I never said his reaction was not normal. I even said it was understandable. That doesn’t make it excusable for a cop to respond that way.
What kid are you talking about?
The kid in the video linked to in post #176.
Someone needs to first show that that’s an innate response before describing it as an instinct. I think it’s learned behavior, which is not the same thing. It takes a certain amount of cognition to slap a mosquito bite. In contrast, there’s zero cognition associated withdrawing your hand when burned.
Not it’s not. When we’re talking about reflexes and instincts like we are, it’s a perfectly apt comparison. If I can somehow steel myself from punching my bitey felines when I’m clipping their talons and have them in restraint, so can a cop. It’s really that simple. “The cop couldn’t help punching her” excuse doesn’t fly when people manage to do that and more everyday.
No it’s not.
Okay, I may address more of your points in a bit but for now I’d like to say: when we start putting cops through the same number of years of training we do doctors, and when cops earn as much as doctors, we can expect the same standards from cops as we do doctors.
Also, if I bit my doctor, I really wouldn’t blame him for smacking me. He was just trying to check my prostate, after all, and he warned me first.
Horse trainers who use the techniques of natural horsemanship would disagree with you:
Note that this is not a mindless enraged revenge attack; it’s a calculated response to provocation, using the body language that a herd leader would employ with a subordinate horse to get the message across. You’re bitten; you retaliate the way another horse would, immediately and forcefully; then it’s over. If a roar and charge at the horse is enough to make it back off, fine; that’s all you do. That worked great with my Quarter Horse, the one time he chomped on me (well, I did throw the empty bucket I was carrying into his flank, too). Never had that problem again, and he lived a long life as a pampered pet, not an abuse-cowed, dull-eyed drudge. But if the horse needs the equivalent of a double-barrel kick to get the idea across, you do it, immediately, for the sake of you both.
If the horse resumes its attack, then you do the herd leader stuff again – or I suppose if you happen to have a can of pepper spray about you, you could always subdue it by distraction – till the horse breaks off and goes away or you put it into restraints that will prevent further attacks. But most horses, unlike freaked-out teenage girls, will have the sense to get the message the first time.
My vet, a man with decades of large animal experience, is wonderfully gentle and calm in handling horses, no matter how badly they might be behaving; but he will use judiciously calculated pinpoint application of force on rare occasions to get the horse’s mind focussed where it needs to be.
It looks to me like part of the problem was that the cop was genuinely startled by the girl’s biting him. I would imagine that animals try to bite the vet a lot more frequently than arrestees try to bite the cop.
That’s funny. I look at it completely differently. I think people being paid to carry around guns and protect human beings should be held to a higher standard of conduct than folks working with fang-bearing animals who are trying to scratch your eyes out in the treatment room.
Training and income have nothing to do with it.
Which means that this has nothing to do with anything that I’m saying. A horse trainer is not a vet. Hitting a horse to teach it a lesson is not the same thing as hitting a horse in the context that we’re talking about. You might as well be talking about snakes on a plane.
I agree that hitting her after she bit him wasn’t helpful. It would have been better if he hadn’t hit her, and instead did what he did a second later, grabbed his pepper spray.
So going over the game film, I’d say the cop made a mistake. And so, what should happen to the cop? You honestly think he should be fired, suspended, or reprimanded? Or just told: hey, mistake, next time try not to do that? Or offered some refresher training on hand to hand techniques?
I don’t know. That’s for his bosses to determine. I could care less what happens to him or that Olive Oyl girl, to be honest.
You said: “Ask any veterinarian or animal technician who handles animals for a living.” Horse trainers and large animal vets (did you overlook the last paragraph of my post?) handle animals for a living, have to restrain said animals while doing things said animals don’t want to have done, and must be able to control situations in which the large, powerful beasts they deal with daily attack by biting (among other things). If you want to set your personal experience as a cat-holder against theirs, good luck with that; somehow I suspect they know a bit more than you do on the subject.
I notice you didn’t bother to mention if you’d ever wrestled anyone? Your animal parallel is facetious. Restraining an animal you’re treating isn’t the same as dragging a snarling dog in from the street. One is a very controlled situation with a trivially small animal. Another is a fight where you very well could die. That girl could have gone for his gun, bit him seriously or done any number of things. In a fight you don’t think out your every action. If I’m nervous because I’m trying to restrain a person and with malice the nutjob bites me I’m not going to flee. My reaction will be to fend them off. Which can be done by punching.
A higher standard or impossible standard? Especially when the suspect isn’t living up to any semblence of civilized behavior it seems rediculous.
So if his bosses decided to pat him on the back and send him on his way, you’d be cool with that? So what are we arguing about, then?
Seriously, it can be helpful for cops and those who train cops to review tapes like this, and point out mistakes and try to figure out the best ways to handle things. There isn’t a cop alive who couldn’t learn to do his job better.
That doesn’t mean that vets are allowed to go around popping their patients in the kyster for biting them. Good Lord. I don’t care what horse whispering philosophies you dig up in the internets. If a vet can restrain themself from punching their patients, so can a cop. That doesn’t mean that all vets choose to do that. But they can. That’s my point.
It’s not a fight with a vet. It’s not a life or death situation. If Mr. Mittens bites you, you will get the best possible health care. It will not escalate. It will not end with Mr. Mittens having a broken arm and suing the city for $500 million, it will not end with Mr. Mittens grabbing your gun and making your kids orphans. It’s an inconvenience if your patient bites you. It’s not a stressful life or death situation. Your parallel is utterly wrong.
Well, I guess it’s just too bad then that the cop didn’t haul out a towel to wrap the squirming fighting yowling little girl-child in so he could clip her claws without getting bitten, huh?
Curse you, Lobohan, for making my point so much better!