No charges for Seattle cop who punched unarmed handcuffed woman, broke her eye socket

[crenquis]

Durden? Perhaps the cops just got her confused with her pugilistic brother Tyler…

[Mindysan33]

Re-reading, maybe you’re right…

[longname]

@John_A

…i’ve been kicked by a 603 350 guy in this almost exact same situation … I and a coworker … got kicked a couple of times…

Putting someone in a squad car?

Is it common for someone in the back of a squad car to kick at a police officer?

[longname]

Sounds like a deficiency / opportunity in squad car design. Maybe the paddy wagon should be brought back.

[dacree]

To me one of the most unbeleivable parts of the story was this

King County prosecutors said they found that Shepherd had “acted professionally and with restraint up to the point where he was kicked in the head by the suspect as she was being placed in the patrol car.”

“Officer Shepherd reacted instantaneously to the kick by the suspect, who was wearing boots, with one punch to the suspect’s head which caused a fracture of an orbital socket.”

The prosecutor found… The prosecutors roll is not to determining if someone acted professionally, it’s to prosecute potential wrong doing. Let the court decide if the case has merit.

The cop was in the wrong here but the prosecutor is either incompetent or is intentionally throwing the case. Either way, the reason cops get away with this crap is due to prosecutors like this one. I’m starting to think of cops as bad tempered children and these prosecutors as enabling parents.

Do we lay responsibility on the child or the parent when children have violent outbursts and are shielded from punishment by the parents?

EDIT: Can we try to avoid the casual racism? It’s not at all amusing.

[SteampunkBanana]

Or, you realize why he was good at that character. Irony would be if he actually was a violent, dirty cop. Acting is just a job pretending.

[Elusis]

@hereticbranding

My opinion: That was 100% male ego “I’m in charge here” BS.

My yardstick is this: I’m an RN and I’m sorta in the protect and serve business. If a drunk, belligerent patient kicks me (it’s happened --he missed) there is no scenario where it is acceptable for me to respond with violence (If, in the quite unlikely event I was in eminent danger of further violence AND I had no means of escape, then and only then would I respond with whatever violence I could muster to defend myself).

The cop’s response was reactive aggression, not defensive (It’s how I behaved as a teen. Acting this way now would get me fired or worse). The decision-making bar to deliver violence or issue threat thereof has to be higher for cops than it is for the people they serve --otherwise a badge is just a license to bully.

Exactly this. I’ve worked in a Day Treatment program with adolescents who sometimes got physical when they were angry or overwhelmed. Our staff was taught how to manage kids (and when I say “kids,” I mean “young people who sometimes stood a full head taller than the female staff”) on the rare occasion it was needed, and “punching them in the face because you’re pissed they kicked you” was definitely not on the menu of options. Psychiatric nurses and geriatric aides sometimes get far, far worse and AFAIK no one thinks it’s OK for them to punch people either.