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Texas Trooper karate kicks rider off his motorcycle
- Thread starter iFly55
- Start date
Which totally justifies firing rounds from his handgun while in a moving car, which he also happens to be driving. Definitely less risk to the public there.
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Depends where, no? On a city street, very risky. Out in rural Texas ranch land, not so much.
No, I do not believe it depends. A speeding bullet will always be more dangerous to the public than a speeding motorcycle. If there is no public to endanger (thus validating the use of the gun), why in the world was the rider such a risk that he warranted being shot at in the first place?
Besides any of that, it was a traffic stop that escalated into a chase, not a SWAT team hunting down a wanted killer. The equivalent of a man being shot in the back for running, on foot, from the cops...
No public at the place where the shot was fired? No risk. Motorcycle moving at high speed in rural area but headed towards urban area? No risk at the moment, but plenty of risk if permitted to reach urban area.
Traffic stop that escalated into a chase? Under Texas law that chase is is felony act. The original traffic infraction is no longer at issue. What is at issue is a fleeing felon.
The felon got stopped. Maybe not as nicely as some would want, and many here would rather not see him stopped at all, but stopped.
Do you also believe that privacy isn't all that important because you do nothing wrong and therefore have nothing to hide?
It's not a question of whether or not you deserve to be shot, but whether or not the authority deserves the right to shoot.
That's quite a slippery, sloping justification. Following that argument, the officer could have simply refrained from chasing the rider. After all, the rider only ran because he was being chased. That would have obviated the need to use the gun, and the rider would no longer be of risk to the public.
But the law is irrelevant when you consider the inhumanity of the officers actions. Guns are designed to maim and kill. Use of one by an officer is an expressed action to do at least one of those things. The rider ran a stop sign - that is an honest mistake at best, negligence at worst. Citing some "law" as justification is irrational. We're talking about human lives, not politics.
Slippery slope indeed. By your rationale nobody should ever be chased for a simple traffic infraction. Unfortunately the net effect of that will be to encourage everyone to run.
The rider did more than just run a stop sign. He was also under suspension and he had illegal drugs in his possession. The running for a simple traffic infraction provided just cause for the cop to suspect that more was going on than just that mere traffic infraction.
As I said, it takes two to dance. The cop was just following the rider's lead. The outcome was up to the rider.
I wouldn't say a chase should never be had. For instance, given the previous infractions of this rider, a chase was justified here. That I can understand. Shooting at the rider is the issue I have with this situation. It was undue risk, and wholly unjustified. Call for backup, corral the rider off the road - but don't pull out a gun and start firing out the window like some gang-banger. The flying kick was adding insult to injury, for both parties.
Though no argument on your last point. It was the riders choice to ride.
Roomie
Banned
Kick unwarranted. The rest of it the rider caused. It's time these little bastards stop with the glorified youtube **** the police crap and started acting like human beings. The minute you run knowing there's a cop attempting to stop you (and in this case even audibly telling you pull over) then whatever happens is on you.
Any time a cop lays a beating or some other use of unnecessary force after the fact, I always wonder how much of that is emotions running high and/or freebie beating feels good. I mean at what level are they taking this personally beyond just corralling the bad guy? Are we going to see meter maids kicking cars or smashing windshields "IT SAYS NO PARKING DAMMIT HOW MANY TICKETS BEFORE YOU LEARN DOOSHBAG" SMASH!!!!
If Gaydos was African American the cop would have been immediately fired and brought up on federal attempt-murder charges.
Just sayin'.
Shooting out of a moving car at a man posing no personal threat to the cop himself is reckless use of a firearm and attempted murder. It is no different than Officer Michael Slagger shooting Walter Scott in the back multiple times -- killing the man -- as Scott ran from Slagger. Slagger was righfully charged with murder in that case.
Public safety would have been best served if the cop had simply called off the chase, especially since it was initiated for nothing more serious than a moving violation.
Indeed...is it any wonder police held in such low esteem these days?
Just sayin'.
Shooting out of a moving car at a man posing no personal threat to the cop himself is reckless use of a firearm and attempted murder. It is no different than Officer Michael Slagger shooting Walter Scott in the back multiple times -- killing the man -- as Scott ran from Slagger. Slagger was righfully charged with murder in that case.
Public safety would have been best served if the cop had simply called off the chase, especially since it was initiated for nothing more serious than a moving violation.
Indeed...is it any wonder police held in such low esteem these days?
It seems that the Texan citizens convened to form a grand jury panel had sufficient esteem for the cops and this cop that they declined to indict him for anything.
mmhmm...
Even if gun-totin' and shootin' Texans are okay with their cops shooting people for traffic violations it is increasingly the trend in the rest of the US that people are fed up with increasingly militarized police forces using excessive force.
What's their reasoning? The grand jury came after the incident. Are we to assume from that grand jury, going forward, that this police action is ok? You know, they and we have a court system to mete out appropriate punishment. Yes everybody is frustrated with jackassery but do we want to green light curb side justice?
The shooting was not for a traffic infraction. It was for felony flight. Rider doing 130 mph running from the cops is a danger.
If they just let him go they open it up for everyone else to do the same when the cops turn on the red and blue lights. Are you ok with that and the danger that would pose to other people on the road? I'm not. Shooting might extreme but so were the speeds reached, and it did get the job done.
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Wouldn't you say that the speeds and distance covered in the chase amounted to rather more than just jackassery? In these circumstances, the grand jury after having heard the particulars apparently thought the actions were reasonable.
Using force and even potentially deadly force to stop someone who won't otherwise stop is not meting out curbside justice. It's stopping the further commission of a felony. The video stops short but there didn't seem to be any further force or what you imply to be curbside justice used after the rider was in handcuffs.
Curbside justice would have been shooting the rider dead after he was already stopped and had given up. That didn;t happen. The justice in this one came later when the rider was arrested and taken for trial.
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Clearly a prodigy of the Lone Wolf McQuaide academy of policing:
[video=youtube_share;BW-kNE_d3PE]http://youtu.be/BW-kNE_d3PE[/video]
[video=youtube_share;BW-kNE_d3PE]http://youtu.be/BW-kNE_d3PE[/video]
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The cop was not chasing a child molester or murder suspect. It was a motorcycle that blew through a stop sign. The chase -- beyond a few blocks -- was unwarranted. The gun play was ... well, what do you think it was? The cop's life was not in direct danger from Gaydos. Any danger to the public was amplified many times by the cop continuing the chase; if a 450-lb bike at 130MPH is a danger what does that make a 4000-lb car? Now add bullets flying out of that vehicle...
The cop was driving in a pursuit situation and had his weapon unholstered, out the window and he was presumably aiming at the back of the rider and his bike. So not only was he driving his 4000-lb car at sustained speeds hazardous to public safety, he was also distracted and not watching what he was doing as he fired multipled shots out the window.
There was danger from the bike running but the hazards to public safety were amplified many times over by the cop acting inappropriately in the circumstances.
I don't see any evidence of this in places that have restrictive pursuit policies. Ontario has such policies in place; police chases are rare here yet we do not see anarchy on the streets and at controlled intersections.
In a report from the law firm of Blaney McMurtry, titled "CHASING SUSPECTSAND PURSUING THETORT OF NEGLIGENTINVESTIGATION" from June of 2006, we see the following:
"... In 1984, theSolicitor General of Ontario established a special committee to examine police pursuits inOntario. As a result of this committee, the Ministry of the Solicitor General introduceddetailed guidelines regarding police pursuits. These guidelines provide direction on manyaspects of pursuits including when and how pursuits are to be commenced and continued,the roles and duties of supervisors, as well as the manner in which pursuits are to bereported and investigated. Municipal police forces as well as the Ontario Provincial Policehave established their own protocols for pursuits based largely on the provincial guidelines.The guidelines have been revised and updated over the years and have become much morestringent. The most recent amendments to the provincial guidelines have placed a muchgreater onus on police officers to determine whether there are any alternatives availablebefore commencing and continuing a pursuit. On January 1, 2000, a regulation under thePolice Services Act was brought into force dealing specifically with the pursuit of suspects.3As a consequence, it is much rarer for police to engage in pursuits today than it used to beseveral years ago. Even when a pursuit is conducted now, it tends to be much shorter induration than it used to be as police tend to abandon pursuits more readily. This means thatthe police are less likely to either commence or continue a pursuit even when they havereasonable and probable grounds to believe that the driver of the other vehicle hascommitted a criminal act..."
Yet no anarchy on our streets. Go figure.
No, I'm not "ok" with police using deadly force to stop a guy they're chasing because he ran a stop sign. Neither is the SCOTUS, even for felony suspects. For example:
"{the} court held in Tennessee v. Garner9 that,except in certain circumstances. the use of deadly force to apprehend a fleeing,unarmed suspect is unreasonable seizure under the fourth amendment. In this case,a police officer had shot and killed a teenager suspected of burglary as he attemptedto escape. The Supreme Court had little difficulty concluding that the use of deadlyforce is a fourth amendment seizure, but found that determining its unreasonablenessrequired balancing its extreme nature the ultimate form of seizure of aperson-against the law enforcement interests being served. The Court rejected theuse of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, regardless of thecircumstances. "It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape,"the Court said..."
I don't subscribe to the "any force to get the job done" mantra; the cop put the public at much higher risk to stop a guy he could only have suspected as being a stop-sign runner and ended up shooting the suspect and for what? Because the guy ultimately had a suspended license? Really? That's okay with you?
The cop in this case was close enough to yell "pull over" to the biker so he was close enough to get a license plate. Instead, at 0:18 in the video I saw, the bike turns left and I hear four gunshots. It's not as if the bike was running right at the cop with the intent to ram. The cop was not in danger. The guy had his back to the cop and was moving away, yet the cop still shot.
This is okay with you?
I'm much more "okay" with the vanishingly small numbers of bikers (or cagers for that matter) that speed excessively or even flee than police departments full of unrestrained cowboys willing to shoot at fleeing traffic suspects under circumstances like this.
I get your frustration and, dare I say, anger. If it was for me to decide I'd want to choke him to death. The guy running the stop might be the catalyst for the extended high speed chase but it's up to the cop whether to ramp it up or not. Think of risk/reward, the risk being, as an innocent bystander, you get shot or run down. So the odd guy gets away? Big deal. Rejig the legislation to make flight more serious or some other strategy but multiple frenzied cops shootin' and running mega speed and then drop kicking a surrendering perp is just too much fun at the citizens expense.
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