Originally posted by airforce: At first blush, I can certainly see why the officer would be concerned. A baby in the hands of an apparently unstable person is not a safe situation. When the woman tried to leave, abandoning the baby, there was certainly reason to detain her, and the officer is authorized to use reasonable force to detain her.
Airforce, I dont see anywhere that it says she tried to abandon the baby.
"became frustrated and tried to leave with the child, Etter said."
She tried to take him with her.
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A baby in the hands of an apparently unstable person
Did you read a different article than I did? I didn't see anything about that, either. She got frustrated with the pigs and tried to leave...that I can understand. I don't think that makes her mentally unstable.
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the woman appeared to be a danger to herself and others
Once again, I'm not seeing it. If you have a link to an article that's different from the one I read, please post it. Otherwise, I don't see how getting frustrated with the asinine questions cops ask makes anyone a danger.
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I suppose the biggest fault I can find is in not calling for paramedics immediately.
The biggest fault I can find, based on the article I posted (which is where Patriot's link took me, maybe it's a different article now, who knows), is:
In essence, she went to THEM to file a complaint. At some point, she reconsidered, and decided she didn't want to after all. But the cop wasn't going to just let it go at that.
Let's use the same basic problem, but in a different circumstance:
Back in 2001, someone illegally entered my house on Christmas Eve. I was going to say broke in, but it wasn't really a break-in since my wife accidentally left the door to the back porch unlocked. Our kitchen door was barred from the inside, so they couldn't get into the house itself, just the porch. There were tool marks on the doorway where someone tried to break in to the house, but was unsuccessful. Since they couldn't get into the house, they just stole a frozen turkey out of the freezer on the porch.
When we noticed the marks on Christmas Day, we called the police. The cop that came looked at everything and basically told me there wasn't much that could be done, but I could file a report anyway if I wanted to (yeah, our cops here are just wonderful, very adept at their jobs). I decided that I really didn't want my name and address in the newspaper, esp. if they weren't going to catch the crook.
Now, using my example, let's use her circumstances. If the same thing that happened to her had happened to me, when I declined to file a report I would have been badgered, intimidated, and finally thrown to the ground, tasered, handcuffed, and finally, gotten a trip to the county jail. And for what? For not wanting to file a complaint.
