Quote:
Originally Posted by flameswin
That's why I really appreciate jar_e's contributions to police matters. He's in that world, yet he doesn't go into these threads with "must defend all cops everywhere" attitude. He'll just post relevant info if anyone has any facts wrong, but isn't looking to blindly defend police actions like law enforcement is a team game.
If anything I'm surprised that anyone in law enforcement would be looking to defend police all the time. If you're an upstanding member of law enforcement and care about the reputation of police officers everywhere, wouldn't you want to be all over any injustices as they negatively affect people's perception?
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Sure you would. But a lot of people don't understand how/why an officer may look at something, so they apply their bias to it. When it comes to violence, for example...when was the last time 'you' were in a physical fight? And yet cops may get into one every other day. So they are more used to it, and what it looks like. Someone who knows a bit more about law enforcement may try to explain how an officer saw something, and they are accused of being on the "injustice lovers/police defenders" side without anyone actually thinking about it from the different perspective.
The most recent pool video, for example...want to know what I thought what I looked at it?
The dive-roll that everyone's mocking? The cop tripped and fell, rolled and recovered to prevent injury to himself.
The language...yeah, he should have tried to watch that. Using bad language in a situation when you are trying to control it generally doesn't help.
Might have been a bit rough with the girl in the bikini, but she was not listening and doing what he was asking (to get onto the ground) as well as he's got 4-5 folks 'dancing' around him he has to keep an eye on.
Pulled his gun. Don't blame him. He sensed a threat, and a lot of law-enforcement folks who saw the video saw the same threat he did. The gun was brought out, ready for use, and not pointed at anyone (it was pointed at the ground) Notice how as soon as it was identified there was NO threat, the gun was put away?
So I look at that and see a bit of a push. The cop was letting things get to him, and that showed. It comes out now that he'd been to two suicide calls just before that one, and now he's facing down nearly 10-1 odds with a bunch of lippy, misbehaving teenagers who are ignoring him.
Did he react with 100% stellar actions? Not at all. Is what happened a firing/resigning offense? Not in my opinion. What he seems to have needed was about a half hour between the last suicide call and this one, to get himself back in order.
And as I've mentioned previously...some of the stuff I've seen coming out of the U.S. in regards to police and actions scares me. I'm very glad to be in Canada, and in Calgary with the police force we have here.