WTF Stories of the Week

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Yes, let's all take that literally, shall we?

Who's taking it literally? She offered a hypothetical situation, and her hypothetical actions in that situation. My question is, what would she expect the hypothetical reprocussions of those actions to be?

The genesis of his behavior is irrelevant. A cop facing irrational behavior is a cop facing irrational behavior, and the course of action is the same whether the behavior is the result of a fundamentally dangerous person or of someone overcome by temporary emotion. That's precisely the POINT of their training - to have a well practiced set of actions he takes to remain in control of the situation, regardless of the unknowable mental state of the person he's dealing with. All he has to go on is the observable behavior, and everything about Moat's actions in that video screams that this is an irrational person, take your time and don't let them have control of the situation.

I'm not saying I don't understand why the driver would have been acting irrationally, I'm saying that the officer, for the most part (by the time he's yelling "Shut your damn mouth!" it's clear that he's not doing a particularly good job of controlling the situation. But it was far from entirely out of line), reacted as he should be expected to when faced with an irrational person.