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Video of cop punching someone to get them under control

I just saw the video on mynorthwest.com of the officer punching the 17 year old woman that was verbally and physically abusing him. Her friend was getting a jaywalking ticket and she decided if she yelled profanities at the cop and shoved him a few times that she could break her friend free and they could get out of the jaywalking ticket. To me, watching the video, it looked a lot like both women were shoving him and attacking him at the same time. If I had some crazy woman yelling profanities at me and shoving me I would be scared it was going to escalate and probably pepper spray her. But I'm thinking he may not have had enough time to reach for pepper spray, assuming he had any.

I'm not going to say whether he was right or wrong to punch her because I wasn't in that situation and I don't know how threatened he felt. I have no idea if he punched her to get the situation under control or if he was angry. We may never know. But what I do know is that you don't yell profanities at a cop and shove him. I've received two jaywalking tickets in my life and it's not that bad. If you break the law there are consequences. If you think the consequences are not just then take it to court like everyone else. So either use the legal system to fight it or buck up and take the consequences, but don't use physical force and abuse on a cop. That's just sad.


I actually support the cop for several reasons:

1. It was escalating. The woman was fighting with him AND had a second person jumping in with other people around. All he needs is someone to go for his gun...

2. People forget that the cops **must** win. Everytime. The minute they dont, you read about them in the newspaper either dead or wounded. And those ladies didn't look like they were trying to run away... they looked like they were standing to fight.

I have no sympathy to people who physically fight with the police. It's stupid to do so and it puts people at risk. if she REALLY thought her rights were being violated, she should have been shouting to the guy with the camera to come get the footage...

She was stupid.
I just heard an interview with a retired officer on the radio about this incident. He said normal procedure in this situation would have been a "face plant". He should have kicked her legs out from under and shoved the assailant down face first so he could hand cuff her. According to the retired officer the punch was less likely to injure her than the face plant so it appears to him that the officer was trying to subdue her without injuring her.

So I'm also siding with the cop now.
Police are taught hand to hand combat and yes, a punch to the face is a technique that can be employed in defense. It is a non-lethal tactic (far better then say, night stick) to establish order. Nothing saying if she was willing to lay hands on an officer, she wouldn't be willing to try to take his weapon or use one she may have had on her persons.

The officer would have used the same tactic regardless of skin color, etc. and the fact that he hit her only once is clear indication that it wasn't racially motivated.

I'd say it's speculative either way.
speculative or not, she shouldn't have put her hands on the police officer in the first place
As I said below, she was acting stupidly.
Accord to the evening news, the officer is going to be re-trained in the correct use of force, so I'm thinking the punch wasn't recommended policy in such situations. That said, both women were acting stupidly.
Didn't see the news, have any links to videos or text? But of all the written stuff I've seen so far says that the police department is withholding judgement until they can review the incident.
Wish I had something else, but that's all I heard on KOMO earlier.

Found this from tonight. The retaining looks like the office should have just dragging her down and cuffed her on the ground instead of the ongoing struggle in trying to cuff her standing up, but everything points to that the officer did the right thing, especially with the crowd that was surrounding the incident.
I can see that. It's not that he hit her -- the situation was escalating. It's that it needed to end quickly before onlookers got rev'd up...
From an armchair quarterback point of view, I totally agree. After he punched her, he should have took her down.

Only reason I can think of that he didn't is that the other girl was on his back for a moment and even after she was pulled off, the crowd surrounding it, if he kneeled down too, he might not be able to react if someone else jumped on him...

But yeah, he was totally in the right and used appropriate force versus pulling out his night stick or tasering the lot of them.