - the guys who didn't get the jobs last time around. The less qualified guys. The guys with worse tempers, less aptitude for the job, etc.

Wow.

Gotcha, so these were the absolutely best of the best and we can never expect better justice than what is provided by them. The very best of the best, the best we can expect is someone who will beat an unconscious man who had just been ejected from a crashing car. I think you've just insulted most law enforcement officers and I know you've just insulted friends of mine who serve and protect and don't see beating an unconscious man as a right of the job.

I missed where I said they this was a "part of their job", or that anyone thought it was "a part of their job".

No, they're clearly not the best of the best. There's probably some cops who could have calmly went up to him and secured the scene, etc. I just personally don't fault them for bashing that punk's head in. I was sorry to read that he's OK (though serving 20 years jail). He'll be out someday, and he'll probably kill someone.

The behavior displayed by these cops wouldn't impact you as long as you don't try to murder them. I imagine people in any profession would react somewhat negatively to someone if they tried to kill them. It wasn't exactly proper procedure. But the original "bad cop" that started this thread was a billion times worse than these guys, because that one had a negative impact on regular people.

I can see how my last comment might be taken as an insult to cops. But it's true. It's a tough jobs and in any job, "mistakes" will be made. Cops' mistakes are magnified because they're dealing with so many high stakes situations and intense scrutiny. And the other human beings waiting in the wings ain't perfect either, unfortunately.

It's an insult because you are projecting your own somewhat sociopathic code of morality


onto a vast number of people you know nothing about. You stated also


theres only one guy on the planet, maybe, who wouldn't assault an unconscious man who led him on a high speed chase which means they may not be cream of the crop but they're at worse second best since clearly we can only find one guy, maybe, that doesn't take pleasure in beating the helpless. Funny, most chases though don't end this way so that one guy must either be making a hell of a lot of chases or the number of people as violently oriented as you seem to be are a lot lower than you are counting.


Yes, and if they acted on it by wailing on a helpless guy they'd get put in jail not fired and it's possible it still might happen to these guys. Of course, had they played by the rules they're ostensibly paid to uphold, they wouldn't be in this mess.

What is with your obsession about black people doing awful things? This is the 2nd or 3rd time I've seen you take this angle. Cops don't get to beat the crap out of people and be able to right it off because "we're all human."

Just pointing out how people aren't as open-minded as they think they are. This point was directed to Rainmaker, not anyone who just has a problem with anything a particular officer does.

We're at a point in society, fortunately, where we can recognize a bias against a race. But we can't recognize it when it comes to any other group: a particular occupation, religion, income status, sexual orientation, etc. I try to make the point about painting broad strokes over groups of people by using the most obvious one, the only one the mainstream really "gets" at this point in humans' development.

With police, of course, these broad strokes are particularly dangerous, because those who have that bias think that when they interact with the police, they police are automatically in the wrong. The rage of moral superiority can consume them, and they can escalate the situation into something dangerous. Happens all the time. It's really an identical process to any other kind of bigotry. If I hate black people, I'm going to act around them in a way that will make them (appropriately) act negatively towards me, thus confirming my prejudice.

The only way to end that cycle is to have the courage to give up the hate and try to see people in any group as humans.

I made this rant last night, it's not related to anything posted yesterday, it's really from the past in this thread.

The cop who got drunk and beat the living shit out a female bartender a couple years ago was sentenced to probation. He actually got much less than Chris Brown. Not only did he beat her down, he later threatened to plant drugs on her if she showed anyone the tape.

Oh and here's the best part. He still is a Chicago Police Officer.

Cop in bar fight video gets probation - 6/24/09 - Chicago News - abc7chicago.com

Cue molson to tell us how he was acting heroically in self-defense.

I never said any of the above cops were "acting heroically in self-defense", and I specifically criticized the entire Chicago PD that stood with this particular cop as a sign of "solidarity". Characterizing things I've said previously as being somehow in support of women being beat up is a TOTAL douchebag move, but the standard fare from you.

I'd be curious what you've actually done to help anything. You're a douchebag with a keyboard.

So ya - fuck off troll

I think at this point people are going to want believe what they. I think most police are decent people however there are some very crooked cops out there who hide behind their badge. These bad cops generally get away with a lot of stuff even if it is caught on camera.