mymojo wrote:Soooooo, I'm on my way to work this morning......
Part of my daily commute takes me thru a flood plain. Well, with the recent rain, the area is fairly flooded. As I drive through I catch something out of the corner of my eye on the edge of the water. "Was that a dog or a man?" I ask myself. I couldn't be sure so part of me said "It had to be a dog. But turn around just to make sure.". So I drive back by slowly and what do I see? A man. Laying in the water flopping around.
(do I have your interest yet?)
I was concerned about his safety so I parked the car and walked down the bank. He was completely unresponsive to verbal communication. All he could do was make yelping sounds. Then he started slowing rolling and flopping his way into deeper water. Being concerned that he was either under medicated or over medicated I was afraid he was going to drown if he kept going. That's when I dialed 911. I did inform them I'm a CHL and carrying.
In the five minutes (it felt a LOT longer) that it took the police to arrive his head actually went under water a couple of times. I'm thinking "Great, I'm about to have to go swimming." Well the good news is that he moved into shallower water. The bad news is that he stood up and started walking toward me. His eyes were glazed over like he didnt even knwo where he was. Did I mention he wasn't wearing pants? Yeah, good times. Good times.
So I'm standing there with a unresponsive, half naked man (who I have to assume is on some pretty serious drugs) headed toward me and nooooooo one else around. At that moment I realized "Thank God I got my CHL.". Thankfully, he collapsed before he got too close to me. So I never had to reach for my .45.
As he's laying there I went to the car and got a towel out of the trunk to cover up certain parts. He was laying there muttering "Don't kill me!" over and over. I was trying to reassure him as the police showed up. He seemed fairly calm at that point.
Well, the police showed up and I moved back. The guy tried to get up and one of the officers genty told him to stay down. A couple of more cops showed up and then one took a different approach the next time the guy tried to get up. He said very loudly and very authoritatively "STAY DOWN!" and put his hand on his taser.
- now we're off to the races -
The guy got scared and tried to get away. He started climbing the embankment and tried to cross the guard rail on the side of the road. *POP* first taser. No effect. The guy keeps stumbling away as the cops are yelling for him to stop He's in the middle of the service road now *POP* second taser. He seemed to notice that one, but kept going. Four cops are trying to wrestle him to the ground and having trouble *POP* third taser. This time it got his attention and he went down.
At this point there were about 9-10 cops on scene tasing and wrestling a black man to the ground. I look up at the highway and notice traffic is at a standstill "Hmmmm, I may be on Youtube later today" I'm thinking to myself. (If you were on loop 12 @ NW hgwy about 8:30-9am this morning. This is what caused the back up)
Of course when they officer took my statement he asked for ID. I handed him DL and CHL. He looked at my CHL and handed it back to me - no questions asked.
So, of course, I was late getting to work today.
Looking back a the whole episode I realized that in a high stress situation my first reaction was not to pull my weapon but to try to de-escalate. But I did ask myself two questions when he stood up and looked at me:
1) Can I fire if I have to? - if I have to, yes.
2) Do I have to yet? - no.
So it was really, really weird. But it was also really really enlightening.
Atleast you showed more restraint than LEOs.