I’m sorry that I didn’t get this typed up in time for the original discussion but I figured its insightful enough that its worth a read.

I have two friends in law enforcement. One has been a Maryland State Trooper for five years and the other works in classified government police work (If you look up what major government defense agencies are in MD, you’ll figure it out). I showed both of them the video and they both agreed on the same things.

1. Bad police work. Bad to the point where he should be severely disciplined or fired.
2. A few small mistakes by our lucky taser “rider”

The one thing that’s pissed off both my law enforcement friends has been the total backlash against police in general. All sorts of yahoo’s have taken to the internet to scream about how police everywhere are tramping over their civil liberties. People are screaming now for the removal of tasers and the “trigger happy cops” as I’ve seen on some sites. They both agreed that this isn’t the case in this video, its just a dumb shit cop.

Below is a timeline with commentary from my State Trooper friend on some key points some of us might miss.

0.0 – We can see the cop pull off the shoulder in front of a 40mph sign. As soon as the man with his family drives past it, the cop lights him up and pulls him over.

Its hard to tell whether this is the second speed limit posting this cop has watched him pass. The audio is a bit muffled because of the traffic whizzing by. If there was a previous stop sign I can understand why he gave him a ticket. In fact, that’s pretty fair that he let him go after passing one stop sign and then pulled him over after passing a second. If this was the first sign the guy passed, then it’s a little dirty. I could understand why the guy would argue the traffic stop right from the onset. I’ve done a few of this myself, but I’ve never given out tickets. I just like to scare people and remind them to drive safe on the roads my wife and kids drive on.

0.39 – The officer gets out of his cruiser, walks right up to the car and sticks his head in the window.

“This is really important to understand what happens later. When ever I approach a vehicle, I always follow my protocol for how to approach. I don’t know what’s in this car. It could be a nice family of three or it could be a drug smuggler with a loaded gun in his center console. Obviously this cop isn’t nervous about approaching this vehicle. You can see him lean into the window with his hands on the door frame.”

0.50 – The cop becomes agitated and demands his license and registration right now.

“I don’t know what the exact protocol in Utah is, but in MD we always do two things when we pull someone over. We identify ourselves with our title and name (Officer Jones for example) and we tell them EXACTLY WHY WE PULLED THEM OVER. Saying speeding or going a little fast isn’t exact. Saying 57 in a 40mph zone is exact. Based on the responses of the driver, it appears that this officer didn’t do either”

2.08 – The officer returns and issues the driver a ticket

“This is another major protocol difference between Utah and MD. In MD we tell them exactly what the ticket says. We explain to them that by signing it, it’s not an admission of guilt. It just acknowledges that I pulled them over and that they will deal with it one way or another. I explain to them their rights should they want to appeal it (I could honestly care less, I get paid either way) and then I ask them to sign. I’ve never had a problem like this. I have had a few people who demanded to see where the sign was. I have no problem helping them get out of their car and safely walk over to view the sign in question. I would never want a member of the public to think that I’m just making tickets up for no reason or that I’m “just making my quota.” If I pull you over it’s because you broke the law, not because I need two more traffic stops to get my raise.”

2.22 – The driver refuses to sign the ticket

“This part confuses me a little. If I was in the same position and this driver refused, I would have repeated my whole “this is not an admission of guilt” statement and then cautioned him. In MD if you do night sign your ticket on sight, you are arrested and taken to a local police station to be formally charged. I would have said this to the driver while he was sitting in the car. I understand why he called him out. If it was a person I was concerned would flee the scene, I would have done the same. But the officer’s actions up to this point don’t warrant it. This also raises questions for what happens next.”

2.25 - The driver walks out of the car and points towards the sign. The officer draws his taser.

“There are too many things that went wrong here to count. I’ll try and point out the major ones. First off, the officer turned his back to the driver as he exited the car and walked back toward his cruiser. That’s probably the quickest way to get killed in the line of duty. You NEVER turn your back on someone. You can see him somewhat looking back as the man approaches him and points toward the 40mph from the beginning of the video. In the same situation, I would have allowed the man to walk back to my cruiser first, and then approached him. Then again I would have never been in this position in the first place. I suppose here that the officer could argue that the man became threatening. Imagine an officer turning around to find a man walking toward him with one hand pointing at something and the other near his hip. That would make me really nervous. But there are several problems here. 1. He wasn’t nervous before when he approached the vehicle and stuck his head in and 2. he turned his back to the driver. That’s the officers own fault. The next thing the officer does is reach for his taser. He immediately becomes incredibly threatening. I can’t see any reason from the video why he would elevate to that level of force in such a narrow amount of time. This officer went from sticking his head into the family SUV to taking a defensive position from a would be attacker in just a few seconds. I never point a weapon (taser, mace or firearm) at a person unless I am planning on using it. He could have just unhooked it and just kept it pointed down in his hand. But even that in my honest opinion would have been excessive.”


2.34 As the driver walks back towards his car he tasers him.
“The driver is obviously surprised and scared by the officer’s actions. Nothing he’s done up to this point warrants someone to point a weapon at him. You can see that he almost goes into a nervous shock. He keeps repeating what the heck is wrong with you, and slowly walks back towards his car (safety). This is where being a calm and collected officer comes into play. I’ll take you through what should have been the dialogue that could have easily diffused the situation.

From the point where the driver starts walking back towards his car:

“Sir, stop”
“Sir, Stop where you are right now!”
“Freeze”
“Freeze or I will taser you”
“freeze or I will taser you”

You’ll note that the officer here never said any of that. He simply kept telling the man to turn around. Again not the best police work here. This is another confusing point for me. I understand why he tasered him, but only to a point. The driver is clearly moving back to his car. This is dangerous. Is the man going to flee the scene? Is he going to run into the street? At this point, I have to stop him. If I try to approach him, things might get violent really quickly. You can see how close to the road they are. Any physical altercation could easily end up in the traffic lanes. So tasering him prevents either of these, sort of. If you look at when and where the officer tasers the driver you can see that he falls right along the side of the traffic lane (or possibly in the lane, I can’t be sure). This is extremely dangerous. This guy could have easily rolled around in pain right into traffic. Why did he wait until he was closer to the traffic lane to fire his taser? Why not right away? Just bad police work.”

There is point where the officer is yelling at the driver’s obviously pregnant wife. I’m willing to bet that this officer has never had to deal with a pregnant woman before, because I would have never spoken to her like that. The first time I watched the video I half expected this idiot to taser her too. He never calls her ma’am either, which to me is very disrespectful.


3.30 – The driver is placed under arrest.

“Again, bad bad police work. The officer says he’s placing the driver under arrest because he didn’t follow his instructions. Again, I don’t know the laws in Utah off the top of my head, but I’m willing to bet that failing to follow the instructions of an officer are not an arrestable offense. The officer fails to read the driver his Miranda rights. Bad police work. Just arrest him, read him his rights and put him in the back of the cruiser. Instead, he goes over to talk to wife while the driver gets up cuffed and approaches the officer. Is this officer asking to be attacked by someone? This is probably the second quickest way to get killed. He cuffed the driver and DIDN’T SEARCH HIM FOR WEAPONS. THEN LEFT HIM ALONE. You can debate that part all you want, but the man was easily able to get up on his feet and stand right behind the officer. This officer is very lucky to be alive”

5.20 - The driver asks repeatedly to have his rights read. The officer responds with “I want you to follow my instructions and do as you’re told.”

“this sort of talk makes my blood boil. We as officers have been hired by the people to serve them and protect them. This man asked for his rights to be read and the officer clearly decided not to. It really shows an inferiority complex on the part of the officer. He didn’t want to be told what to do by this driver, so he just decided not to listen. I suppose its good he didn’t in the long run. Now nothing this man said will be admissible in either the traffic charge against him or in the officer’s defense in the likely civil suit to follow.”


6.30 – The officer says “this is not the place to argue it.”

“He’s absolutely right. On the highway, I issue the citation and you sign it. Period. That’s why I’m sworn in as an officer. I have been vested this power by my state to issue citations when necessary. Once I write it, there is no debating it. You either acknowledge it in my presences by signing it or I take you down to the station to be formally charged. But this driver doesn’t seem to have a clue what’s going on. He doesn’t know why he was tasered. He doesn’t know what speed he was cited for driving. And now, he doesn’t know why he’s being arrested. That’s not his fault. Bad police work.”

8.00 – The officer explains to the drivers wife why he arrested her.

“Everything he says here is contradicted by the video. I’ll just leave it at that. I just hope it adds a few zero’s to their civil suit”

9.20 – The officer discusses the taser incident with his sergeant/senior officer.

“Again, there are multiple contradictions with what he told his senior officer and what actually happened. Apart from his inappropriate taser deployment, giving a false statement to a senior officer can get you fired really quickly. He said the man was jumping all over the place (and pointed to the spot where he actually fired the taser) and said at that point he pulled the taser. Not true. He also said that he warned the driver that he would fire a taser. Not true. Finally, the biggest thing that keys me into this officers personality is his “Oh, he’s completely in charge” comment at 9.20. This is the sort of asshole cop that I hate working with. He might as well as shouted RESPECT MA AUTHORATA while hitting him with the taser. Its clear to me that this officer had an inferiority complex with this man. He felt stupid and belittled. The thing is, you can’t let this driver get to you. You do your job, he signs the ticket and you move on with your life. You can see throughout the latter portion of the video where the officer won’t listen to what anyone says, because he feels he’s in charge. He won’t read the driver his Miranda rights because he’s in charge. He won’t discuss it further with his wife because the driver thought he was in charge.”

The bottom line is that this was just bad police work. What it highlights is what can happen when you give someone a non-lethal weapon. I’m trained to only pull out a taser in a situation where either I would normally use my firearm or the suspect is an immediate danger to themselves or other people (including me.) That is obviously not the case in this video. I’m glad that this video got posted online. Not because I want to see a cop fired or justice served. I think as a nation we need to have a dialogue about the proper use of non-lethal weapons. What if this driver had a heart condition and died on scene. Things would be looking very different right now.

What I want to say to anyone reading this is that not all cops are out to force you into submission and violate your civil rights. Some of us are Democrats (you’d understand that more if you know a bunch of cops), ACLU members or just plain nice folk serving in a noble position. The bottom line is that this officer made several bad choices. So did the driver, but I’m more than willing to excuse him. He’s the one who was tasered for very little reason. He’s not the one who’s pulled over hundreds of people on the side of the road. He’s not the one trained in how to issue citations and make arrests. He’s not trained in the use of force. He’s just a driver who was speeding, got scared when an officer pulled a weapon on him and made the mistake of walking away.