Thank you for that. What some fail to recognize is that we authorize, even encourage officers to use force (within reason) to maintain social order. It is never pretty.
If you watch closely, the left will often say things like “He had an argument with the police.” That should translate as
“He was defiant to legal and lawful orders to cease and desist.”
To cease and desist does not make one subservient, it is simply an emphatic to remind you of what your social and civil duties as a citizen are. If you persist, then the next option is force.
“He had an altercation with the police.” That should translate to “He resisted arrest, because he was persistently defiant even when warned of impending arrest.”
“He didn’t have a gun, I would know if he did”
or
“I didn’t raise him to be like that.”
or
“He might have had a gun, but the police are too quick to shoot. They shot him for no good reason.”
All excuses, all denials, all the time.
There are hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens who carry concealed everyday, to protect themselves or loved ones. There are equally hundreds of thousands who routinely carry guns to protect themselves as well, but the difference is the have chosen a life, willingly, that necessitates them to carry a firearm because they are always in danger of being assassinated. I am not talking about cops either.
They carry those firearms because they have chosen to sell dope, rob others, shoot at people for intimidation and to kill or maim their rivals, who are actively doing the same line of work. When they cross paths with the police, they believe that they can just open fire with no consequence or they care not for the consequence, for they have been indoctrinated since toddlers that prison is just a fact of life, an inevitable destination that you will visit.
I work with other officers who have done heroic things, went into burning houses, yes, rescuing black folks, carried unconscious black citizens out of carbon monoxide filled rooms that even the fire department was not going to go in with SCBA gear, went in front of houses that suspects had been firing out of to rescue shot up people, and many others.
I have NEVER worked with a police officer that would not do the same if the opportunity arose.
Bad hiring/screening, bad training, and bad leadership foster bad cops. All correctable, but you have to have the organizational culture to do so, not all agencies are equal.
I understand. I have a older, female relative, in her late sixties at the time, who was in the mental ward of a hospital several years back. At some point, this relative wasn’t cooperative and so was taken down by the hospital staff. The relative was slightly injured. It was a rough takedown, despite the fact that she had committed no crime and I don’t believe had actually been a physical danger.
I understand, too, that physical force, when used, has to be appropriate. But I believe, too, that it is easy for people to come along afterward, look at a video, and decide no force was necessary (and hence the officers are simply violent brutes who want to hurt people) when they don’t know the situation and what was going through officers’ minds and what they were facing at the time.
And even where force might have been a somewhat negligent call, it might not be the egregrious decision that some people think it is, or want to be believe it is.
This is what Simone did three days before:
Simone is no stranger to law enforcement. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that he almost rammed a police cruiser in a separate chase three days earlier.
Court records show that Simone eluded police in Millbury, Massachusetts, who had tried to stop him for an outstanding warrant, by trying to collide with the cruiser before driving onto Interstate 290.
http://whdh.com/news/man-in-custody-after-high-speed-chase-in-ma-nh/
And another report I read says that Simone wasn’t seriously injured.
I have been thinking that they didn’t know what to make of his surrender. When someone goes to such great lengths to not surrender, there is typically a strong reason behind it which they aren’t going to just give up. I would think that they would expect him to run once his car became inoperable or he was cornered. And I would think that they were waiting for further resistance from him, in some form, despite his sudden docility.
Watching the officers apprehend Simone, I’m not saying they were justified, but I see more than enough reason there to wait to hear their side.
And I see no reason to feed the idea that the left is pushing, that the troopers were and are just out-of-control psychopaths and rabid dogs. I see no reason at all to demonize them. THAT idea is all over social media, including in this particular case. The police repeatedly hit the man while apprehending him? That makes them evil beasts.
After hitting him a number of times, and perhaps kneeing him, they cuffed him and didn’t seem to be full of rage once he had been subdued and secured. To me, that suggests that physically attacking him as they did was the tactic they chose to arrest him with the least possible danger to them all.
Once again, that doesn’t mean that I necessarily think they didn’t do wrong. Just that I see no reason to believe that this was a just an entirely unjustifiable use of physical force, whose chief and only purpose was to physically punish the man, because the officers were sadistic or psychopathic monsters. That’s all. I would next like to hear from them.