Dear All Police Ever,
Seriously… its 2014. If you’re a cop, you’re being recorded by someone with a cell phone. Just assume this at all times. If you’re going to exercise police brutality, maybe pick someone who at least LOOKS intimidating. Maybe a 6’4, 300 lbs. black man (sprinkle some crack on him, call it a day). No matter what the situation, beating up a 105 lbs., white, teenaged lesbian at a gay pride parade is going to look REALLY bad.
MAYBE if she was holding an AK-47 against the temple of a toddler you might be able to get in a single punch (one, not two… not three). Maybe. Even then, you’re suspect. If she’s just standing around arguing with someone while waving a rainbow flag… maybe just it let go.
Thanks,
-Mav
JUST IN: Pittsburgh Police are investigating a video that surfaced from yesterday’s Pride Fest. It appears to show a police officer using excessive force on a woman.
VIDEO AND DETAILS: http://cbsloc.al/1iB5ubF
What do you think of the video?
http://www.wtae.com/news/woman-arrested-during-pittsburgh-pridefest/26510854#!ZMMu4
I am very curious to see how this all pans out.
She confessed to harassing the cop and pulling on his belt and making grabs at his gun? Not sure what’s up.
In his statement he claims she said that she didn’t realize he was a cop or she would not have resisted. It “appears” that the video being pushed around only shows a small part of a larger altercation, but it seems strange there isn’t more/better footage.
Regardless…punching someone repeatedly in the stomach is not how you disable a threat and take someone down. While I agree that some force should have been used, esp if she was being an idiot and grabbing for an officers weapon, this is not the correct use of it.
that’s sort of my point. It’s no longer clear what is going on. from the 3 or 4 articles I’ve read, the most innocent way I can reconstruct it for all parities involved is:
Lesbian and antigay activist are having heated argument. Cop comes to break up argument. Approaches from behind lesbian, grabs/moves her aside. She doesn’t know who’s touching her and fights back. Cop beats lesbian down and arrests her.
That’s the most innocent and altruistic account I can make from all sources. In reality, any of the the three of them may have had less pure behavior. But even in that best of circumstances this was never going to look very good on the cop. It’s just never going to be a good idea for a male policeman to pummel a female gay rights activist at a pride event.
If she was actively endangering people (something I have not seen anyone suggest) then yeah, the cop needs to throw all caution to the wind and take her down. But even in that most innocent of circumstances I described, it probably would have been best to not physically touch her in the first place.
Unless of course the thing we don’t see is: “Cop says break it up you two!” and lesbian says “fuck you pig!” and lunges for his gun, this is certainly going to look bad (in the eyes of the public) on the cop. The lesbian and the antigay activist aren’t (and shouldn’t be) held to as high a standard.
Bulger are you a police officer?
I think it boils down to if they were having a physical confrontation, which is his report, he was breaking up a fight, surrounded by a crowd. If the situation went down as HE described it, and that is a big if, IMO he is justified in whatever force was used, especially if she went for, or even accidentally grabbed at his gun.
Chris is right, it logically makes no sense for a cop to just rage out on someone, so it is at the very least, plausible that his story is true. She didn’t look any worse for where when being arrested, and she certainly didn’t look like she was overtly afraid of the officers near her. Scared about the situation sure, but calm enough to realize the situation had gotten out of hand. It will all depend on the investigation.
I’ve also heard reports of people who spoke with the cop before this went down where he basically said “This job sucks. I don’t agree with what the protestors are doing but I need to babysit them for everyone’s safety.” So, it wasn’t a hate crime.
The person who posted the video is giving a story that the girl was yelling at the anti-gay protesters (who are the ones yelling about how she’s getting arrested), and the cop came up behind her and grabbed her, and that’s where the video starts.
If at ANY point she grabbed/reached for his gun, legally everything after that is justified to keep hold of that firearm.
Not a police officer now, no, but I did go through training before I was DQ’d for medical reasons. There’s a point where you use a proper amount of force to disable someone who is out of control. Usually your goal is to get them on the ground and secured. Here, it just looks like he lost control…he wasn’t using the usual techniques generally recommended to subdue someone (leg sweeps, using your body weight to knock someone over, etc). Again…I agree that SOME force should have been used if she was combative, but I just don’t see an officer in control of themselves here…it looks like he’s just out to hurt her.
This is unreal.
As a note, cops usually get the full benefit of the doubt in court whereas the public does not. This is happening in the comments here too — I am not saying that this cop did wrongly or not, but there are a lot of scenarios here, and witnesses are giving a darker picture of that particular police officer. Yes, witnesses are tainted and biased as well, but it looks to me like this was not well handled by the cop at the very least.
Of course, I am biased too — I was arrested by a cop who sprayed me from head to toe in pepper spray at 1″ from my face and threatened to re-break my wrist at a protest once. I was taking pictures and called him an asshole for beating the shit out of a kid in front of me. He claimed I was throwing batteries at him (I had to let them go when I was handcuffed, I did not throw them. The cops saw the batteries on the ground afterwards and made up the story to cover his ass.) My charges were eventually dropped, but I was given a lesson by the lawyer in public perception on cops about this one. And by the way, the cop was later fired for excessive force in a later case.
I should clarify: at the time of the pepper spraying, I was changing the batteries in my camera, hence them being in my hands when they cuffed me. Also, they didn’t single me out for the battery throwing, he came into the police station yelling, “I HAD TO USE FORCE WITH THEM, THEY WERE THROWING BATTERIES AT ME!”
So, yah, not all cops are good. Some are complete dickwads.
(I also dealt with some very good cops at the station too, i am not anti-cop in general)
bulger, not sure what trainging you went through but i was a cop, 5 years. you cant leg sweep people, the risk of neck and back injury is to great. that was actually spelled out to us
I trained about 14 years ago and it was a split academy/ROTC program, so things may have changed (that crap always does). BTW, name is Cori, no need to be proper;)
If you read the officer’s description here, http://www.wtae.com/news/woman-arrested-during-pittsburgh-pridefest/26510854#!ZQx5w, it sounds to me like this girl was getting yanked on from all sides. She probably “grabbed” him because she was trying to keep from falling. I’m staying neutral at this point, but it sounds like that cop is an idiot who should not be on duty in crowd situations, because however you slice it, this could not possibly have been the way to handle it.
Also, I frigging DARE you to show me any realistic situation where you’re being yanked on with any real force at all (let alone from conflicting sides), and you don’t put your hands out to protect yourself from further harm. You don’t think about that, you just do it. It’s called survival instinct.
Jenie: I might agree with that if you’re punched at, but if my body is being moved about in different directions, mine would probably send out arms for stabilization. I don’t know if that is or is not the case in the one on video, but it is plausible. Regardless, that’s all speculative… we don’t actually even know if she did grab for his gun, other than what the cop said happened.
Here’s the video as it was posted to Facebook. You can see a little better (the parts actually filmed). She’s on her hands and knees, and he picks her up by the hair and punches her twice. I doubt she reached for his gun. He might have thought that’s what was going on, but if she reached for anything, it was probably to grab something to keep from fallling, since she ended up on the pavement. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=822894481054086
Moose –
He *said* she was hitting someone. Assuming she was, he did not see what started it. He does not know if she was struck and was defending herself. He did not see whatever was going on until AFTER it started, so frankly, he has no idea what happened. He just went to break it up, and we don’t know how he chose to do that. Given his actions after he got involved, I kinda have to doubt his words at this point. He doesn’t get bonus points or extra trust just because he’s a police officer.
It all happened on a sound stage.
I did not claim it did not occur “because it’s not on the video.” I said we have only his word, and he doesn’t get extra weight for being a police officer. I have seen police officers behave abominably and then spin the story out so that they were somehow attacked. I have been there when it happened and seen people arrested for absolutely nothing. I have known people arrested for nothing and then watched them sit in jail because they couldn’t make bail because a cop in a bad mood had them charged with assaulting a police officer. I have seen a man’s life damn near ruined for that, all because he accidentally knocked over a beer bottle on the way to a concert, and a foul-tempered policeman took offense to it and turned it into a story in which the beer bottle was hurled at him in an attempt to kill him. So you will have to excuse me for not taking a policeman’s word for it, ESPECIALLY when the story he is telling does not demonstrate sound judgement, and I have just seen him drag a girl who was on her hands and knees up off the pavement by her frigging hair. Frankly, if I were fending off a male in a crowd and someone came up to me in that crowd and grabbed me without first identifying himself as a police officer, I’d probably hit him too. You make the assumption she even saw the police officer before she struck him. For all you know, he came up from behind and grabbed her. As a woman, I have been grabbed from behind in public, and I long ago stopped looking to see who was doing the grabbing before I reacted in a way the person grabbing me would not enjoy. All you have is a policeman’s word. A policeman who is in the spotlight and may have behaved extremely badly and is trying to get out of trouble. Both people have a reason to spin the truth, but you make the assumption that only the girl is at fault. I am saying we don’t know what actually happened, because all we have is a game of he-said, she-said.
I’m sorry, but YOU are the person full of strawmen, hyperbole and gross generalizations. I did not say ANY of what you just attributed to me. #readingcomprehensionFAIL
#dontfeedthemoose