Originally published at: Police Officer sued for flipping the car of a pregnant woman | Boing Boing
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The whole orchard.
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Sued?! How is he not in jail for attempted murder?
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So, the driver’s failure to stop was apparently going to endanger road users; but the cop forcing her to go broadside across the freeway, hit the barrier, and flip over; completely blocking the lane wasn’t an issue? Nor was the cop driving the wrong way up the freeway to arrive at the site of the accident he’d just caused?
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You’d think that in Arkansas they would at least care about the fetus.
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No. They don’t actually care. the whole damn point of anti-choice laws is to punish women and to control them. Anyone who says they care about the “baby” (which is a fetus until it’s born) is just lying - either to you or themselves.
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What offence justified this? Had she just robbed a bank? Was she wilfully driving a car while darker skinned?
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Cool. If this ever happens to me I’ll just stop right in the middle of the road to satisfy the pig.
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The video says she was accused of speeding, aka passing a police car.
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You are correct, of course. Jokes don’t always come across the internet very well. I meant the whole thing about the fetus as a joke a joke about the right being completely disingenuous about their actual talking points.
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What really gets me is that the state explicitly tells drivers what to do in this situation - “activate your turn signal or emergency flashers to indicate to the officer that you are looking for a safe place to stop” - but the cops themselves have their own (often completely personal) notion of how things should go and become extremely dangerous when people don’t comply with what’s in their head. The driver is screwed whatever she does - if she stops in a dangerous situation, she could be in trouble for that, but she tried to be safe and… this happens. Much attention has been rightly paid to the problem of cops acting with total impunity, but within that context, how do we operate as a society with police who are potentially both incompetent and capricious as well? How do police apologists “you should just do what the cops tell you” exist without their heads fucking exploding?
Nah, she was disrespecting his authority, so she had to pay. (He wanted her to pull over, and she didn’t! She insisted on following the law! How dare she!) He didn’t give a shit about who was endangered. This, unfortunately, is frequently a motivation for cop’s (mis)behavior.
Problem is, you could be in trouble for that, too. (You stopped in a dangerous location, endangering the officer!) You’re supposed to read the police officer’s mind to know what he wants you to do.
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That’s not a real thing.
So according to the police journals I have found, PIT (a better term is “tactical ramming”) causes a car to spin 180 degrees while remaining moving in the same direction, then come to a stop. So if the car spun out across several lanes and flipped over, by that definition the officer did not (successfully) execute a PIT. The lawsuit alleges that the police department didn’t train the officer in its use, and everything I can see (again: in online police journals and publications – not just popular press!) says that it can only be used safely when the target vehicle is going under 35 mph. If you are on a freeway you are pretty much either going well over 35 mph or you are not fleeing the police. Finally, apparently it doesn’t work very well on vehicles with stability control which is all vehicles made in the last ~10 years, and many many vehicles older than that.
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To be fair, I don’t think the police have a position on abortion, except as individual voters. Nor do all voters in Arkansas oppose women’s rights, even if many do.
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I’m convinced that the biggest reason we see a disproportionate number of aggressive cops in the US compared to the rest of the world is their adversarial and militant attitudes towards civilians.
American cops are taught to view all “suspects” as dangerous threats that require subjugation and control. These views are reinforced and lauded by the public since cops are always on the “front lines” and “protectors” from the “bad guys”. Cop shows and the American zeitgeist love of guns & ammo certainly doesn’t help either.
So not so much as case of bad apples, but rather a spoiled orchard (as @anon33932455 referenced above).
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What is the situation with qualified immunity in Arkansas?
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That’s a rhetorical question right?
It’s because the US is a failed state that has many who worship the largest gang.
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My mistake.
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OMFG. Victim blaming piece of shit.
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It’s bama. Probably she “looked at him crossways”
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