06-10-2015, 09:40 AM
(06-09-2015, 09:49 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: A refreshing change having someone defending the LEO aside from me. That being said he wasn't in the situation alone or I'd be much more apt to agree with you. If you have backup on site your risk from an unarmed assailant(s) goes way down. Having been in this type of situation before I can say it wears your nerves and patience raw. One time I came a brain impulse away from throwing a person down a concrete flight of stairs but you have to reign those impulses in and not express them. Unlike most I don't see the barrel roll as a big deal, it looked like he was tripping/falling and he rolled out of it.
As for the guy resigning, that's yet another sacrifice on the altar of public opinion. He made a mistake, IMO, but he didn't point his gun and anyone and he sure didn't discharge it. Like I've said for months now, this is going to get worse before it gets better.
Yeah, I suspect it is going to get worse. I remember 1991 when the Rodney King assault went down. There was this mentality then in most of our country that King had it coming to him. That mindset was, of course, wrong. But now the pendulum has swung the other way and there is this mindset that every cop is terrorizing sweet little children with no provocation and shooting guys in the back. That mindset is wrong, too. Somebody called it click bait and I referred to it as the new game everyone is playing. The collective mind seems to be "let's mess with LEOs - it will be fun." There is a middle ground where cops and citizens act mutually respectful, where bad police are held accountable and it isn't a media "event" but rather a tragedy for the whole community when someone loses his badge, but in this climate it is really hard to imagine.
I remember as a kid and young adult having very few but almost exclusively positive interactions with cops. Since then I have had a mix of positive and negative interactions. It always amazes me when I see a LEO disrespect a citizen or a citizen disrespect a LEO. It is something I just couldn't imagine a few years ago. What a sad devolution for our culture. People celebrate the decay and failure of community institutions, and even try to accelerate it. People joke about violence toward and from LEOs. Everything is a joke. The center can't hold. And the band plays on.
JOHN ROBERTS: From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice... I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.
