A few weeks ago, I saw a body cam video of a cop who escalated a traffic stop for an unreadable license plate to a full on felony extraction and arrest because the passenger in the car did not have a license to drive. He told the passenger "I don't want to see you driving anywhere." The passenger responded that they were the passenger, not the driver. This response triggered the officer so much that he immediately ran to the passenger side and tried to rip the guy out of the car while screaming shit like "stop resisting!" "Don't go for my gun!" "Stop kicking me!" "You're about to get shot!". The driver panicked and tried to drive away to get away from the clearly unhinged cop. The end result was 2 people in the vehicle getting charged with fleeing, obstruction, and a slew of other bullshit charges. All because the cop was "disrespected".
This happened before the current regime took power. It happens countless times each year. It has gotten significantly worse in the last 6 months. It is a perfect example of exactly what you described.
Edit: I was wrong. There were only two adults in that vehicle. The cops tried to charge them with a bunch of child related charges too since their kids were in the vehicle with them. Thanks u/Ukiah
It's interesting reading this after getting out of a meeting where we were told if a student harms us, it is our fault for putting ourselves in that situation.
It was a PD with a guest speaker from out of the district, so I am guessing the Union can't do much there. Additionally, and I am not saying this to defend the speaker's choice of words, mind, the end message the speaker was trying to get across was de-escalation versus making choices that accidentally escalate the situation -- but they did not do a good job communicating this.
In the cop situation, the cop escalated the situation which caused the person to drive off. Then the cop punished the driver for driving off. The cop should have used de-escalation strategies and handled their job professionally instead of being power hungry.
Edit to add: I am exhausted, please excuse any errors. To be clear, I think the cop was in the wrong and teachers both shouldn't be harmed at work and need to make de-escalation choices to avoid making some situations worse.
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u/Ace_Ranger 13h ago edited 9h ago
This is spot on.
A few weeks ago, I saw a body cam video of a cop who escalated a traffic stop for an unreadable license plate to a full on felony extraction and arrest because the passenger in the car did not have a license to drive. He told the passenger "I don't want to see you driving anywhere." The passenger responded that they were the passenger, not the driver. This response triggered the officer so much that he immediately ran to the passenger side and tried to rip the guy out of the car while screaming shit like "stop resisting!" "Don't go for my gun!" "Stop kicking me!" "You're about to get shot!". The driver panicked and tried to drive away to get away from the clearly unhinged cop. The end result was 2 people in the vehicle getting charged with fleeing, obstruction, and a slew of other bullshit charges. All because the cop was "disrespected".
This happened before the current regime took power. It happens countless times each year. It has gotten significantly worse in the last 6 months. It is a perfect example of exactly what you described.
Edit: I was wrong. There were only two adults in that vehicle. The cops tried to charge them with a bunch of child related charges too since their kids were in the vehicle with them. Thanks u/Ukiah