Woman calls police. They brutalize and arrest her.

07-17-2010, 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by Sage Rat

Cop 1 asks The Friend some information, but before he can ask his name, The Friend skedaddles. Since Cop 1 thinks that The Friend has been beating up The Lady, he decides to get The Friend's name and address from her, so that he can look the guy up later. She decides that she won't help the police with this, and refuses to give any information. Cop 1 says that he is legally obligated to get information about someone suspected of beating on women and if she doesn't give him the information, then he is going to arrest her and take her in. Rather than giving him the information, instead she runs for her house. The officer pursues, apprehends, and continues to struggle with her, eventually using a tazer to get her to submit to the arrest.

The beginning of this part of your mostly excellent summation is slightly off; here's direct from the AJC story linked above:

[quote]Wells, who teaches in Columbus, said she had called to report a prowler. Murphy wrote in his police report that he was dispatched to check out a report of an

07-18-2010, 01:00 AM

Originally Posted by ivan astikov

Can I just ask you if you ever switch off your "on the job" mode? No matter what environments you seem to be in - in my admittedly limited experience of them "off duty" - you always seem ready to go into Cop Mode at the slightest provocation. Do you ever ignore "crimes" that you personally find less serious?

No, they're not all on the job 24/7. There was an incident 10 years ago in Chicago in which a reportedly off-duty cop ignored an armed robbery in a grocery store in which she was shopping. She faced dismissial in 2003 for, among other things, failing to perform her duty and making a false report but I don't know what came of it.

07-18-2010, 01:58 AM

Originally Posted by jsgoddess

Originally Posted by billfish678

Originally Posted by Giles

Even if she is lying, and the cop knows she is lying, there is no justification for tasering. That's essentially using torture to get information out of her.

Like nearly ALL the other cops did wrong threads, it boils down to this. When a COP TELLS you to do something, you DO IT. If you don't do, he is pretty much required to FORCE you to comply. To allow otherwise would defeat the very concept of a cop.

She didnt get tazed because she was lying. She got tazed because she ran and was resisting.

DO WHAT the cop says, take a ride ride downtown. Behave yourself. And if you think the whole thing was a crock of shit get hold of a lawyer, or the ACLU, the local paper, or Al Sharpton or something.

I'm not so sure that we, as a society, are better off if people like the OP's victim just tamely go along to get along. Should we want petty abuses of power to slip under the radar?

One can only hope that people who defend abuses of power become victims of it, that is probably the most effective way to rehabilitate them.

I'm not saying that people defending these cops should have their testicles attacked to electrodes, or their anuses penetrated with a nightstick, I'm just saying it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if that happened...

**spit** · 07-18-2010, 03:49 AM

Is it not possible that she lied about "The Friend"? Perhaps he comes over, they had a bad breakup, she is scared hubby will have a fit if he finds out she had to call the cops to her home, so she says a prowler is outside in hopes that a police car appearing will get Romeo to leave. Cop appears, asks for basic information, and she refuses. Several things make the cop believe that there may have been more to this story, and he can tell she is lying. The fight is on at that point.

Again, that was excessive force, tasers should not have widespread use, and I am not defending the cops.....It's just that *something* in this makes me feel that she is not as clean as the wind driven snow.

07-18-2010, 05:19 AM

Originally Posted by Lute Skywatcher

Originally Posted by ivan astikov

Can I just ask you if you ever switch off your "on the job" mode? No matter what environments you seem to be in - in my admittedly limited experience of them "off duty" - you always seem ready to go into Cop Mode at the slightest provocation. Do you ever ignore "crimes" that you personally find less serious?

No, they're not all on the job 24/7. There was an incident 10 years ago in Chicago in which a reportedly off-duty cop ignored an armed robbery in a grocery store in which she was shopping. She faced dismissial in 2003 for, among other things, failing to perform her duty and making a false report but I don't know what came of it.

I don't think anybody sane would find "armed robbery," less serious.

At least, I hope not.

[OT]Went to court today 'cause I got a ticket for "being in the park after dusk (who knows when that is); dismissed because, supposedly [del]the cop had taught me[/del] I had learned a lesson, I guess, by being told the rule and the inconvenience of having to take off to show up there.[/OT]

07-18-2010, 06:00 AM

Originally Posted by njtt

Originally Posted by Cat Whisperer

It also seems to me that if you're going to encourage a culture of cops being above the law (not informing on each other, not giving each other tickets when laws were obviously broken), then cops feeling they have a carte blanche is going to be the downside of that.

Are you suggesting that there is also an upside? :dubious:

The people who support cops having a different set of rules for themselves think there is. I don't think cops should have a different set of rules; I think cops should get tickets when they break traffic rules when driving (not in pursuit) or when caught drunk-driving off-duty; I think cops should rat on each other all the time, as often as necessary. I don't believe in the blue code of silence, or whatever it's called. I think cops need to hold themselves to the possible highest standards, so that when questionable things happen, our first response isn't; "Dammit, the cops are out of control again!" but, "That's unusual; cops don't usually do that."

07-18-2010, 06:05 AM

Originally Posted by alice_in_wonderland

WTH?!?!?

What possible justification could there be for the way these police reacted?

They're inbred redneck dickless assholes?

Or that they're cops (which is, I admit, redundant)?

**Bookkeeper** · 07-18-2010, 06:56 AM

So the first cop claims he tried to arrest her, pepper-sprayed her, and tazed her to save her from being a potential victim of domestic violence? Sounds like "We had to destroy the village in order to save it".

Regardless of whether he was dispatched for a prowler or a domestic violence call (and we would have to check the 911 tapes to see what actually happened with the call), surely the officer's response should not involve physical violence to the apparent victim.