On weekend nights Huntington Beach High School was a hot skateboarding spot. The terrain was good for skating and occasionally some pros would show up. There was an outdoor park next door where people would bring ramps and rails. The police would always show up to kick us out.
On one occasion, a rocket scientist of an officer decided chasing skaters with his squad car was a good idea - never mind the risk of actually hitting a skateboarder. He actually tried to follow some of us who ollied down a set of stairs. The car got stuck on the steps. He stayed in his car and laughed when we offered to bring him some donuts.
Yeah, we were punks who lacked respect for authority. Most teenage boys fit that description. We weren't scared of the police, though, just bugged by them. In every case, the cops weren't interested in citing us - just getting us to clear an area.
And now, on to a story of police misconduct in Arkansas. I saw these videos and they really bugged me.
Several things happen in this video that are wrong. Let me try to sanely review each one of them. There's a lot of talk on the web, but I hope to lay it all out for you.
The First Mistake
The cop has one suspect on the ground, hand around his neck, while being photographed by the second kid.If any bystanders are bothering him he should clear the area, ask them to leave, or at the very least have them stand a safe distance away.
At this point, the only thing the officer has done that is wrong is the choking - which is really a debatable issue. Maybe it's the standard procedure their for cuffing a suspect and the picture just looks bad. If he stops there, nobody is in any position to really question his judgement.
But then the "suspect"'s friends walk up. Kid #2 mentions to them he has a picture of the cop chocking Kid #1. The policeman then diverts all attention to kid #2. Obviously this is a soft spot for him which brings into question the context of the photo and presents legitimacy to whatever story Kid #1 can concoct about the circumstances leading up to him ending up on the ground with a police officer's hand around his throat. We move on to...
The Second Mistake
The cop leaves a cuffed suspect on the ground completely unattended to chase another person.Now, if you just photographed a cop choking a kid and tried to walk away after mentioning that you had a picture, would you run? Maybe, maybe not. But a teenage boy? Yep. In a heartbeat.
From the police officers perspective, though, he has no real interest in Kid #2. If he did have an interest in him, Kid #2 should have been on the ground before Kid #2 was cuffed. He made a poor decision of leaving a person in custody unattended to get involved in a chase.
The poor decision is reflected by the fact that Kid #1 stands up and his friends try to talk him into running as well. The officer has plainly lost control of the scene and he did so during a case involving the most menial of tasks - stopping skateboarders from skating on the sidewalk. It may as well have been jaywalking.
What happens when this police officer has to handle a high pressure situation like a bank robbery?
The Third Mistake
At this point, investigation is over. The policeman runs back to find his suspect standing up and walking around telling bystanders he's not running. The third mistake is that when running back to the scene, the officers arms are flailing around like a little girl.You don't infer authority by running like a girl. No offense to the 98% of girls who don't run like that.
I should also point out that the cop now hastily moves the scene while leaving the suspects personal property behind and unattended. Not caring about the personal property of a suspect is pretty standard police procedure so no ding on that one.
The Fourth Mistake
The officer hastily moved the scene to... go find a place to sit.Really? If cops made a regular habit of heading to my restaurant and seating themselves and suspects at my outdoor tables I would have a big problem. My problem would be further exasperated if they decided to cause a big scene by yelling and lecturing the criminal at the table. Especially if they didn't at least order coffee.
So the cop sits the kid down and yells at him, obviously just pissed off because of the whole scene that has unfolded. He's lost credibility on his own beat, he just got outrun by a kid, and he's bent out of shape. But he's not just yelling at the kid in cuffs.
The kid's friends walk up again. Again he chooses not to tell them to stand back. A girl walks up pretty close, says nothing and the policeman tells her "you know what, sit down!"
The Fifth Mistake
Like every teenage girl who is yelled at to do something, she says "no".Now, I realize that this officer is just pissed at this point. But anger is not an excuse to lose control. Another officer has showed up at this point who seems to be in much better control of his emotions.
Again, much like a little kid, the officer yells at this teenage girl "You're under violation of a city ordinance, you're under arrest too!" He makes a grab for her and she turns to run. The second cop lets her run right by him without so much as verbally trying to stop her. He sees plainly that she hasn't done anything wrong and his badge wearing brother is acting out of control.
He runs after this girl that has done nothing wrong, bumping into another cop in the process, and grabs her by her head
This isn't Rodney King we're talking about here - it's a teenage girl. You don't grab teenage girls by the throat and put them in headlocks.
The Sixth Mistake
A friend of hers gets hysterical. Now we have another situation where we have lost control of the scene. Her friend gets grabbed by the neck by the second policeman and passed off to the first cop - who has a choke hold / head lock on a teenage girl.Yeah, I know they are teenagers, but you don't pass off a body to a cop who already is struggling with a person.
The Seventh Mistake
The result of the handoff? The girl gets away. That's two teenage kids who have now escaped.At this point, the cop wrestles Kid #3 to the ground. I can't fault the officer for ending it the way he did, but if he had more control of the situation it would have been completely unnecessary. Of course, if he had more control, this whole thing would have been long over.
The Eighth Mistake
Finally, the cop goes after the kid with the camera. Funny enough, this kid was doing what he could to diffuse the situation from pretty much the beginning.When others told his buddy to run and ran themselves, he stood there. When the cop left the skateboard behind as he moved to the restaurant, he made sure somebody grabbed it. When the melee took place, he tried to calm everybody down.
So what did he do, other than antagonize the officer with statements like "it's just skateboarding"? Apparently the cop got his knee scraped while taking down the other kid and camera boy looked like a convenient fall guy.
The eighth mistake is threatening to mace the camera kid if he moves his arms.
Conclusion
You may be tempted to defend the police officer and point out the kids lack respect and didn't do exactly what the officer said when he said it.I would counter that their actions were exactly reflective of normal teenage behavior. Neither the two kids who escaped nor anybody who was arrested beyond the first kid did anything other than be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The fact that these teenagers were calmly talking to authority figures who were obviously in emotional states and standing by their point that the officer was by himself escalating the situation is a good thing. More people should be willing to do the same. Did they articulate their points well? Not especially, but then again the officer was throwing around the word "ain't" so an articulate argument would have just confused him.
A skateboarding stop that should have resulted in a verbal reprimand or at most a citation ended up with at least three kids arrested, two kids escaping, three kids having been choked by police, and an officer who lost control of two crime scenes within 30 minutes.
This cop doesn't deserve his job. Certainly grabbing and choking the teenage girl was the emotional thing that hits you. His demeanor is poor, but even that is excusable.
The fact that he lost control so many times in such a short period and escalated such a menial situation to one that ended up highlighting his lacking capability on a national level is really why this man should be fired or at the very least kicked in the nuts by his peers.
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