Traffic Enforcement Is Very Important
Call me jaded. Maybe it is age, maybe it was fifteen years of making only felony cases and confronting real crooks. This is beyond the pale.
The video shows unintended consequences at work. This is an example where technology has not done law enforcement any favors. Between the video and the Taser the result is predictable.
I don’t know why the lady was stopped. I do know that since it involved a citation the violation was at the lowest level of the offense scale. Experience has shown me that little old ladies can be vicious. If they get it in their head they aren’t going to do something, rock meet immovable object.
In my day, prior to video and Taser, there was a simple cop response to this situation. I would write, “refused to sign”, give her her copy of the ticket and her license and get the hell out of there. I wanted to put some distance between us before she decided to exit the vehicle and commence to whipping ass. Yeah, I could probably take her best two out of three falls, but there is no glory in that fight.
But we have technology, now. If the officer backed down, his defeat would be captured on video. The foundations of American law enforcement would begin to crumble. The whole structure of the police agency would collapse and hundreds, if not thousands of basement dwelling cop pogues would be killed by the falling rubble. Somebody has to make a stand and by God that ticket writing clown is just the guy to do it.
Watch the video. During the second stop (with the siren wailing in the background) our hero draws his ASP. That is a collapsible metal pipe masquerading as a night stick. Here is a picture of the ASP along side a traditional hickory night stick.
A little know fact is that the turnings (fancy wood work) serve multiple purposes. It provides a secure hand hold. More importantly the hickory is designed to break at a pressure slightly less than the pressure required to break bone. Best I can tell, the ASP doesn’t break.
Back to the video. I suspect the officer had the ASP out with the intent of braking the side window. At least I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. If his intent was to subdue this recalcitrant driver, shame on him. Fortunately even this officer wasn’t dumb enough to commence beating a little old lady up with his collapsible pipe ASP.
Then he remembered, technology is his friend. He went for the Taser. The Taser delivers an electric shock that will take the fight out of most people. The claim is that the Taser represents the lower level of “force” than the laying on of hands. According to the PR flacks, once an individual has indicated verbally an intention to resist a lawful order, lighting them up with a Taser is appropriate. Grandma you’re going down!
What these technical geniuses fail to recognize are the dynamics of a confrontation. The reality is that some people are going to “talk shit” purely as a face saving gesture. They know that they are going to jail. They just want to demonstrate to onlookers that they didn’t go meekly. Crooks and real police know that there was never going to be a meaningful fight.
I don’t know how many times the thrashing and trash talking increased once the suspect was sure that the handcuffs were secure. Handcuffs were a guarantee that the potential for an ass whooping decreased.
What started as a low level traffic stop escalated into a felony with the threatened use of deadly force. It shouldn’t have. I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the cop. He didn’t control the suspect. Oh well, that happens. What is worse is he failed to control himself. He got sucked into a confrontation that he couldn’t win. I have said it before and I will say it again. This video shows two assholes who got in an argument and one of them went to jail.
Traffic enforcement is important because it gives really stupid cops something to do.
