http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6188505.html Let's say I wasn't some racist cop... Why in the world would I shoot some guy after "leaning up off the ground" on the suspicion that I "think" this guy stole a car and he's a threat to me. I'd like to hear what WWR thinks about this one.
Yep, currently living in Bellaire, and all the cops here are trash. Some dumbass ran a red light on the 610 feeder and just barely missed the car in front of the cop..what did he do? Just drove along his way...He'd rather write a parking ticket for a car parked in the wrong direction.
i have 3 friends that are cops, one in IA another i'm pretty close with. from what they talked about, there's a fine line between good cop and bad cop. put it this way, since my friend became a cop, he's developed a racial prejudice i've never seen in him before, but at the same time, he's never cross the line.
Right... I just said the same thing to a friend of mine who had a mutual friend get fired off of the force. Once again, there are only two kinds of people who want to join the police force: Those who were bullied as a child or those who were bullies as a child. The good people leave within 5 years. The rest? Let's just say I've fully known enough.
Funny I didn't realize I was a bad person. Who knew? As a 30+ year retired veteran of the police force who fell into neither of your categories Fatty you are pretty much full of you know what when it comes to your opinions on police officers. As for this situation I would need more than the family's side of this story to make a judgment but I too would to be looking into charges as well.
I'd wager that the mother was beyond frantic and disrupting the officers' procedure, which is why she had to be moved, or "pushed". The young man, Tolan, may have done more than "slightly" raised. It sounds like all of this was right at the front door of the house. There's not enough info to conclude anything, but I'd wager that if the mother had stayed out of the middle of it, and everybody involved would have let the officers do their job, it would have been sorted in minutes, and no problems would have arrised. But no, attitudes have to arise, and even innocent people who are pulled over or are suspected wrongly, have to rant and rave and protest at the WRONG TIME. These people can't do what the officers request, and make a scene more dangerous than it needs to be. Say your piece AFTER the police have no reason to suspect a threat from you or your party. It's scenarios like this that feed the fire, everybody gets a distrusting feel about all cops, and feel the need to defend themselves and protest instructions when a cop's first duty is to make sure you are not a threat. Just sayin'.
My opinion is that police officers of today are not the same kind of people that were police officers in the past.
Quite often people bring it on themselves. Keep your mouth shut and be polite. You have a right to voice your opinion to them and they have the right to make you miserable. Be smart and don't be emotional. As a teen living in Friendswood, I had an older car that leaked and always had a musty smell. I always kept those air fresheners in the car and had several around my stick shift. I was pulled over for my taillight being out and they saw all the air fresheners so assumed I was always smoking pot. I let them search my car simply because I know they Friendswood cops can be assholes and harass me and find a reason to pull me over in the future.
And, of course, sometimes they don't. If the only way to avoid being wrongly shot is for a mom to be perfectly rational when her son is being held on the ground on her driveway for stealing his own car, and for a son to be perfectly rational while being suddenly and surprisingly arrested for nothing and then seeing his mom pushed around by cops, you've probably got a system in place that's asking for trouble. Unlike the other situation, it's good that the police chief seems to be upfront and willing to share what they know and don't know so far.
Here's a recent example of this: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2008/12/galveston_false_arrest.php What exactly should the girl or the family have done differently? Was it irrational for a 12 yr old to yell "Daddy!" and resist when three men jump out of a van and grab her off the street?
When it comes to the cops...yea, be rational. It may be tough, but if they think they're in the right and have made a truly honest mistake, then anything that would heighten the situation would probably be a bad thing.
I don't think she was under any fault. If they didn't identify themselves as cops and just took her like the article said, then, I'd do the same thing in her situation.
Let's stop with the all cops are assholes/ etc. blanket statements. I think in this case however we can safely assume with the information in the article at least that the officer(s) made a series of terrible mistakes.
Exactly right - neither side is ever 100% right. There are some cops who are probably asses. There are other cops that make mistakes. There are some individuals who make bad situations worse by their actions. The goal should always be to learn more about what really happened.
Agreed - but the police department has decided that the cops did nothing wrong and that both the father and daughter should be charging with assaulting a cop.
