I would never treat a police officer as an overlord or anything more. But I am not going to take the side of a civilian when they could have avoided the whole situation. They could have talked to the officer from the beginning and gotten it over with and then probably got sent on their way with no trouble. I don't sympathize with the girls because of how they were responding and the fact they could have just walked over the damn overpass, 15 feet away.

The title of this thread should be: "Two women assault police officer, resist arrest, cop haters blame cop."

Oh and the title of this thread should be changed to
"17 year old girl gets what she deserves for interfering with Police"

Which should have include getting tazored in my opinion.

Since when is it your friends choice on whether a cop arrests you or not?

[edit on 15-6-2010 by xmaddness]

Nope, I am totally with the cop on this one. She's lucky she didn't get shot. The cop was outnumbered and she put her hands on him, trying to interfere with his arrest.

In that area of Seattle, you never know who may be packing a gun, male or female. In that area of Seattle, there is an awful lot of gang presence, male and female. There was quite a crowd forming, this could have easily grown a lot worse.

The cop had to protect himself. I'm sure there was a lot of adrenalene flowing at the time in all involved, the girls were getting scrappy and out of hand. Maybe pepper spray or taser wouldn't have looked so bad, I don't know. But the cop did what he had to do.

Why don't people get that if you just follow the cops orders, there won't be a problem? The officers are on the street to serve and protect us all, respect them, and they will respect you girls!!

Originally posted by C0le
This is coming from someone who has no issue with calling out the police when they do wrong, I have my own personal experiences in some threads o ATS so Id be the first to call something if it didn't seem right.

Secondly I'm also a CJ major which will be entering Law Enforcement in the not to distant future So I can see both sides of this issue here.

Its easy to say this officer overstepped his bounds when that's what you WANT to see him doing. the reality of the situation is this, The officer was attempting to make an arrest, whether it was lawful or not would/will be determined by the courts.

On the scene were two males a female, and the female being arrested. The female being arrested WAS resisting arrest, and being HIGHLY uncooperative, the other female was also not making the situation any easier she was INTERFERING with the arrest.

On this cops mind are several factors the two males on the scene, the aggressive female friend, and the women resisting. This officer is ALONE and confronted with obviously hostile individuals.

The woman resisting is a handful as it is and the other women DID in fact assault the officer, there is a GUN present mind you it is the officers, His arrested is not under control and her friend is attacking him. A LEO is constantly weighing and observing his situation and he KNOWS that if he loses control of the situation he may not go home that night.

The female friend attacked him and he lost control of his arrestee, this could be a potentially DANGEROUS situation if one of them goes for any of his weapons, he MUST do what he can to get things back under control and YES KNOCKING the woman out is JUSTIFIED.

NEVER resist arrest, NEVER interfere with an arrest and NEVER ASSAULT A POLICE OFFICER especially while hes trying to make an arrest...


Some people here like to make any police actions seems like its the end of the world and some NWO takeover and loss of our rights and I can assure you THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE SITUATIONS

Some people think they know everything because they sit behind a computer screen but the reality of the situation is that this officer did what he had to do, you may not like it but put yourself in his shoes.

In my schooling and experiences with LE I can tell you that situations like these have on many occasions resulted in the officer getting KILLED because he lost control of a situation.

The officer used an equal level of force to restore control of the situation, he was JUSTIFIED to use the next level of force which I'm sure everyone here would have screamed police brutality had he went to that level.

He was following the correct use of force guide lines for this situation.

[edit on 15-6-2010 by C0le]

Best post in this thread. Read it again.

I think the cop was trying to take it easy on the 19 year old he was originally trying to arrest. She did get a pretty good slam on the hood of the car at the begining. You can hear it on the video when the guy with the camera was quite a ways off. I think he had the strength to really man handle her but he was trying to use the least amount of force. The slam on the hood was a warning to the girl to calm down and thats when things went south for him he now had the 17 year old getting involed.

[edit on 15-6-2010 by JBA2848]

This is coming from someone who has no issue with calling out the police when they do wrong, I have my own personal experiences in some threads o ATS so Id be the first to call something if it didn't seem right.

Secondly I'm also a CJ major which will be entering Law Enforcement in the not to distant future So I can see both sides of this issue here.

Its easy to say this officer overstepped his bounds when that's what you WANT to see him doing. the reality of the situation is this, The officer was attempting to make an arrest, whether it was lawful or not would/will be determined by the courts.

On the scene were two males a female, and the female being arrested. The female being arrested WAS resisting arrest, and being HIGHLY uncooperative, the other female was also not making the situation any easier she was INTERFERING with the arrest.

On this cops mind are several factors the two males on the scene, the aggressive female friend, and the women resisting. This officer is ALONE and confronted with obviously hostile individuals.

The woman resisting is a handful as it is and the other women DID in fact assault the officer, there is a GUN present mind you it is the officers, His arrested is not under control and her friend is attacking him. A LEO is constantly weighing and observing his situation and he KNOWS that if he loses control of the situation he may not go home that night.

The female friend attacked him and he lost control of his arrestee, this could be a potentially DANGEROUS situation if one of them goes for any of his weapons, he MUST do what he can to get things back under control and YES KNOCKING the woman out is JUSTIFIED.

NEVER resist arrest, NEVER interfere with an arrest and NEVER ASSAULT A POLICE OFFICER especially while hes trying to make an arrest...


Some people here like to make any police actions seems like its the end of the world and some NWO takeover and loss of our rights and I can assure you THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE SITUATIONS

Some people think they know everything because they sit behind a computer screen but the reality of the situation is that this officer did what he had to do, you may not like it but put yourself in his shoes.

In my schooling and experiences with LE I can tell you that situations like these have on many occasions resulted in the officer getting KILLED because he lost control of a situation.

The officer used an equal level of force to restore control of the situation, he was JUSTIFIED to use the next level of force which I'm sure everyone here would have screamed police brutality had he went to that level.

He was following the correct use of force guide lines for this situation.

[edit on 15-6-2010 by C0le]

This explains the video better than the usual responses. While it may seem to be an extreme measure to punch someone in the face I can tell you if I had several people surrounding me while I'm trying to arrest someone, I'm going to establish my ground by force. It seems like he lost control of the situation early or at least had a difficult time restraining the individuals.

[edit on 15-6-2010 by nastalgik]

Man a cop actually doing the right thing for once. Damn!

I see the event happened at 3:10 15 feet from a pedestrian overpass. So I would guess you are supposed to walk over the pedestrian bridge and not across the road. Also this is probly near a school and school was probly just realesd so the officer figured he was dealing with juveniles and not adults. So he would use least amount of force possible considering it was children. School resource officers run into the same type of situations all the time in schools. They get teenagers trying to fight them when there not allowed to use force to fight back because of school policies.

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher
You don't touch a cop and you don't try to stop him from arrestting someone.

I don't care how stupid the charge is...you let the courts handle it. She wanted to act tough...pushed the cop...and got what she deserved.

Having said that...what is up with this cop...why is he so weak??? Can't get one female under control? And I'm surprised the crowd didn't do anything...it wouldn't of been right...but they all seemed angry and they just stood there and watched.

I was ashamed of this officers performance, I didn't see him get a single hold correctly or call for support.

Originally posted by elevatedone
Now, should he have struck her, eh, in the heat of the
Moment, maybe he feared that all the people present were
Going to attack him? We don’t know.

They could have been pepper sprayed or tazed, but it wouldn’t matter
Everyone would still jump all over this claiming the officer was out of line.

Most people can't see the whole picture.

Secure

If he would've just let go of the first girl's wrist, there wouldn't have been a struggle.
The yelling wouldn't have been as bad.
The friend wouldn't have felt the need to intervene.

God forbid they walk away from him after committing the heinous crime of walking across a street...

I do not usually side with law enforcement on topics like this, however I do not think the officer was really out of line for punching the 17 year old. She involved herself. She reached out and pushed him first, then grabbed him. All in an attempt to make the officer not arrest her friend. Sorry, but she is dead wrong. Here is an officer, all by himself, trying to make an arrest with a female that is fighting him every step of the way, with a crowd gathering around him. Again he is all alone. It only takes one person involving themselves to start the chain reaction, the cop was pretty lucky in my opinion that not more people jumped in.

Now there is another side to that coin. This whole thing could have been avoided if this cop was not trying to flex his muscles by ridding the world of all those criminal Jaywalkers! That in itself is beyond stupid. Jaywalking is just one of many out of date laws that are on the books, hardly used, and used as more of an excuse to mess with people. I can not recall ever hearing any 911 calls for out of control Jaywalkers.

It seems to me that this cop was just looking for something to do. So although I do not fault him for striking the girl in that situation, I do fault him for creating the whole situation to begin with by attempting to detain people for Jaywalking.

that's what you get if you attack a cop didn't have the right to punch her in the face in most cases, but he was surrounded and did what he felt he had to do

When someone grabs a cop's arm, and tries to push him away from making an arrest, then that cop is legally allowed to use a certain amount of force. The "Force Continuum" is a guideline for cops and what level of force they can use.
1. Officer Presence
2. Verbal Commands
3. Soft techniques (wrist locks, pushing, open hand attacks, OC Spray, Tazer)
4. Hard Techniques (closed fisted strikes, take downs, night-stick)
5. Deadly Force

A Police Officer is allowed to be one-step above from the force being used against him. For example, if someone pushes/grabs a cop (soft tech), then that cop can use either use the same level or go up to hard techniques. Obviously, I would of let go, and sprayed the $%@! out of her. BUT.... Even though he was legally allowed to punch her if she grabbed or pushed him, it still didn’t look good, and should of been handled differently.


[edit on 15-6-2010 by monkeySEEmonkeyDO]