WWYD? #3

March 31st, 2009 by

What would you do?

What would you do?

5 Comments »

5 Responses to “WWYD? #3”

  1. on 31 Mar 2009 at 2:09 pm1 Joseph

    I’ve seen officers let people off in less dire situations. He should have taken their information from their vehicle and see if it checked out OK. If not, he could have waited for them to get out of the hospital or find out from the front desk if a relative was really there.

    For the Officer, I see this situation as sometimes officers become hard in their training because they are used to the few experiences that could jeopardize their life or job. This is why Officers don’t act like your buddy when they pull you over. But regardless, this time the officer should have used better judgement.

  2. on 31 Mar 2009 at 2:46 pm2 Victor

    What do you think you would do if you were in the situation of the family pulled over? That is a tough one.

  3. on 31 Mar 2009 at 5:38 pm3 Ron S.

    I live in the Dallas metroplex and this has dominated the local news (and then national) since the story was first broken by our ABC affiliate here. The poor judgement and lack of compassion by the officer only furthers the stereotype that law enforcement can be a powertrip for egocentric people. Not to mention that since the officer is white and the family is black, it also does nothing to improve race relations.

    But what has amazed (and impressed) me since I first saw the entire dash-cam footage is how the NFL player (Ryan Moats) handled the situation. He never once brought up that he was an NFL player and he never once returned a bad attitude back on the officer. I don’t know how much better I could have been than Ryan did. Maybe I would have asked the officer to follow me into the hospital. Maybe I would have tired to walk towards the door calmly while trying to rationally get the officer to understand that this was a dire/emergency situation that could not wait for “ticket writing time”. Of course I might have been cuffed and arrested too.

    Of course now a pattern of behavior from this officer is starting to come to light. In Sunday’s Dallas Morning News a story was published that a Dallas Cowboys player – Zack Thomas (a white player & former Pro-Bowler of the Miami Dolphins) told about an incident that his wife had with the same Dallas Police Officer (Powell). Thomas’ wife (who happens to be Hispanic) got stopped by Powell for making an illegal U-turn. The officer wrote her 5 tickets and arrested her for not having proof of insurance. He didn’t believe her story that they had just moved to Dallas (her husband had just become a Dallas Cowboy) and she was hauled off to jail for 3 hours – leaving her nearly non-English speaking mother to find a way to get around (they were riding together) and find a way to get her bailed out. Thomas was in training camp in California at the time. A judge later dismissed all but the U-turn ticket.

    It remains to be seen if he’s just too hard charging and lacks a sense of empathy & compassion. Or if he has some underlying personal prejudice with people of color.

    The talk here is now what will happen to the officer. Will he be made an example of and be fired (of course then will the Police Union file suit and get his job back eventually – only to be regulated to a desk/corner job for the rest of his career)? Or will he just be disciplined and be allowed to remain on the job. Either way, I think the public trust with him as an officer is shattered and he may be better off changing careers.

  4. on 31 Mar 2009 at 6:38 pm4 Joseph

    Ron S,

    Why make it into a race issue? I didn’t see anything racist. What I saw was a Officer who didn’t use his common sense and was being stubborn. As I said before, from the perspective of an Officer he has become hardened. Being a cop is a dangerous job, many Officers tend to become less sympathetic after dealing with the criminals on a daily basis. In this case he should have done exactly what I said in my post because some people are that sick and may fake a death at a hospital to get away from a ticket. I’m sure it has happened before.

  5. on 01 Apr 2009 at 12:58 am5 Ron S.

    Joseph,

    I’m certainly not making it a race issue. But the whispers are already there – especially in light of a previous incident where the officer seemed excessive and the recipient also happened to be a minority. Hopefully such is not the case. Either way, it certainly was very poor judgment on the officer’s part and this incident has given a big black eye to the Dallas Police Department – who otherwise have a pretty good reputation here.

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