Quote:Much more to the story, in fact. The whole incident--every last second of it--could have been avoided with a very simple law that states that unmarked vehicles cannot initiate traffic stops, like other states have. If the undercover officer had simply radioed the truck's description and plate number in, a marked vehicle could easily have been sent in instead, and this incident doesn't happen. I mean, that's all there is to it. It doesn't excuse in any way what the assailant did, but I'd bet you anything that the guy would have been far less likely to leave his vehicle and start crap with a uniformed officer coming out of a marked squad car.

 

Additionally, if the plainclothes detective could not articulate the reason that the assailant had been stopped, the assailant was being unlawfully detained and had the right to demand his license back and leave the area. That's clearly not what happened here, but it is a side note that unless there's yet more to the story, the apparent actions of the officer in refusing to articulate the reason for the stop would have made the whole thing unlawful.

 

Beyond that, there's nothing really new added here, just the officer telling us what we already know, a union boss complaining because police are being held accountable when they kill someone, and a police chief opining that social media is to blame for the outcry against police overreach and brutality, not the overreach and brutality itself.

 

This is where you are wrong.

 

First of all, the reason that the perp was pulled over to begin with is because he was driving erratically on the interstate.  That's a dangerous situation that could potentially put several innocent lives in danger.  Had the detective not stopped him, there is the potential that he could have killed someone in a traffic accident.

 

According to the story, the detective did speak to the perp while he was sitting in his car, at which point the detective would have told him why he was pulled over.  The detective then went back to call a "regular" patrol officer to handle the traffic stop.

 

The perp exited his own vehicle and became combative towards the detective to the point of assaulting him.

 

Here is the most disturbing part of the CNN article.

 

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Adding insult to injury: several bystanders, instead of helping, took pictures of the bloodied officer as he was facedown on the concrete and posted the images on social media, where the officer was mocked.

 

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...the six-year police veteran said he didn't shoot the man who attacked him during a traffic stop because of the outcry surrounding a spate of police shootings nationally.

 

If I was that detective, I would have stopped the perp's actions, and that would have been two to the chest and one to the head.

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