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UPDATE: While not in the same league as to situation, the cop was right to stop him and Moats kept pushing him, the lack of compassion by slowing the process down and then contempt for questioning him makes this cop a powertripping douchebag. That he later had to apologize is proof he handled this wrong. (found by Mr. Justin)
“I can screw you over,” the officer told Moats. […] “Shut your mouth,” Powell told him. […] “Your attitude says that you need [a ticket].”
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Cops are trained nowadays to follow rules to the letter or the department risks a lawsuit. He cannot be sued for this but can be sued if he went red-lights-and siren to the hospital as an escort. I can see it now, “Mom died because of loud siren.”
The system as a whole lacks common sense. Calling for an ambulance when they can be headed to the hospital is ridiculous, but that is probably the rule.
That said the deputy’s name should be released and he should be subject to public scrutiny.
31,
“Cops are trained nowadays to follow rules to the letter ”
Sure they are…
#29 Named
Nice try. I guess you prove the point about nimrods being on the site.
Did I say there has never been a police escort?
My late hamster’s age surely exceeds your IQ and from the look of your comments probably by an order of magnitude.
I have to agree with Mr. Diesel and JCD except for releasing the cop’s name.
The cop did everything properly. I would add that the cop is not a trained or authorized medical person and so is incapable of evaluating a person’s health.
Yes, yes, I know, it sucks. That though is life. If the guy had of phoned for an ambulance ASAP then this would not have happened. EMTs are well qualified to give care and triage on the way to the hospital.
#5, Named,
Anytime the police contracts are threatened, they just seize up on writing tickets. Once the city figures out the loss of revenue, the police get their contract.
Anytime I hear something like this the first thing I think of is “ooopps, somebody just got a ticket”.
If you don’t want a ticket, don’t speed, don’t park illegally, make sure your license plate is renewed, don’t turn left on a red, don’t run through stop signs, signal your turns, repair broken lights, and any number of other traffic violations.
#31 Too many crimes have been committed in history under the guise of “I was only following orders”.
There can be no justice as long as laws are absolute. When did we stop being human and start being robots who only follow the rules? There are times when men of good conscience need to disobey certain rules. I gather that this police person has no good conscience.
35,
15 years as a driver, 2 violations. 1 for speeding which I won in court and 1 for a radar detector… which sux because I was driving my friend home after he blew out his clutch knee skiing… I drove his car. And that was well over 1 year ago for both.
So, no. I didn’t get a ticket. But, I do know that cops are revenue generators.
33,
“Escorting someone to the hospital is out of the question due to liability against the department if let’s say, the cruiser makes it through an intersection and someone t-bones the truck and kills or injures both.”
Right. So rather than take charge of the situation and not worry about the billing system, he could have escorted. But, he preferred to do the procedure thing… you know. “It says here I gotta do this. Oh, your dying. Yeah, that’s not in here.”
You’re obviously a slave.
Just another thought, in the video the son said his mother had a chronic respiratory problem. If that was the case then she should have also had O2 available at home.
If she died so quickly it is more than probable she would not have survived even if she had of reached the hospital.
Then add in that the police have been fooled many times before with the old “escort me to the hospital” trick.
Not pretty, but the cop made the right call. The son screwed up. Just think, if he had of renewed his plate this wouldn’t be a topic.
#38 Named
And you continue to prove that you are an idiot.
#36 Beard
You could gather that the officer had no good conscience, I would say you were wrong.
Maybe his conscience resides with providing for his wife and children at home and didn’t want to jeopardize their future.
He could also be the kind of officer who would brave a burning car to pull someone to safety since that doesn’t usually involve getting your ass sued off if you attempt it.
#28 and #31, The Policemen assumed responsibility of the citizens when he stopped them. Yielding to the police authority relinquishes a portion of your personal safety to the police during your detention. This is why you cannot or must not resist arrest which severs the bond of responsibility between police and citizen.
39,
Maybe they can’t afford it any longer? Afterall, abortions are soaring in the US due to costs…
#36, Beard,
There are times when men of good conscience need to disobey certain rules. I gather that this police person has no good conscience.
I would think that the police accidentally stop many times more people carrying drugs than they do little old ladies about to die. He did the prudent thing and called for an ambulance. More than that requires a lot of “perhaps” and “what ifs”.
With the ambulance, the EMTs can make a decision about the woman’s health that he can’t. In the few minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive, she died anyway. If the EMTs can’t resuscitate her, it is doubtful the hospital would have. Nor is there any evidence he would have gotten her to the hospital before she passed.
You can rest assured that if she had of died in the ambulance we would never have heard about this. Yup, if she could have held on just a few more minutes. If the son had of called the ambulance just a few minutes earlier. If he had of paid for his permit. If they had of filled the O2 bottle. If she hadn’t smoked for 62 years.
I am quite sure the cop’s conscience is bothering him right now. He will be second guessing about what he did for many years. I would be more worried about losing a good cop than what happened.
Dallas police delayed NFL player as relative died
A police officer was put on desk duty after pulling over an NFL player rushing to see his dying mother-in-law in the hospital and holding him in the hospital parking lot as she died.
Dallas police officer Robert Powell stopped Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats’ SUV outside Baylor Regional Medical Center during the early hours of March 18 after Moats rolled through a red light. Moats and his family had gotten a call saying his mother-in-law was dying.
YEah, cops sure do “protect and serve”.
The hospital was 1 mile away…1 frickin’ mile away. The son obviously had access to a car, there’s no guarantee that an ambulance would be available within the proper amount of time had he called. So the guy (lapsed plates or not) made the right decision to drive his mother. And while the cop was within his right to write up a ticket, did he HAVE to hold the son up for it? The fear of a lawsuit is a poor excuse, as is “Just doing my job”.
I wish I still had my notes from life insurance course. There was a same kind of case and I remember, it was ruled that the cop caused the delay leading to death of a woman. He was fined/fired and the city paid a lot of money.
I would be expecting a letter from a lawyer at any minute if I was the Sheriff.
“Nor is there any evidence he would have gotten her to the hospital before she passed.”
Actually there is evidence that he would have gotten to the hospital in time. The report states that the hospital was less than a mile away from where he was pulled over. Which leads to the reasonable inference he was less than 5 minutes from the emergency room.
The ambulance took 10 minutes to arrive. That’s double the time.
The *real* question is did those 5 minutes *actually* make a difference? Well, we’ll never really know.
But while the officer wasn’t necessarily acting “egregiously wrong”, or perhaps even “negligently”, letting the guy off wouldn’t have been a huge mistake either. Everyone here is acting like providing a police escort would have been the only other option.
Absolutely not. Officers have discretion as to when to write up a ticket. The guy could have simply said “well I’ll let you go this time but get your registration renewed.” Or he could have just *followed* the dude to the hospital, no blue-lights required, and then given him the ticket there.
This was not black and white, but the officer definitely treated it as such. And, IMO, made the wrong call.
Alex,
Of course he could have let them go. That was option#1. I mentioned escort just in case the cop had a real hard-on to write the ticket without killing anybody with their Barney Fife mentality.
This is the sheriff of the year folks! Be nice! http://shelbygop.org/wordpress/?p=272
The only thing I like more than these stories is reading the comments that middle America has left beneath them on places like CNN.com, where the ultra-idealistic argue “everybody KNOWS you can’t run a red light. What makes him so special?” Unwavering, mindless, and unattainable idealism. It’s America in a nutshell. One day there will be a crisis where both sides in this country hold onto their petty bullshit so tightly that the problem continues to…oh wait.
And that’s why we’re all going to die!
It’s funny reading replys from idiot trying to rationalize such a gross negligence. Imagine someone trivializing the life of you mother, no better yet your life with respect to a expired tag. Its not a matter of if she would have survived had she made it, it has everything to do with some prick felt that a traffic ticket was worth the risk that this individual was actually about to die. Police, no people like him give scum a bad name, and I would be god dammed if I let a stranger let alone my mother die in my back seat to appeal to unethical commands of some idiot. He should be ashamed of himself, he should be tarred and feathered.