Quote Originally Posted by JazMerkin View Post
I think the simple fact that the chief of police thinks his behaviour was completely inappropriate says it all. Yes he could stop him, but just give them the ticket & let it go when you can see people are that distressed. Pulling his gun was completely unneccesary. His initial pull-over, fine that's understandable, but the rest of it is bullshit. Also if the people involved feel it may be a race issue, then it may very well be, its very easy to say no its not sitting at a computer when you weren't there, its much easier to tell when you are actually face to face and dealing with them. I'm not saying it is, because I too am sat at a computer, but I think to dismiss it entirely is completely naive. It's police officers like that who fuck it up for the ones who are actually decent human beings.
I do agree a lot with what Sonny says about race being an issue for the police here. I imagine with the victim being black no way they would want to get into a racial dispute so easier to just condemn the cop.

I do find the whole thing extrememly biased in terms of reporting though.

I mean there were two offences here, firstly the guy jumped a red light in front of a cop and secondly he didn't stop for the police car when they tried to pull him over.

One thing I've learned from watching police camera action is that when somebody jumps a light and then doesn't pull over for the police there is often a very high percentage chance that the driver is up to no good, either drunk, stolen car, smuggling drugs, stolen goods etc.

Everybody jumping on the cop is looking at it with the benefit of hindsight, i.e this was a genuine case of a poor family who had a mother dying and were racing to get to the hospital. However even then its still no excuse to jump a red light I mean that's just dangerous, if everyone decided they could jump a red light when the situation was urgent enough then we'd have chaos on the roads and its the policeman's job to uphold the law on the roads if he's on traffic duty.

And as I said in the post above anyone can scream 'My mother is dying' and attempt to run into a hospital to avoid being investigated by the police or having to hand over details.

I'm sure this cop, and countless other cops hear these excuses all the time and most of the time they are just blaggers trying anything to get out of a ticket.

I think it was a very unfortunate situation but that the cop is just as big a victim in this as he was just out doing his job and is now part of some huge national scandal and has had his name and reputation dragged through the mud.

What's even more ironic is that you'd get the impression from the media reports that this whole family was detained for hours or something whilst the poor mother in law died alone with nobody with her.

When in fact all the family apart from the driver went straight into the hospital to be with the mother and the driver himself was detained for 1 min 54 seconds!

I really don't see the big deal, to me the cop is actually more of a victim here being made a pariah for just following his job description.

Spicoli you say he should have put his own judgment above beurocracry and rules but at the end of the day all of our servicemen HAVE to follow the rules to the letter. I don't want my police service, fire department, armed forces etc choosing when and when not to follow their job description, that just opens the way to chaos and more problems down the road.

In the interests of public safety I want the police to properly investigate every possible case of foul play.

The guy jumped the lights and refused to stop for a police car. He HAS to stopped and investigated and its aboslutely right he should have to produce his documents. Regarding the ticket the police officer is just following the law in issuing it, its up to others higher than him to waive it imo.

I can't fault the officer for anything other than his tone, which I agree was nasty and unfeeling. However do you really think the cop knew this woman was actually dying in that exact moment? As Sonny said anybody could cry that and many probably do, if the police response was to automatically just let them off and tell them to get in there and see their loved one then the police would just be a laughing stock with people claiming all kinds of excuses to stop the police investigating them.

The more I think about the more I think the real victim is the cop and his family. He was just unfortunate to be on duty in the wrong place at the wrong time.