Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2
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'd actually forgot about this story from a couple years ago...
My father in law had surgery for mesothelioma (8+ hours of surgery we were at the hospital the whole day). After he got out the doctor said things were looking good. WE went and visited him the next day and he was awake, things were improving. Then we get a call at 2 AM that he's crashed and is in CCU/ICU in a coma. We rushed to the hospital, going the speed I normally travel down the freeway (UCLA Medical is about 40 miles from Orange County). I stopped at a number of lights, even the ones closest to the hospital, because regardless of the situation at hand, it's my responsibility to not put others in risk. So when I'm speaking about the driver being in the wrong, I do speak from experience in my own life.
Once again, as I've stated each time, the officer should have handled the situation differently once he was approached by the nurse, but it was the drivers own fault for the series of events that occurred, period. Much of the blame goes on him for how he handled the emergency situation.