Arkansas State Police have an Excessive Force Problem
WARNING: These videos are violent and will upset some viewers.
A woman is suing an Arkansas State Police officer for intentionally flipping her SUV as she was seeking a safe place to pull off of the highway. The woman, who was pregnant at the time, was being stopped for driving 14 miles over the speed limit. When the officer turned on his lights and siren, you can clearly see her slow down, pull over and turn on her flashers (which is what the law requires in Arkansas). The shoulder at their location was very narrow, and apparently she was driving to the next exit to be safe. The officer, a Certified USDA Grade A DUMBASS, was having none of that, and performed what the cops call a “pit maneuver” which is code for running a car off the road. He caused a massive crash, flipping the SUV. For speeding 14 MILES OVER THE SPEED limit. Fortunately, the woman walked away from the wreck and later had a healthy baby. It could have been a lot worse. AND, of course, the cop walked from any criminal charges including reckless endangerment.
Apparently, Arkansas has an epidemic of dumbass among its police forces. Here’s another “pit maneuver” where a police cruiser flipped the pickup of a teenager fleeing police. This maneuver ending up killing the teenager and seriously injuring the officer. Use of this tactic has skyrocketed in recent years, and was used in Arkansas over 300 TIMES in 2020. All I can say about that statistic is FFS.
We all know that cops LOVE high speed chases and demolition derbies, almost all of it unnecessary. We now have these newfangled things called RADIOS, and 18,000 police departments around the country who have them in every car and on every officer’s shoulder. Rather than all this Indianapolis 500, maybe the police can just call ahead so other officers can block the road or put out tire spikes. How about just letting the driver go home and go arrest them there?
This kind of idiocy does two things – kills people, and erodes confidence in police. When citizens see bad judgement like this in public, it not only makes the cops look like morons, it destroys the relationship between the police and the policed. It’s simply got to stop.
Good thing she wasn’t black.. Or was she??
1When I was in high school almost 50 years ago I wanted to be a cop and joined the local Explorer Scouts troop attached to the local PD. Saw lots of stuff or ride-alongs and in the police building itself. Got to shoot guns at the range.
Yes, cops love high speed chases.
More to the point, cops are much different now than they were then, and different PDs are much different from others.
Most of all, I learned that the job of police officer is highly attractive to exactly the sort of people you absolutely do not want to be police officers. When tightly supervised those bad-cops can actually perform as good-cops for quite a while. Maybe a whole career.
But not always and definitely not when the supervision lapses. When the command gets weak the normal stress of the job breaks down discipline. They start to view anyone in the general public that is not rabidly pro-cop with contempt.
And you get videos like this.
2A PIT maneuver is always, even in controlled environments, risky. Nobody knows where the effected vehicle will go. Or where it will end up. There have been cases where the car slammed sideways into a pole at speed and everyone inside died. It is potentially lethal, in all circumstances.
Even the car used to perform the maneuver, and all occupants, are at risk. Police sometimes die doing a PIT.
Risking lives, the woman’s and the police officer’s, is not proportional to an normal speeding ticket. As you wrote ‘there are radios and stop sticks’. He could have just followed her.
This kind of shit is a disgrace. It has to stop. Firing this cop is not enough. He needs jail time for reckless endangerment. At the very least he should never carry a badge, of any description. Mall cop is too much responsibility.
3Alan @2 what you have described re the police could be assigned double to the military. In particular the USAF and its academy in Colorado Springs that has been infiltrated by whack-a-doodle religious extremists. While reform requires decades, erosion or corruption happens almost instantaneously.
What to do, what to do about all of this? How do we place leadership back on course in both policing and the military? Please tell me Lt. General Russel L. Honoré is not the last man standing in the military who can fix all our problems. Maybe Senator/Lt. Col. Duckworth can recommend a task force of 10-12 people to kick ass and take names on that score.
As for policing? Perhaps DOJ can select six or so communities that have succeeded with police reforms to use as a template to rebuild and reform the most problematic city police forces.
Same with education. Homelessness. And other seemingly endless problems that always seem to be out of reach of workable solutions. Borrow from other countries and examples within our own country that do work; expand on the “good.”
4Two immediate questions come to mind. First, how much of this coming to a head is due to the fact that we actually have video evidence of this now? I remember the Ray Rice case in the NFL. Obviously, seeing it makes it seem that much worse. I suppose to wrap up that question we would need numbers. Is this getting worse or is it simply a reflection of seeing it and knowing it exists to the point where we can’t deny it?
Secondly, we would need to know whether there is a racial bias element to this. Is this simply bad policy playing itself out or is it a case of a procedure that is being applied in a disproportionate way? I’m just a lay person so it would seem to me that PIT procedures are simply too dangerous to use period, but I’m not an expert. I know HPD has shied away from high speed chases in recent years due to the danger to the public, officers, and suspects. It makes sense to get a scope on the idea of what we are dealing with exactly.
5Nick @5, for want of solutions look no further than El Jefe’s column earlier today: The Problem Explained, In One Chart.
lol You describe yourself as “a lay person,” Nick. Whereas I’m just a simple guy and definitely not fancy with words. Maybe that’s why Al Franken was such a great Senator. Late night comedians and the cartoonists seem to have a better grasp of the issues than our elected officials.
My simple answer for this week: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9C4klEKaf98/YMEDvKfh7YI/AAAAAAACNtA/ngOFWIj3WzUnYOUf8ynkKMVEy0tt2GDKgCLcBGAsYHQ/s712/8%2Bsteve%2Bsack.jpg
6Police Departments attract the kind of people that we used to call “power trippers”.
7There’s never been a shortage of people willing to work as cops, prison guards, camp guards, etc.
I hope the pregnant woman (and all the others to whom this has happened) sues the living daylights out of the cop and the police department, and wins enough to see her child through an Ivy League college. I hope the cop ends up in jail for a long time at best, and at worst, never has another job anywhere near law enforcement.
8“You can’t outrun a Motorola.” — Elwood Blues
9Buttermilk, we are such fans of Elwood and Jake we have life-size figures in the backyard. They have been there 25 years.
Do I remember correctly that some little town in Arkansas had cops who would take orders for cars. They would then go out on the freeway to find one, put some dope in the car and then impound it and sell it? I’m almost certain it was Arkansas.
10Meanwhile Louisiana State Troop F beats the shit out of Black Men, just beats them bloody because they can. Troop F is so bad they even stand out among generally racist white cops. The state troopers office actually secretly started an investigation.
Troop F has plenty of video evidence because they never thought they’d have to worry about being scumbag racist trash cops in Louisiana.
11So, because she didn`t stop in the *middle of the highway*, he flipped her car .
12Shame he didn`t use his taser . /s
Perhaps the Arkansas police took their aggressive approach from the Louisiana police or the LASD or the Minneapolis police or almost any other police department.
There was nothing special in flipping a vehicle over for a12 mph over the limit speeding ticket. It could have been for something serious like an air freshener hanging from a rear view mirror.
13Well kids a story upon which I feel comfortable commenting!
For the record:
I served a couple years as a sworn peace officer in North Texas and 34 more as a civilian in three different departments.
Plus I’ve raced motor cars, go carts, motorcycles, tractors, 18-wheelers, skateboards, pogo sticks etc for 50+ years. Occasionally I’ve raced in SCCA sanctioned races. in 2016 my older brother built a Corvette to take to the Nurburgring for a run in green hell. It was glorious.
My tldr for this story is this: when two motor cars moving at any speed touch each other NOTHING good happens. On the street, on the interstate, on the track. Stop that sh!t people, you’re crazy
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