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Keith B wrote:

mamabearCali wrote: Have you ever been around a girl that just experienced fight or flight? Let me tell you once in college my car broke down. I was in a bad part of town and was chased by three men throwing things at me. I ran like hades and got to a safe place. Once I had got away all I could do was sob. I could barely get out my cell phone to call for help. Her reaction was entirely normal. The swearing was superfluous but kids today swear.

She was not being chased by three men throwing things at her, she was grabbed by the arm by a LEO in broad daylight. Totally different. While she would have initially been startled, once it was realized it was a police officer, then the fear would have subsided. She threw a fit like a spoiled brat and that is it, plain and simple.

No the fear does not subside and the after effects vary from individual to individual. You cannot tell a person how they should feel after being grabbed from behind. That is like the doctor saying it does not hurt when putting in stitches without lidocaine. It does hurt. She was afraid. The LEO's did not have to escalate things. Aren't they supposed to be trained in critical thinking?

Keith B wrote:

Cedar Park Dad wrote: Exactly. In our situation we had a stalker for several years and have CHLs at recommendation of our attorney and the police themselves. She's been taught how to hurt someone who grabs her, breakaway and be in shooting mode when she breaks.
This could have ended very badly.

But this goes back to situational awareness. If you run around with headphones on while carrying and someone makes an stupid but innocent move and grabs your arm or some other method of stopping you, you need to be sure of what you are drawing your gun on.

I will say it again, initial reaction of being startled and pulling away to assess the situation is totally appropriate. Her post reaction, her whining and crying fit and refusing to ID after knowing it was a police officer was not.

EDIT: WildBill bascially beat me to the same answer.

Have you ever been around a girl that just experienced fight or flight? Let me tell you once in college my car broke down. I was in a bad part of town and was chased by three men throwing things at me. I ran like hades and got to a safe place. Once I had got away all I could do was sob. I could barely get out my cell phone to call for help. Her reaction was entirely normal. The swearing was superfluous but kids today swear.

WildBill wrote:

MechAg94 wrote:At first, I visualized an officer catching up to her and grabbing/tapping her shoulder to get her attention and letting her turn around and see that cops are trying to stop her. In that case, someone might jump or freak out for a couple seconds, but should calm down once they realize they are looking at a cop, not some mugger.

Hard to miss Walton and Johnson in the morning.

Sometimes they help me cope with my long commute.

I can see the women being upset. This was probably her first contact with an LEO in this type of situation. I can see her being very upset, but she needs to work on her "emotional intelligence". Maybe this arrest will give her a little more perspective. That said, I hope that they drop all of the charges and just keep the citation for jaywalking. I don't think that she is a menace to society. I can also hope that this incident won't taint her long term feels toward law enforcement.

You bet your butt she is tainted probably for life. Women do not forget. Women do not trust once that trust has been lost. You attack us, hurt us, treat us like trash, we do not forget and will not give you another chance to do so. So the cops won the skirmish, but lost the respect and trust of a citizen probably for life. Good job boys in blue.

The perspective you ask her to have is not possible given how things happened. Boys can punch each other one day and be best buds the next, women do not do that.

texanjoker wrote:

VMI77 wrote:

Texsquatch wrote:But she did do something wrong. Maybe the arrest was harsh, but maybe she'll also re-think the ear buds considering she was snatched from behind by two huge guys. Maybe she's lucky they were cops. There's plenty of other guys that could grab her in Austin - and she wouldn't get a chance to scream.

Nah, she won't. Many young women think they're invulnerable. She'll go right back to the ear buds and just hate cops.

I don't think she had any respect in the first place otherwise she wouldn't have gone off like she did. They really should release audio of her crying rant so her parents can be proud

I think her crying audio should be played to show LEO's how young women grabbed from behind react. She might be a spoiled brat. Perhaps she would have thrown a fit anyway, we will never know. However how she was initially detained colored from the start the whole interaction. They chose to use violence (grabbing someone from behind) to initiate a contact and are surprised when it went south from there.

She might be a brat. That does not excuse them for being stupid and callous in their approach. Tap on the shoulder, tap on the arm, wave a hand in front of a persons face, there are many ways to get someone's attention apart from grabbing them from behind.

Like I said before. I have hearing loss in my right ear--not through anything I did. If a person comes up behind me and talks with say the noise of traffic in the background I won't hear them. I don't think my inability to hear in that ear necessitates me being assaulted (which if anyone else had done that stunt is what they would be charged with).

She might be a brat, but that does not mean that the LEO's were not out of line as well.

If she really did refuse to identify and they did not just cart a screaming terrified girl off before she could calm down enough to tell them her name....well that was stupid on her. But it looked like she was terrified, not just petulant, and her being terrified is directly related to how she was detained. Perhaps (we will never know) she might have been more cooperative if she did not feel like she had just been attacked.


What I object to most is how they handled the initial contact. If a person cannot hear you and you grab them from behind, you are going to scare the living crap out of them and escalate the sitatuion. The person rightly thinks they are under attack and their reflexes and fight or flight kicks in, setting everyone up for a bad situation. Maybe the LEO's here are ok with grabbing people, but I am sure not being ok being grabbed. There are many reasons a person would not hear a LEO, ambient noise, hearing disability, and yes being silly and having your earbuds turned up too far. I have a bad ear from no fault of my own. You come up on that side of me and talk with any ambient noise and I might not hear you at all. They need a different way other than grabbing a person. Wave a hand in front of their face. Tap them on the shoulder. Tap them on the arm.

Look crossing a road in an unsafe manner is unwise. Still, I tend to think of it as a bull sort of a charge the type that generated revenue rather than addresses public saftey.

However if you grab a young woman from behind who is unaware that you wanted her attention then use her entirely natural reaction of recoil to get a resisting arrest charge.....that is ridiculous. The cops escalated the situation when they did not need to. She was hysterical scared to death and rightly so. Now could she have crossed the street better, probably.

I expect LEO's to use some common sense and not arrest people for being scared, for crying, or even for doing something as dastardly as not crossing with the stoplight.

You gotta think about PR and what you are doing. That young lady is not going to trust LEO's again anytime soon. Her family is now going to view LEO's with more suspicion. If she has kids, is she going to teach them officer friendly or that officers are to be distrusted and viewed as a threat. How many people used to view LEO's with a certain level of trust that has now been broken? Keep doing that and they will make enemies of nearly all.