WildBill wrote:chasfm11 wrote:Texas_Blaze wrote:There's been a lot of threads on OC and bad tactics. Well, this seems to be bad tactics by the officers. Honestly, nothing better to do? You want public support? Don't engage in bad tactics like this. A jogger minding her own business is a criminal? If she was jaywalking, give her a ticket and move on.
It seems like the transit police everywhere are more aggressive. I worked at Renaissance tower in Dallas for awhile and jaywalking there was going to get you not only a ticket but a dose of real attitude. NJ and NY had the Port Authority police and many of those that I saw were definitely over the top.
There is a case to be made about being so into your tunes with earbuds that you don't understand what is happening around you. But it sure looks like this was a "make a public example" situation. Granted her response didn't help her after the heavy handed tactics had begun.
She was jaywalking. Bad on her.
Ending up in the back of a cruiser for that offense seems like overkill no matter how I try to look at it.
[Fortunately] I haven't had the pleasure of meeting up with transit police.
I think that in these types of cases the officers have to demonstrate their ability to control the situation and make sure that people are compliant to their commands.
Even it might be overkill, they can't just let the woman walk away.
I ride my bike along public bike paths. I often pass joggers with ear buds in. It is always my practice to hail them, especially if I'm passing them from behind so that they won't suddenly swerve into my path during my pass. Almost none of them appear to hear my hail. If I've figured this out, the jaywalk enforcing officers should be able to do the same thing.The assumption was that the woman was failing to voluntarily comply. My assumption is that she didn't have that opportunity to do so. They reacted by grabbing her when it would have been just about as easy to wave a hand in front of her eyes to get her attention rather than grabbing her. Someone who is unexpectedly grabbed is very likely to have a startled reaction and attempt to pull away.
I admit that it is a questionable practice to wear earbuds in public places. It is plain stupid (in my view) from a situational awareness point of view. But wearing earbuds in not yet criminal and turning a failure to hear into a failure to comply is an unnecessary escalation of the matter.
Perhaps I'm over-reacting? I sponsored a thread here in the past year which discussed my hearing loss and my concern that I may be in a position not to comply as crisply as an LEO might demand. The specific situation that I cited as my worst possible environment with cars and trucks passing as might occur during a traffic stop. I have a problem processing what I strain to hear under those kinds of conditions and there is sometimes a delay in my response.
It is one thing to need to take control of a situation. It is another to give the subject a reasonable opportunity to respond. "Reasonable" is not a synonym for "instantaneous"
