Officer pistol whipped with his own gun. Witnesses happily take pics (warning graphic images)

Mods if this is in the wrong forum please move. Thanks.

"BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC) -A Birmingham Police Department detective was injured on Birmingham's east side Friday morning.
The plainclothes detective was injured near 9100 Parkway East in Roebuck and has been transported to UAB Hospital. Police say the detective's condition us unknown at this time and they are waiting on more information from doctors. Police now say the detective is in stable condition and has been admitted for observation.
The detective was injured around 11:20 a.m. after stopping a suspicious vehicle while waiting for back up, according to Lt. Theophilus Smith of the Birmingham Police Department.
Police say after a verbal exchange with the detective, one of the suspects exited his vehicle and the situation escalated into a physical altercation."

detective-assaulted-taken-to-uab-hospital

assaulted-during -traffic-stop

From different websites apparently a w/m plain clothed police officer pulled over a vehicle that had two b/m. The officer asked the people to stay in the car to call backup. One of the men exited the car, took the officers gun and pistol whipped him. The officer is in the robbery division and this happened at a strip mall. There is no mention of why the officer pulled the vehicle over or if it was robbery related.

Being at a mall there were other people there that witnessed the incident and took pictures of the beaten officer. The pics were posted to facebook and the original comments have gotten people in the city pretty upset. The original post was deleted, people have commented it was facebook that deleted it. So people screen grabbed it and have been reposting overnight.



Warning Pics are a little graphic. Please do not look if you have a problem with blood.






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This in turn has made the police upset. I'm friends with several officers and their comments on facebook are how I first found out about the assault.

"Shortly after a Birmingham police say a fellow officer was attacked on Friday, images of the bloodied officer appeared on Facebook, something that has
outraged Sgt. Heath Boackle, President of Fraternal Order of Police.
"This man has a wife, he has kids so now all this stuff is flashing on Facebook, seeing their dad, their husband bloodied, laying face down," said Sgt. Boackle. "This officer is doing his job, gets beaten with his own weapon, the public is taking pictures of him?”
...
He said had the situation been reversed, and an officer did this to someone it would have gotten national media attention.
Sgt. Boackle said officers all over the country officers are walking on egg shells, which leads to what we saw today in Birmingham."

fop-outraged


I kinda have to agree with the police officer. Had this been the opposite and the officer had pistol whipped the suspect and these images posted to social media it would have made national news last night. Instead it will probably be forgotten in a week. I'm not even going to get into the comments made on facebook.

I love my city. A year ago, I swear race relations were not this bad. In my news feed I would never see white or black people talking negatively about another race, but it has started to become more common place. I'm worried what all this is leading up to. Any comments ATS?

a reply to: RammerJammer

cue the racist and cop haters in 3.2.1.

Apparently he's not very smart. I don't understand how a cop could get whipped with his own pistol, that's allot of time with a gun out. Just a squeeze and it's done, so what was he doing? Waving it around? Holsters are designed specifically so others can't yank the gun out.

For all intents and purposes, he is lucky all they guy did was pistol whip him.

Things could have been much much worse for the officer.

a reply to: Flesh699

Agreed. I have not been able to find out exactly how they were able to get his gun.

a reply to: Flesh699

regardless of popular opinion, not all cops go for their gun first when confronting someone. some will and do try to defuse the situation first. so it's not hard to see how a suspect /perp could rush and overtake a police person.

originally posted by: Flesh699
Apparently he's not very smart. I don't understand how a cop could get whipped with his own pistol, that's allot of time with a gun out. Just a squeeze and it's done, so what was he doing? Waving it around? Holsters are designed specifically so others can't yank the gun out.

Just a squeeze and it's done?
Cops don't shoot without cause first of all (well trained officers anyway) and who wants the media attention of being a white cop shooting a black guy?
Don't you think that was in his mind at the time?

Taking life is no small thing and I think it's appalling that people would post the pictures and comments that they have.
What happened to people helping someone when they're injured instead of mocking them?
Race relations and police-citizen relations have taken a real beating this year and I blame the media and the administration for hanging the police out to dry.

The police aren't perfect but for pity's sake they are human beings.
I pray we never forget that as a nation.

Eta: It's no coincidence that the NWA movie is coming out this year. Their most famous song being F - the police. They are ramping things up and the divide is growing even deeper.

a reply to: RammerJammer
Can anyone translate the one Facebook post for me? I know what most of the 'words' mean, but I am not sure of the idea being conveyed by the sentence.

lmao dumbass cracker dats for da red bit

Edit to remove punctuation that was not present in the actual Facebook post.

a reply to: Flesh699

1) that's assuming he had some sort of retention system holster. Most of the detectives I know have a simple thumb strap holster. Seriously doubt he was wearing some triple retention rig on his hip. Even still, the holster isn't a gun safe on your hip. It can still be defeated, especially if an officer is incapacitated in some way.

2) he's incredibly lucky "all they did" was beat him with it.

3) not at all surprised nobody helped him, given all the events that have been pushed in the media lately

4) gonna say it even though it'll probably be flamed: he would've been within his rights to shoot his assailants, had he been able to get his weapon back somehow, or retain it when the fight began.

Oh well. Flame on.

a reply to: Shamrock6

gonna say it even though it'll probably be flamed: he would've been within his rights to shoot his assailants, had he been able to get his weapon back somehow, or retain it when the fight began. 

No flames from me on that point.

He would have been justified in shooting them.

Sadly, if he had done what he had a right to do, he would be looked at as a murderer by some.

Thats why I love where I live. We had a drunk try to beat a cop here about a month ago. The people present didn't take pictures. That came ti his rescue and beat the drunk. Go WV!

i feel a movement coming on
#copsmatter

No flame, whomever did this is guilty of assaulting a police officer. Theres no big flap because well, obviously, a crime has been committed.

a reply to: butcherguy

It translates to "I'm a racist oxygen thief"

Meh,He's damn lucky he all he got was a Pistol whipping..
edit..I'm not bashing the cop,it's just an observation of what could have been.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: Shamrock6

gonna say it even though it'll probably be flamed: he would've been within his rights to shoot his assailants, had he been able to get his weapon back somehow, or retain it when the fight began. 

No flames from me on that point.

He would have been justified in shooting them.

Sadly, if he had done what he had a right to do, he would be looked at as a murderer by some.

Damned if you. Damned if you don't.

This whole system we got doesn't seem to be very effective does it? Maybe we should invent a non-racist AI to police ourselves. Nudge, nudge.

a reply to: butcherguy

I think one of two things happened.

He was incapacitated enough (in whatever manner) that they got his gun and continued the beating and then took off.

Or

He DID draw his weapon at some point and hesitated for some reason. Whatever that reason is, it caused him enough hesitation that he got disarmed and then the pistol whipping commenced. Either he didn't want to possibly take a life or he didn't want to be a white cop taking the life of a black man.

Hopefully there's more into yet to be released about this and it can shed some light on how things went down. I'm highly curious to know how the gun came into play here.

a reply to: Shamrock6

Or he wasn't aware he was dealing with more than one person. Someone got the drop on him.

originally posted by: Rosinitiate
a reply to: Shamrock6

Or he wasn't aware he was dealing with more than one person. Someone got the drop on him.

Quite right.
There were two males in the car that he stopped.
If I were a police officer (and I would NOT want that job), I would hate to have to operate without a partner.

originally posted by: hounddoghowlie
a reply to: RammerJammer

cue the racist and cop haters in 3.2.1.

I guess I'm one of those "cop haters". Even though I only hate cops who abuse their authority......but I digress.

I'm in agreement with Shamrock. He would have been justified in shooting.