Throat, not face. And no coffee for me, either.
Since I know self-defense, I tackle him. He’ll be put offbase from the unexpected action, and the cop will be right there.
My first thought after reading the OP (and before reading the poll options) was to throw my chair in front of him to slow him down. If he came at me after that I would pick up another chair and use that to keep him at bay until the officer got close enough to handle it. I wouldn’t try to take him down myself. The officer is trained for that sort of thing and I’m not, plus if the dude has a weapon I don’t have a vest or any other protective gear.
I’m not the type of person to stand idly by and watch. When there was an accident on our road that blocked one lane at a busy intersection, I told my kids to call 911 then ran down to see if everyone was ok, then directed traffic until the police showed up. Apparently I wasn’t half bad at it either, because the officer let me keep directing traffic it for a couple of minutes while he sorted the situation out. When a pickup truck tried to beat a red light and ran over a car (literally, it ran up over the hood and flipped like something you only see in Hollywood movies) everyone else in the area just kinda froze. I was the only one to do anything. The pickup had landed on its side, so I jumped on top of it and opened the door and pulled the guys inside out of it (they were struggling to get out and couldn’t because the truck was on its side). When a power transformer on our street blew up and took out all of the electricity in our neighborhood at 4 am, I went out with a flashlight and started looking at transformers to see if I could figure out which one went. When a woman flipped her car in front of me, I stopped to see what I could do to help even though I wasn’t involved in the accident (surprisingly, she only had a broken nose - I gave her a bunch of napkins out of my car to control the bleeding until the ambulance arrived).
It would really bother me to stand by and do nothing if I was in a situation where I could be of some kind of help.
I’ve grabbed and stopped the person when a security person I know was 10 feet behind them. I think I’d have to do something with this one too.
Looks like you were the right person in the wrong place at the wrong time, eh, engineer_comp_geek?
In the situation in the OP I would likely stand in front of the perp, frantically flagging him down as though I were asking him to stop as there was an emergency. Once that didn’t work I would hold out my hands, palms towards him and flinch with my eyes closed. He would likely run into me whilst flinching and throwing his own hands up, so both our arms would intertwine and we’d make contact via our foreheads. We’d both go flying and at least one of us would suffer a broken nose and black eyes.
If time allowed, I would rig up an invisible trip wire and stand back and watch.
Actually, I voted tackle him, but I honestly don’t know how I would really react. I do think it would feel really good to take him down, though.
mmm
Not in any part of the USA.
That’s a standard rule in stores and malls – but it’s the stores’ and malls’ rules, more than being about the law. The stores and malls don’t want to deal with lawsuits by aggrieved alleged thugs, nor do they want to risk the liability of having their own employees injured. So they make rules like that.
I don’t work for Publix. Or Sears, where I’ve snatched up shoplifters.
I’m not a cop anymore, so if I want to see if Asshat has a weapon, my concern for his 4th amendment rights are negligible. He can try to stop me if he likes, but no one has ever been successful when they tried. I’m about 400 and 0.
Nope, here in Merica, holding some shitheel for the cops is generally a Good Thing.
Like a wise Man once said… “Don’t **start **nothin’, won’t **be **nothin’.”
I’d give him a good shove… but tripping him would probably be the better option, now that I think of it.
If I can help the police without putting myself in great physical danger, I’m glad to do it. I know several cops and think I have a duty to my community to help them in the work to the extent possible.
Which reminds me…
I was on a London street late one night some years ago and a drunk guy was beating up (what I assumed to be) his girlfriend. Several other guys and I rushed up, pulled him off her, and held him for the very brief time it took for a police car to come along and for him to be arrested.
Some years later, I saw a car on fire - like, Hollywood-style towering flames - on a one-way street in Cleveland. I could see no one in it. I quickly stopped and parked, planted myself at the end of the street, and diverted oncoming traffic down a side street for maybe ten minutes, before the police arrived. Who should walk by but my Congresswoman (I kid you not), who gave me a hug and thanked me for helping out!
I felt good both times.
I suspect that I’d just freeze in surprise, and the thief would be past me before I unfroze.
If I had time to get over that and react, I’d like to think that I’d do something. I voted for “give him a shove” but was tempted by “tackle him”. Not sure if I’d actually have the courage…
I voted that I’d trip him, but this is more likely:
It’s a crime in my jurisdiction, “evading arrest or detention.” Even if it’s possible that the guy is actually a deaf hero running to save everybody from a purse bomb, it’s completely reasonable under the circumstances to conclude that the guy is criminally evading the police officer chasing him and shouting for him to stop.
In a chase situation like that I’m not sure what I’d do. If it looked like he was going to get away I’d probably try to way lay the individual in some way but depending on the circumstances I might not intervene for fear of getting in the way of the LEO or making the situation worse than it otherwise is.
If I saw a peace officer struggling to subdue a person by themselves or losing a physical confrontation I would absolutely intervene–police aren’t superheroes and are doing something professional that to some level we all have a responsibility for, so if I saw one in trouble I think citizens in general have a moral responsibility to help out. In general they should be given a decent berth to take care of business as they’re trained to, but if one is losing a fight I think you should definitely intervene to help.
Maybe 10 years ago or more, there had been a spate of police & trooper killings around the nation. Enough to get me paying more attention anyway. I was traveling from Arkansas to Oklahoma and was going around a curve that I could see a long ways because it was built up along side of the hills of a small valley just enough.
There had been no traffic for a bit and I noticed an Oklahoma State trooper car ahead just sitting still. So I checked to make sure I was not speeding and continued. As I( came closer and more around the curve, I could see the driver door, which was on the highway side, was standing open.
Hummmmm, no trooper in sight… I drove slightly past slowly and could see nothing. I stopped and approached the troopers car looking for what I was not sure but it felt wrong there.
I heard movement down the bank in some brush & a trooper came out & up the embankment. He looked at me a bit warily, I am a big bilker looking dude, and asked if he could help me.
I said that I was just stopping to check if he was OK or needed help in light of the recent news reports of troopers getting hurt.
I kind of figured he was not just relieving himself because of the open door. Turns out there had been an accident there a few days earlier and he was checking if there was any more evidence to help explain some of the inconsistencys they had encountered.
He then laughed and said this was the first time in 15 years of being a trooper that anyone had ever stopped to see if he was OK.
We talked some more & it turned out I knew where he lived along that highway. After that encounter I would always honk & wave every time I would go by and his official care was parked there.
I quit worrying about being a few MPH over the speed limit through there, I ran the route a lot back then.
I have done this a few other times along the interstate systems. I am always thanked by the surprised LEO’S but never had another where I became more or less an acquaintance of the officer.
Have not had the opportunity to do that for a long time but still will, if just for the look on their face when I stop.
Random acts of kindness and all that… 
Former, I believe.
I was watching Cops the other night and a single officer was trying to take down a subject who was flying high on his pharmaceutical of choice. The suspect started throwing punches and the officer got knocked onto his back and the suspect dove in. On the edge of the camera view you could see the sound guy drop his boom mike and go for the guy, and a half second later the video went out as the cameraman went in as well.
Always wondered what the crew would do if things went south. Now I know.
The one time this happened to me, this was pretty much it.
“Wait, what? Guy running from the cops? Really? Oh, he’s gone now.”
And be arrested as an accessory after the fact because the cop is pissed off the guy got away.
Unless the purse is so ugly it couldn’t possibly be construed as an accessory. You know, made of pink and purple beads or something.