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She learned enough to pass a citizenship test 17 years ago. Likely her main problem now, aside from the fact that she lives in a town with idiot cops who tase old ladies out collecting flowers, is dementia.
Or maybe she had been taught that the police were friends and community helpers, way back when she took and passed her citizenship test.
I hope she and/or her family sue the socks off them.
They KNEW she didn't speak English, so while technically, when told to drop your "weapon" and they do not comply, you would use force..... but she is 85, and while I didn't see the size of the knife, I'm sure it wasn't a machete. Their reaction seems extreme. Some common sense was lacking.
Edit: DH brought up a good point. Did dispatch convey the information that she does not speak english and she was cutting vegetation?
2nd edit: Learned a new word. Extigency (sp?). She was not threatening anyone, and she was not threatening to harm herself - so why the need to go to the force of the taser?
It's protocol, dontcha know. Those cops were drilled to follow an inflexible protocol and were not able to adapt and act appropriately to the situation.
you have to have something wrong with your mind when obviously gun-armed men motion for you to drop your knife and you dont do it, post haste.
Yeah. Because the town handed out handbooks to all the immigrants on how to deal with american police.
Most people dont have run ins with the cops and dont know how to deal with them, and also dont know that instinctively acting in defense allows leeway for police abuse by law. Since the chief is defending the tasing I dont believe a word about the old lady going at them with the knife.
you have to have something wrong with your mind when obviously gun-armed men motion for you to drop your knife and you dont do it, post haste.
Lots of 87-year-olds have something wrong with their minds. It's our job to look out for them, and hope that someone does the same for us when we're 87.
This lady is walking on the bike trail, she has a knife and she won't leave. She doesn't speak English."
The caller told the dispatcher that the elderly woman did not threaten anyone with the knife. "She's old so she can’t get around too well...," the caller said, according to the 911 call, which has been made public. "Looks like she’s walking around looking for something, like, vegetation to cut down or something."
So they were notified right off the bat that she didn't speak English. They were also notified that she wasn't threatening anyone, and what it appeared that she was doing. Did that information not get passed on to the officers? If not, why not? Her not being able to speak English is kind of a big thing to be telling responding officers.
The excuse that the officer would have fallen and accidentally fired at her if he backed up is ridiculous. It did say that the officer used his own pocket knife and threw it on the ground as a way to try to communicate, but did he make it clear what he wanted her to do by indicating his knife to hers and then pantomiming or whatever to place it on the ground and the point to her, or did he just grab his pocket knife and throw it on the ground as the article states?
At what point would they ask for an interpreter? They have cell phones and radios to use to get the message across. Put it on the loudspeaker over the radio like they do when they pull you over.
Is a hand up not a universal language for "stop"? If so, did they do that?
Too many questions, but really, a very old woman...just how much power behind any potential swing of the knife did they really think she had? It would be VERY easy to disarm her. She moves slow, so have one officer go behind her, one in front of her, and if she starts to swing the knife, grab her from behind, it isn't that fricken hard.
Yet I believe I've seen your posts in favor of concealed carry here, amirite?
I bought a large bag of kitty litter home at the grocery this evening. It weighed close to ten pounds.
I could have hurled it at someone in the store's parking lot and done them a serious injury!
I got raw eggs, too. Think how many cars I could have hit with them!.
Screw that -- think of all the damage you could do with your car! It would make a hell of a lot more sense for a cop to arrest every driver than to arrest an old lady minding her own business with a knife.
there are 10s of thousands of police encounters every day in this country. some of them are going to end poorly. its not an easy job.
This wasn't some chaotic situation that happened to end badly. The problem here is that the cops didn't know how to act appropriately. And even after the fact, after having time to think it all through, they still don't know. Maybe they're slaves to protocol, maybe they're just stupid, either way they're dangerous.
Don't they have interpreters for this kind of issues?
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