You come up to this scene, what are your thoughts? We have a young, decent looking kid apparently being threatened by an old fart with a gun. People around are getting antsy and stupid. What to do? Watch the whole thing, specially at the end.
So it turns out the old fart is actually an off-duty plainclothes officer and the young fella pulled a knife on him. That the young idiot is alive speaks volumes about the control of the officer or the fast response to orders of the perp.
And you have to love the Peanut Gallery: “You ain’t police!”, “put the gun down, we are here”, “Lemme see your badge.” “We are not the ones pointing a gun to an unarmed man”, “He is not gonna shoot ya!”, “He didn’t do nothing, he felt like pointing the gun at him” and then silence when the cops pull the knife off the kid. Hell, that fact that at least three idiots approached an unknown man with a gun displayed in an aggressive manner, tell you the kind of pitiful waste of grey matter is occurring at that time.
So lessons I get on this sucker:
- Appearances can be very deceiving.
- Don’t butt-in where you don’t have business to attend.
- Use you frigging phone for phone calls to 911 also. Leave the Youtube crap alone.
- Morons will pop out from anywhere and harass you. Cool head always.
- If you ever thought that Citizen’s Arrest is something you could do, you may wanna rethink your position. And:
- Appearances can be very deceiving…yes, again.
UPDATE: It is even more twisted than initially informed. According to KSL, the old man is a security officer who saw the young man with a knife arguing with two individuals. The young man (unbeknownst to the old man) was a victim of a crime (bike theft) and was confronting the thieves.
On one hand:
I’m all for videotaping cops and putting those videos on youtube or whatever. There is a lot of police misconduct and daylight is the best disinfectant. Making videos of police action public does a lot to draw attention to these cases and promote justice (see Officer Pogan case)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/nyregion/30pogan.html?_r=0
On the other hand:
Once that camera comes out, SHUT UP! Video for sure, but do not interfere. The cops are going to arrest who they are going to arrest, and your protests aren’t going to change that. More importantly, you don’t want to get arrested too. Stand back, don’t instigate.
This case is a perfect example. The security officer didn’t see the bike robbery. He saw a kid with a knife. He assumed that was the threat and took action. Luckily the kid wasn’t shot. He should have just shut up and laid there. There is plenty of time to explain what happened, thought a lawyer, at the police station. Hopefully the bike thieves will get caught.
Yeah, facts vs. perception. The SO took what he thought to be actions to potentially save lives.
I dunno. I come on a scene like that, my initial thought is “Some kid tried to threaten somebody, got the wrong victim.
The guy with the gun is on the phone. I assumed he’s talking to the police.
I might want to get out and watch, just so there are more witnesses, but yelling at the guy with the gun is a great way to escalate the situation. Kid on the ground isn’t going to get shot unless he does something stupid. And if he gets shot without doing something stupid, THEN you mob the gunman.