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I am sorry to see he resigned. I was critical of his actions in a prior post and I stand by my comments, especially as they refer to the negative impact on other Dallas PD Officers. I saw his interview last night on KHOU Ch. 11 and I accept his apology. He didn't try to justify his actions and he admitted that he acted poorly. He went on to say that he thought about how he would have felt if it had been his mother, and he would handle it differently if he had it to do over again. Unfortunately, none of us get a "do-over."

Many will claim his apology was not sincere, but an attempt to keep his job. Perhaps, perhaps not, none of us will know for sure. But that can be said about anyone's apology. What I saw was a 26 year old "kid" who has only been with DPD for three years. I suspect that he will never act that way towards a citizen again. I say this not based solely on the predicament he created for himself, but on my experience as recruiting director for the large firm I was with before starting my own law firm.

For ten years I was responsible for law clerks and "baby lawyers" in addition to my own law practice. Many of my partners would want to fire a "baby lawyer" that made a mistake, regardless of how remorseful they were about missing something. If I felt the person truly cared about screwing up, as opposed to a nonchalant attitude, then I wouldn't fire them on a first offense. People who make a mistake, especially a major one, are far less likely to do it again, if they truly care about their professionalism. I was seldom proven wrong by people who got the proverbial second chance.

I'm sure Officer Powell has learned a lot and he will either be a better officer because of it, or he will become bitter and his law enforcement career will be shortened. Too bad he won't get the chance to do it at Dallas PD. I'm sure a lot of my friends here on TexasCHLforum will think I'm being too soft on the officer, but if we were all drawn and quartered for our youthful mistakes, rather than being given an opportunity to learn from them and improve, few of us would be where we are in life. I remember well a comment I made to a judge when I was a baby lawyer that brought the "wrath of god" down on me and embarrassed the senior partner in our firm who was standing next to me at a hearing. The judge later became a good friend, the senior partner said "don't worry, your job is safe, but if you ever do that again I'll kill you!" I never did. For me, I guess it goes back to something said 2,000 years ago; "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Chas.

[flack vest on]

CHL/LEO wrote:Rest assured that the majority of DPD officers are extremely offended and embarrassed by this officer's behavior and attitude. As a Dallas Police Officer I join with our Chief of Police in apologizing for this incident. There are over 4,000 employees of the DPD and the old saying that we all have grown up with of, "it only takes one bad apple to ruin the whole barrel" is unfortunately apropos in this situation. Again, I can assure you that 99% of our officers would have not acted this way, but as others have related on this thread, all LEOs are now being thought of in a negative manner because of this - and not just Dallas officers. Because of that I want to also apologize to my brother and sister LEOs along with their departments and agencies.

We know that the news media never shows the thousands of good things that LEOs do everyday and we accept that as how the game is played. Our home phone has been ringing off the hook for the last 24 hours with calls from friends and family wanting to know what the heck was wrong with our department and how could we employ an officer such as this. I had a friend who worked with LAPD during the Rodney King situation and he told me then that I couldn't imagine the turmoil that they were going through as a department when that happened. Every officer was looked upon as a racist thug who beat down people just for the heck of it. While this situation doesn't rise anywhere to the level of the Rodney King situation I can now understand what he was trying to convey to me back then.

Our department has had so many complaints coming in from all around the world because of this incident that we've had to reassign officers to special duty just to field all of these calls. Now that it has gone viral (You Tube, ESPN, CNN, and the internet) it will probably get worse before it gets better. The media trucks constantly parked outside of our headquarters building resembles the Super Bowl. Again, my (our) apologies to everyone, and I hope that if you do ever have the opportunity to come into contact with an officer from DPD it will be in a much more professional manner.

Thanks for the post and I'm sorry for what you guys are going through because of one jerk. I've said it many times, no one hates a bad COP more than a good COP, because they have to live with the aftermath he created.

Every LEO who has been on the street for any length of time has run into medical emergency situations and you have to use your best judgment on how to handle the situation. In this case, the stop wasn't made until they were in the hospital parking lot, so there was no danger to the public by an emotional driver. Plus, all he had on the guy was "traffic" and if he felt that strongly about it, he could have written the citation later.

Chas.