i believe its already happened.
that our young hero didn't know it was the cops is another area of contention.
its is possible that the old adage "never attribute to malice that which could be caused by stupidity"
its possible that junior didn't know that was a cop when he looked over his shoulder at the car catching up with him, its possible but i like to thinks he was smarter. in my day when we were foolish and a car came up on us like that we knew who it was. juniors s/a was a bit week he rode up on the unmarked car then went 2 lanes over and passed the bus on one wheel. he did that in sight of the trooper as he cut back in front of the bus. maybe he didn't see the marked cop in the median too.
any idea how to find this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_732210&src_vid=RK5bMSyJCsg&v=9TICuwenwcs
its been removed
my interpretation of him turning his head to look back as the cop caught him was that he knew he was had.
i similarly do not share fitz's view that the cop "was hiding his gun" from the dash cam. i don't believe the other cop was that close until the gun was already holstered. and see no reason for the cop to be worried even if it was filmed. that stop was dejavu for me and typical of the stops i've seen where one pushes the envelope in traffic on a bike. the cops have this silly idea that guys on bikes will run and like to discourage that. i can't see anywhere where the gun was anywhere near our hero's face and in fact the cop kept his booger hook where it was supposed to be and the muzzle pointed correctly.
cop cut junior slack and let him keep bike and no reckless. when junior tried to play games cop took back the slack. theres a lesson to be learned but i'm not sure juniors a fast learner. especially since he apparently showed fitz some more paper. he would be wise not to drive like that in va. its not as lenient as md though you can tape to your hearts content
And that's where your bias is showing through. Believe it or not I agree that he was driving like a *expletive deleted*che. And he absolutely should have gotten the ticket (or more). The rider here is far from blameless, which is part of how it's so easy for you and others to gloss on law enforcement's misdeeds.
I object to LE's behavior here in two (and only two) parts.
1. Approaching with a pistol drawn. Lets assume for the moment that the rider had run. What's the officer going to do? Pop a few shots at the back of a fast receding motorcycle? What's his backstop? They were on a freeway offramp, so the bullets are already pointed up (The land is sloped). Where on his departments use of force matrix is reckless driving? Not at the deadly force level. When he got out of his car, that rider had done nothing that indicated he was going to be violent. In fact the opposite, as he'd stopped. So the LEO
escalated to deadly force by drawing a weapon where none was needed, and in fact, he would have been in trouble if he'd used it. In fact he
brandished his weapon, in the full meaning of the word. LEO's are supposed to deescalate encounters, not escalate them.
2. He did not, in fact, "take back his slack". He, his department, and the prosecutor
escalated once again. This time out of IMO nothing but spite. As I said, any lawyer worth his salt knew the wiretapping charge wouldn't fly. There's tons of case law about videotaping in public. They took back the slack on the traffic charges, which was fine if a little vindictive, and then added another BS charge in an attempt to either intimidate him or "teach him a lesson". It's a pretty blatant bullying move.
Those are the two parts where LE is at fault in this situation. The rider needs to own his own part in creating it, and tickets, loss of license, or bike could reasonably all be a part of his part. But in those two actions, it's all on the LE involved and they were in the wrong. I have seen no ownership of their misdeeds yet, or even acknowledgement of them. Hence the continued argument.
