Have been really busy tonight. Not replying to nearly as much in this discussion as I'd like to.
The police themselves however, will come down on him hard for failing to properly secure the suspect in the first place. Desk jockey for life maybe, being fired as a result at worst.
I've been trying to follow cases of police abuse for a while now, and it seems like most of the time nothing happens. The most common scenario is the cop gets put on paid leave (i.e. free vacation) until the media blitz dies down and then things go back to normal with no other repercussions at all. Plus, when the police publicly absolve an officer of wrongdoing, it tends tp mean exactly what it sounds like. He's not going to see any consequences.
As one example that's close to home for me: There's an ongoing case where I live where a cop plowed over three motorcyclists while driving drunk en route to a call, killing one and criticially wounding another. The guy was measured at three times the legal blood-alcohol limit, but the blood tests were judged as inadmissible evidence because the two cops that showed up mishandled the scene. They waited too long to get his blood tested AND took him to a person who wasn't licensed to perform the blood test on an officer. After well over a year of court battles, it looks like he won't be caught on any alcohol-related charges, which will probably clear him of other responsibilities as well because then they'll be able to just treat it as standard collateral damage in the line of duty. He'll probably be punished to some extent, but not nearly as much as a civilian would be.
But what's really ridiculous is the two officers responsible for mishandling the case were initially demoted... and then after most of the media attention died down, were re-promoted to positions higher than they previously held. One is now in charge of his own precinct. WTF
I believe in personal responsibility, so I suppose that makes me a monster when I expect it from other people and accordingly hold them accountable for their actions.
There is so much more to it than this...
First, drug users can be products of all kinds of fucked up circumstances. Some are introduced to the addiction by their parents. Some are victims of other sorts of horrendous circumstances, and use drugs as an escape. Some people are horribly educated about the realities of drug abuse, and how it will effect them. Sometimes people slip drugs into other people's drinks, especially women. There is tooooons of information out there about how people fall into downward spirals of addiction, that eventually lead to them doing really stupid shit.
Second, what offends people about your attitude is you seem to heap all kinds of pre-conceived judgments on people based on shallow labels. She was under arrest, therefore she's automatically a criminal, even though she hadn't been convicted of anything. She was under the influence of drugs, therefore she's a druggie and responsible for whatever crazy stuff she does while under the influence. Did you consider that perhaps she had mental issues? Or perhaps the drugs in her system were put there against her will? Now the truth is we'll never know what she actually deserved.
Not to mention, above all, that very very few people don't do incredibly stupid things around that age, and yet most manage to grow up into decently responsible adults at some point. If everyone who did something stupid and reckless as a young adult deserved to die for it, there wouldn't be much of a human race left... and a lot of people who would have grown up into decent people would have never had the opportunity to do so.
But the impression you give everyone is that you just automatically assume she must have woken up that morning and said to herself "I think I know what I'll do today. I'm going to pump myself full of some crazy shit and drive around town like I'm in an action movie! FOR THE LUUUULLLLZZ!" Therefore she's an evil maniac and deserves whatever she got. Do you honestly believe that punishment is the only purpose of our justice system anyway? Don't you think that sometimes people just need some help to get their lives in order? Or is all right with the world so long as any person accused of wrongdoing suffers and/or dies afterwards? You don't even know if she actually hurt anybody. Leaving the scene of an accident is incredibly vague. For all we know, she hit two parked cars in a parking lot.
So, even if he did somehow end up tackling her, she wouldn't have been able to fully protect herself from the fall. She would have gotten seriously hurt regardless of what happened.
Why would it even be necessary to tackle her? Seriously, how far is someone stuck in handcuffs really going to go? There were multiple other officers around... with vehicles... quite frankly, if they can't retrieve someone with a major physical handicap from a pursuit right out of their own goddamn front door, then there must be some serious fucking incompetence involved.
The argument that she could have caused further trouble is kind of pointless, as it's justifying a bad thing as prevention of a completely unspecified potential bad thing. The only one that even makes any sense, is that she could have run out into traffic... but she only got a few feet out the front door. They had tons of time to act before that would have even been an issue, and if they can't chase her that far and still be in taser range, they must be so out of shape that they have no business being a police officer.
And another thing that really drives me nuts about this is how they don't seem to care at all that she's injured. This is another one of those recent trends that is causing people to seriously hate the police. They injure people all the damn time and do not give a fuck. They will break a person's bones and then leave them in the back of a van for hours without a second thought. In this case, the cops don't even bother to check her pupils to see how badly she's been effected by the head injury, or get behind her to make sure she doesn't suddenly collapse backwards and hurt herself anymore. They all just kind of stand around like a bunch of idiots. There is not the slightest evidence of concern.
Wait? A Baton is less lethal taser or pepper spray?
I would say a baton is less lethal than a taser or pepper spray, as long as it's not being used to recklessly beat a person over the head. Being hit with a blunt object is likely to cause injury, but much less likely to have deadly unforeseen consequences. Yeah, they kill people too, but I imagine 99.9999% of fatalities from a baton are from a couple cops holding down a person helplessly while a couple more beat the shit out of them for some extended period of time. Tasers or pepper spray, on the other hand, can outright kill a person with a pre-existing heart condition or allergies. With tasers, this risk is on top of the injuries a person is likely to suffer from an uncontrolled fall. If this isn't already the case, officers should have it drilled into their heads relentlessly that every time they fire a taser or pepper spray at someone, they are rolling a die with that person's life. They have no fucking clue if they are going to agitate some pre-existing condition and outright kill them. To use those things in situations where it isn't absolutely necessary as a last resort is reckless endangerment on the same level as a doctor giving a patient penicillin without informing them or determining if they're allergic.
OMG WEZ NEED TO QUIT DERAILING TOPIC, HURRRR!
OWS sucks, 'n stuff.. ya know?
And WTF is this?