From Seattle:
Seattle: Rioter lays in the street to try and stop the police from moving in on bicycles. One officer rides over him anyway. #AntifaRiots #BLM pic.twitter.com/zQHC2wXJrP
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 24, 2020
Correction: He moves the bike over the man laying on the ground, not ride it. The incident is being investigated for potential misconduct following an uproar by anti-police activists.
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 24, 2020
Update: The officer who walked his bike over a rioter laying in street has been placed on administrative leave. The Office of Police Accountability has referred the incident to the King County Sheriff’s Office for a potential criminal investigation. https://t.co/tBXfy5yRMa
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 24, 2020
The police were about to storm a line of rioters. One rioter lays down in front of the police to stop them. One cop walks a bike over the rioter and knocks his hat off.
Now the officer is in a world of shit.
During the demonstration that occurred last night, the Seattle Police Department was notified of an incident where, on video, it appears an SPD officer walked the wheels of his bicycle over an individual lying in the street. Immediately after being made aware of this incident, SPD activated the Force Investigation Team (FIT) to document and investigate the use of force – as required by policy — and alerted the Office of Police Accountability (OPA), which also responded to the scene. OPA has opened an investigation into the incident. The officer has been placed on administrative leave. Following the request from the OPA, the SPD has referred the incident to the King County Sheriff’s Office for a potential criminal investigation.
It’s fair game to throw incendiary devices at police but the police can’t walk a bike over a rioter who deliberately laid down in the street to block his path.
And here I am thinking that the police should run over those fuckers with one of their surplus MRAPs.
Honestly, every single cop in Seattle should quit tonight. Every one. Take their families and just abandon the city.
It’s not worth risking everything to protect a city from rioters that cannot be touched when they lay in the streets.
It would be interesting to ask these idiots exactly what they want to accomplish with shackling cops. Why there is any police left in these cities is beyond me.
1) I am for police using adequate response again lawbreakers, rioters in this case.
2) Walking bike over civilian on the ground is a sick power play. There is no battle rush, no fog of war. The policeman safety is not compromised. It is easy to raise the bike up while stepping over the body on the ground.
The condoning of this kind of power play results in civilians being tasered and violently manhandled for not wearing a mask at an outdoor sports event.
Bless your heart.
Yeah. Except that rolling a 5lb bike across someone is not “use of force”, and has zero chance of causing any sort of injury to the person. I;m kind of sick of everyone expecting the police to be superhuman, emotionless automatons who always act with full and flawless professionalism at all times, in the face of the most blatant provocations. At the very worst this was bad judgment and unprofessional behavior, not “use of force”.
As for ACTUAL force, assuming you are referring to the same video I recently watched, no one was tasered “for not wearing a mask”. They were tasered for resisting arrest and struggling with the police officer. They were arrested for refusing to leave the stadium when asked by the officer. Even if it was an unlawful command (and it isn’t), you have no right to refuse a police officer’s command because your personal interpretation is that the law is unlawful. You DO have a right to sue the police afterwards in court if you feel the command was unlawful. The officer was following orders, removing anyone not wearing as mask from the stadium, either per governor’s order, or per college policy, which gives them the right to have any person removed from their private property who does not follow college regulations. No officer just walked up to a citizen and said “no mask?! Alright, you’re going downtown, bud!”, let alone whipped out his taser and started tasing the person as punishment for not wearing a mask in public. This is exactly the same BS, untruthful rhetoric that the left is using to immobilize and disempower police as they attempt to carry out a violent revolution in the streets, and you aren’t helping by confirming their lies and slanders.
Not sure what you think the officer was supposed to do in the stadium. Willfully ignore his orders and refuse to enforce the law, or to do his job and remove the girl from university property because you don’t think it should be legal to do so? When his boss says “do this”, the officer does it, and lets the bosses deal with the legal problems (unless it’s clearly, blatantly illegal, which it is not in this case, in spite of all the rhetoric from the left: the governor is given authority to make orders ‘for the public safety” in times of emergency, That is the law, even if it is a bad one”.
Was the officer supposed to shrug and say “well, I asked her to leave an she refused, oh well, never mind”? Was he supposed to stop arresting her when it became clear that she wasn’t going to voluntarily submit to arrest? Because only arresting people who are willing to let themselves be arrested peacefully without any force involved sounds like a GREAT idea. Or maybe he should have called for backup, and him and five other guys chased her down and physically tackled her and restrained her, in order to avoid TASING her. Anything but that! Never mind that you use far more actual force and risk injuring the arrestee and the officer far more when you try to use physical strength to force them to accept the cuffs, instead of using a shock to compel them to submit.
The idea that the police should somehow enforce the law or disperse a violent, angry mob of people without force is moronic and unworkable.
Do some police abuse their power at times? Obviously yes. But it’s hard to avoid when you have tens of thousands of officers, who are at best normal people with a few months of training to make them “police officers”. Maybe you think we should start making police work the equivalent of a doctorate degree, with an intensive 8 year training program to turn them into flawless professionals? Of course that would cost billions of dollars, and you’d have to pay them doctors wages to make ANYONE accept the job with that much of a commitment involved. They already have trouble attracting enough recruits to fill the ranks as it is, let’s make it even harder and raise the bar to keep out all but the most flawless, perfect candidates. If we offer them enough money, maybe we can even find them.
I can see picking the bike up to carry it over, but….it was the individual who put his body in the path of police, he wasn’t put there by the cops.
As for “what to do next” I’d strongly suggest cops devote less time to studying Criminal Justice in whatever college/university they go to and earn enough credits in other disciplines to at least garner an AA degree; knowing business accounting, something of the culinary arts, a bit of the practice of architecture, maybe some computer science, engineering or chemistry, or whatever other than cop stuff you find interesting, gives one options. And do some of it “on the side,” part-time, to gain experience, establish connections, and network. That way when it’s time to say “screw this” and toss your badge and gun on the lieutenant’s desk you already have an escape path built.
Brilliant move, if you ask me. Knock a douchewaffles hat off, go home and sit on paid leave while they “investigate” for 3 to 6 months! No more abuse, no more piss bottles, bricks and fireworks. Get up at 1000, look for a new job where you can actually have some respect, watch a little TV, collect your paycheck…what’s not to like!!!
I used to live in Seattle. Even before all of the riots, SPD moral was low. I knew the officer in our area and he was fed up with the treatment of the police by city council and the mayor. My neighbor 2 doors down had 3 years before full retirement with SPD but he took early retirement instead of hang on for 3 years. I still follow Seattle news and the city council overrode the mayors veto of 50% defunding. Seattle has voted to commit suicide.