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News & ArtsTuesday, June 9, 2009
Crime Hang In There
Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 3:26 PM
A Seattle police officer took a 39-year-old man on a wild ride last week after the man approached the officer's squad car and asked for help getting out of downtown.
According to a June 2 police report, Officer Cory Simmons was on patrol near 2nd Avenue and James Street just before 4 a.m when a man approached his car and yelled "let me in your car, man. I gotta get out of here."
Officer Simmons told the man to step away from the car but, the report says, the man grabbed onto the vehicle and told the officer to "let [him] in the fucking car."Officer Simmons' report describes the man as appearing "very high," and says he was "sweating profusely" and was "irrational and paranoid."
The report says Simmons had no backup in the area, so he "nudged" the car foward to "shake" the man free from the vehicle. The man became angry and yelled "fuck you, faggot. I am not letting go of your fucking car" at Officer Simmons.
Officer Simmons tried to drive away, but the man began to run alongside the patrol car and grabbed the top of the passenger-side door. Officer Simmons sped up to over 30 mph, but the man pulled his feet off of the ground and held on to the car.
The report says Simmons called for backup, sped up and began swerving across several lanes of traffic in an effort to 'dump'" the man from his patrol car. Officer Simmons made a sharp left turn at "a high rate of speed" onto Jackson street, but the man continued to hold on to the car and yelled "fuck you. I'm still here, motherfucker." 
It's not clear how far Officer Simmons drove with the 39-year-old man in tow, but eventually, the man lost his grip and fell off the car in the 200 block of Yesler Street, where he reportedly stood up and ran off. "[He] was not injured as he had no problem running from police," Officer Simmons wrote in his report.
Officers later found a backpack in the area and were able to identify the man but did not make an arrest.
According to SPD spokesman Mark Jamieson, Simmons' drive-and-dump tactic is "not something that officers are trained to do."
Image via Flickr
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So the guy grabs the door, and the cop drives off with the guy hanging on. Despite Hollywood stunts, this very easily could have ended in a fatality. The guy could have fallen off at speed, broken his neck, or hit something, or been run over. Cops, of all people, should know that a car is 3000 pounds of moving metal, and can be very deadly. I mean, he's lucky he was able to walk away from it; he could have died.
Did this guy deserve to possibly die for hanging on the side of the car?
Cops are supposed to use the least amount of force necessary to deal with any given situation. Sure, if the guy was brandishing a weapon of some sort, or was threatening in some way, they cop needs to take more drastic steps. But just because the guy was acting kinda crazy or strung out is not reason enough to put his life in danger. He should have just let him in the back seat. The back seat of police cars are basically a cage, and you can't open them from the inside. If the guy had gotten in the back seat, the cop would have been perfectly safe, and the guy would have been trapped. The very worst that could have happened would be if the guy had trashed the back seat of the car.
2. The officer was not safe exiting his secure car.
3. We're all lucky no one got hurt.
Reverse Polarity -- are you a child? Did you know you can got for ride-a-longs with the police and learn more about what they actually do, You're allowed to do this even if you have a problem with cops.
Not true - cops, like all other citizens, are supposed to use force that is 'not more than necessary' .... that is not the same as the least. Cops are, in fact, trained to use a level of force above that of the person they are dealing with because ending a situation expediently is way less risky and dangerous, overall, than underestimating or matching force. The quicker a confrontation is resolved the less likely anyone gets seriously harmed.
Oh, and for the record, I'm not arguing this officer necessarily did the right thing, I'm just pointing out you don't know what you're talking about.
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Dominance trumps everything. Either do everything the cop says when he says it or the cop will escalate the violence. Have you seen the recent tasing of a 72 year old grandmother? There's another cop who could have chosen to do nothing, resulting in a much better outcome. It was just about a traffic ticket. But she wasn't giving him that total abject compliance.
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Comedy Gold!!!
Comedy Gold!!!
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