It is hard for me to take what you are trying to argue seriously. I have no idea what your actual situation is, but you speak like someone who has led a completely sheltered life. Have you ever been in or around a situation like this? I said that we would not have treated someone this way and would report others who did. In fact it was our department's policy to coddle them. And personally I did not mind that. My crews and I even did what we could to try and help down and out people sometimes to extremes that you would most likely make fun of. And we got to know who was good natured and harmless and who was just plain nasty. Who knows what the situation with this person was?
But I do understand the frustration of dealing with people like this day after day and how this type of incident developed. From the video it didn't look to me like the person laying on the ground probably did not receive injuries from the encounter, you play stupid games and sometimes you win stupid prizes. And in the real world whether someone got hurt or not makes a big difference. If the guy had some real injuries the follow up story would be about the transit cop getting fired and charges with a crime. If the cop wasn't black he would be fired immediately anyway.
First let me commend you for being patient with these scammers and being willing to turn in any professional who did something like this. As an emergency services provider this is part of your job, to serve the public no matter how stupid the interactions might get or how often. I understood that you personally and your crew would not have allowed this to happen on your watch. And it would be the right thing to do no matter what the others might say.
I was directing my judgement at this one officer directly, When we start saying as a society “oh.. he was wrong but only just a little bit wrong, not too serious, he didn’t hurt the guy much... It’s acceptable because he was having a bad day and was frustrated, the guy deserved it because he was a scammer anyways.” And the big one... “It’s acceptable because he’s a cop”. We are then allowing ourselves to be conditioned into slowly accepting more and more of it as “acceptable”. At what point do we finally see it as “too much” when ANY AT ALL is already too much and crossing a line?
There is a line that cannot be crossed no matter what the circumstances happen to be. It is the same with any occupation where human personalities interact. I have been working with the public and a-holes all my life and can’t count how many times I wanted to punch someone because I was “frustrated” with them. But it’s unacceptable in ANY form and ILLEGAL without the justification of self defense. You just can’t be rough with people because you are frustrated or having a bad day.
And I do have some experience with this and do not live a sheltered life. I have been working with the public all my life as a service provider and business owner. I was once homeless for a couple years and ran with these “scammers” for a bit and full well know the game and how they play the system and purposely “test” public servant professionals.
Both my father and my uncle are retired law enforcement. All three of my daughters and one son in law are in health care and have all worked emergency services and in large hospital emergency rooms. Now three of them work in an Alzheimer’s and mental illness center where they have to physically defend themselves in a patient passive manner all day long from residents who try to beat the hell out of them for just doing their job. They actually do get punched all the time and CANNOT physically defend themselves and retaliate.
So I do understand the system, and I do understand how frustrating it can get interacting with society and personalities. But there is a line that cannot be crossed no matter what the situation might be. And never should we start accepting this line to be crossed even “just a little bit” without a serious legitimate just cause. It is a bad road to go down especially from a professional who is trained and paid NOT TO DO THIS.
Public interactions too frustrating for you... get out of it... It’s your job to be patient with it no matter how often or how bad it might get until they actually do break a law. Tell you what... You would seriously want to smack the crap out of half my customers. But I just can’t cross that line under any circumstance without being able to prove self defense.
It is what it is... and it does indeed extremely test my own patience constantly. And public servants are bound by these very same legalities and constraints that everyone else is.