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Even as a woman myself, I'm having trouble seeing any way to justify her behavior beyond the initial startled response. How can she possibly be that traumatized by having someone grab her arm in broad daylight with plenty of witnesses around? Someone could have tried to stop her because she dropped her keys or ID. Someone could have seen a hazard in her path and been trying to warn her. Someone she knew might have wanted to get her attention. There are lots of legitimate reasons someone might grab the arm of a jogger. Is it necessarily the best approach to take? No, I don't think so. Is it a crime? Not in and of itself. If you are going to be traumatized for life and have an eternal hatred of law enforcement because a police officer grabbed your arm after you broke the law and failed to respond when ordered to stop, your life is going to be a MESS. My goodness, if that's what you consider a traumatic experience your life has been blessedly easy. If they had tased her or tackled her or otherwise used actual force, it would be a completely different story. But thy didn't.

She violated the law. Yeah, it's a minor one we don't see enforced a lot, but when you have a pedestrian-heavy area and those pedestrians are blatantly ignoring traffic signals, it gets to the point of being a danger. In Austin, there are auto-pedestrian issues and they are frequently fatal. If you break the law, you need to get over it when you get stopped and held accountable for it. Heck, maybe she heard the police officer and thought that if she just kept running and pretend not to hear, they'd let her go. There's no proof of that and never will be, but I think it's as likely as the idea that she was so traumatized that she couldn't help screaming and cussing and carrying on like a child.

n5wd wrote:

oohrah wrote:Sure, letter of the law ... blah, blah, blah. If this happened in my city, I would be all over my councilman to reprimand the priggish police supervisor who set up the "jaywalk task force" in the first place.

Apparently, Austin has had some serious auto-pedestrian collisions, with at least one fatality, and the anti-jaywalking 'task force' was set up as a response to pedestrians getting run over. Most policing efforts are, after all, reactive in nature.

I live near Austin. If the news outlets don't have a new auto-pedestrian accident to report, they instead report on previous ones and how people want "something" to be done about it. Heaven knows the drivers in the city are beaten to death over "sharing" the road with bicyclists and pedestrians, so I guess someone figured it was about time to address the other side of things. I'm a very careful, cautious driver and I've had my share of near-accidents with bicyclists. None with pedestrians yet, knock on wood, but I do think there needs to be some accountability for the non-automobile traffic on the roads.

tomtexan wrote:

WildBill wrote:You sure can hear her scream.

That's for sure!

Reminds me of my 3-year-old when I tell him not to throw sand and remove him from the playground.