It’s not enough that we…welll, if you haven’t seen all the stupid shamefull stuff associated with Texas in the past few years, you’re not paying attention…It gets so that every single time I hear the words “embarrasement” and “police” in a news story I stop and pray “please not Texas…”.
Now I’m sure someone will be along soon to say that having a mother in law die is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of getting married but come on…Does Dallas really need ANOTHER PR problem. Geez…
Yeahbut, in the defense of Texans, the outrage is pretty much unanimous around here. I haven’t heard a single person, either personally or in the media, giving the cop even the slightest bit of support. The unanimous reaction seems to be “fire the jerk, he has no business carrying a badge and gun.”
Don’t feel too bad, FL had the kid suspended for farting story this week. We couldn’t muster up the ‘embarrassing police story of the week’ but never fear, there’s next week.
Worst thing I heard 'bout Texans is that they post news Links in Pit threads without taking the time to summarize – just lazily expect everyone to go, follow, read, and come back (with pie).
A mid-20s black man (who just happens to be an NFL player), his wife and family are rushing to the hospital after being called by the hospital and told that the man’s mother-in-law is dying. She was in the hospital for lung cancer and the family had gone home to rest.
In his hurry to reach the hispital, the man (after stopping and turning on his hazard lights and being waved through by another person at the light) rolls through a red light. A Dallas cop sees this, turns on his lights, and attempts to pull the man over. The man continues on for about a minute, minute and half and parks at the hospital. Upon stopping family members attempt to leave the vehicle, at which point the cop draws his gun.
Despite being told several times the situation, both by the people in the car and by actual hospital employees, the cop keeps the man outside the hospital, all the while threatening him and lecturing him using a very condescending voice, for 13 minutes, during which time his mother-in-law dies.
Also, points to Chief David Kunkle of the Dallas PD, who issued an apology yesterday, stating that Moats handled the situation well, never mentioned he was an NFL player, and excercised great restraint in his reactions to the cop, and suspended Powell pending an internal review.
Let’s hope Powell ends up working night security at a warehouse somewhere.
Whether race played any role in this is pure conjecture. Whether or not that cop is a complete douchebag is a certainty. Some guys just shouldn’t have a badge, and he 's one of them. He’s so concerned that this guy is speeding and running lights—that’s fine. Initially. But when this guys speedy escape turns into the hospital, you’d think that dumbass cop might have realized there was some medical emergency. And that when that was explained to him, he would have taken a twentieth of the time, to figure things out and let the guy go. I found his response to the nurse to be particularly shitty: “I’ll be just a minute.”. Good for his wife and the other women for just going into the hospital anyway. And, as others have noted, props to Moats for not playing the NFL card.
I will never again live in Dallas nor in the state of Texas but all the same, it is nice to know that some things never change. Crap like this from Dallas cops was more or less the norm during the years I lived there. To give the devil his due, Houston cops were much worse than Dallas cops.
This cop is a punk, no question, but I don’t think this is a case of Texas culture having any bearing. Maybe if the community or the Dallas PD supported him, it would, but it looks like he’s on an island as far as public sympathies go.
His behavior was reported by another police officer, and it sounds like his superiors were just as disturbed by the video as everybody else:
It sounds like “Texas” is on the side of the Moats family here. I don’t know that we can conclude this is about race either. My subjective take is that it looks more like an an immature, power-tripping punk kid with a badge being more concerned with making sure people respect his authori-tay than with any kind of compassion or common sense.
One of the people he held up was Moats’ grandfather-in-law – the father of the woman who died. This punk kid kept a man from being able to say goodbye to his dying daughter. That’s stealing something he can never give back. He needs to be fired.
From the looks of his myspace page, this cop, Powell, doesn’t look like he’s showing any remorse or understands that he did anything wrong.
I wonder if Officer Powell spends a lot of his time on duty chasing those goddamned white vans with the flashing lights that are always speeding to and from the hospital.
Wow what an asshole. The police department should publish the Powell’s home number so people can personally call him and tell him, what kind of person he is. “Screw him over” If you will.
Texas is doing what any decent people would. I don’t see reason to pit the whole state.
I’m fairly supportive of cops in general, but these bad eggs that show up once in a while really make the rest of them look bad.
This one happened around here almost 3 months ago.
Summary: Guy is driving his mini-van home before midnight on New Year’s Eve after a party with his 3 young children. Cop turns on her lights to pull him over.
It’s on the freeway, the road is busy, the shoulder very icy/snowy. He feels it’s unsafe to try and pull over there and is also afraid he won’t be able to pull back on the freeway safely. So he drives slowly to the next exit to get off there.
Apparently this wasn’t good enough for the cop so once he got off the freeway she used a pitting manuveur to ram his van with the kids in it. Kids are freaking out at this point so what does she do? Arrests him for evading an officer.
