Pathetic...

I guess for me this one hit close to home.
I've been in both situations.

march '89

I got the call from my father. Mom was dying, cancer. a long battle lost.

I made the choice to drive to the hospital , safely adhereing to the traffic controls and for the most part speed limit.
I missed my mom passing by minutes..but I didn't risk potential harm to my young daughter in the truck or other innocent motorists on the road.

maybe it was the training I got in the academy. we learned you don't gain much time by speeding and running lights.. basically it wasn't worth potential injury to innocent people.

I personally don't hold Police officers to a higher standard..well at least no higher than my own. which I believe we should all do...set high standards for ourselves.

we are , afterall, humans..we make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.

the driver in this case was a high paid professional athlete..shouldn't he be held to high standards? afterall, don't kids(and adults) look up to these folks?

it is to easy to critic errors after they are made.
both were at fault here.
one event led to another. but it makes me wonder. if Moats had not run the light...
 
star_rider said:
I guess for me this one hit close to home.
I've been in both situations.

march '89

I got the call from my father. Mom was dying, cancer. a long battle lost.

I made the choice to drive to the hospital , safely adhereing to the traffic controls and for the most part speed limit.
I missed my mom passing by minutes..but I didn't risk potential harm to my young daughter in the truck or other innocent motorists on the road.

maybe it was the training I got in the academy. we learned you don't gain much time by speeding and running lights.. basically it wasn't worth potential injury to innocent people.

I personally don't hold Police officers to a higher standard..well at least no higher than my own. which I believe we should all do...set high standards for ourselves.

we are , afterall, humans..we make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.

the driver in this case was a high paid professional athlete..shouldn't he be held to high standards? afterall, don't kids(and adults) look up to these folks?

it is to easy to critic errors after they are made.
both were at fault here.
one event led to another. but it makes me wonder. if Moats had not run the light...
Click to expand...

Star you have a good handle on the situation. I am a police officer in dallas (county, not city), the officer was/is a douche, no doubt. The traffic stop should have ended as soon as the nurse and other officer informed him that Moats story was true. Treating and telling him to shut up was very unproffessional and uncalled for. I cant tell you have many times that I have attempted to pull someone over and they dont stop and then pull into a house or store and give me some crazy story bout how "they have to be here or whatever" 99 times out of 100 it is BS, they are just trying to get out of a ticket! The difference is that I check the story out before holding them up, just in case they are telling the truth.

As for racial profiling.........today while you are driving around I want you all to try and determine what race of person is driving the cars coming towards you! Oh, and you also have to tell how fast they are driving, if they have a seatbelt on, and dont forget to look at both stickers (inspection and registration) to see if the are in date or not. My point is that most of the time I have no clue what the race of the person is untill I get up to the car and talk to them. Are there racist cop, yes. Are they in the minority...absolutly! We have way too many other things to do than running around harassing people because of race! And if you look at the numbers, which in Texas every officer has to fill out a "Racial Profiling Report" and it breaks down all the stops you made and what race the were. Why is this report nessary, to make sure that racial behavor is not a factor in traffic enforcement. There is no place in law enforcement (or anywhere) for race to be a factor.
 
I'm not exactly defending the officer, but I think it's easy to forget that he didn't have the benefit of knowing the whole story. For him, he saw a car run a red light. He put on his lights and siren and the car did not pull over. When it did finally stop, people got out of the car (which, as has been pointed out, could be very dangerous for him) and disregarded his orders. Then he got a story about the driver's mother-in-law dying, but this is almost certainly not the first time he's heard a story like that.

I'm not saying he handled it well, only that we should not judge him as someone who heartlessly prevented someone from comforting a dying family member because, from his perspective, that's not what happened. At least not at first---once the story was confirmed, he absolutely should have let them go in and there are no excuses at that point.

I'm not saying cops are the only ones with stressful jobs, but they are also not the only ones who sometimes make bad calls under stress. Should the guy be disciplined in some way? Yeah, probably. Should he be fired? Not in my opinion.
 
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