Earlier in the week, we had an article about a video sent to us here at The BFD that showed an interaction with a police officer and a young couple who had just returned to a vehicle after shopping at the Silverdale Pak-n-Save. The original post is here, and a second post, updated with the young man’s version of the events, is here.
In that video, it is plain to see that the officer, although simply frustrated in the beginning, turns angry towards the end and after reaching across the female, snatches the phone from the young man’s hand before slinging some abuse at the pair then throwing the phone at the man, striking him in the chest with some force.
It is very easy to say that the officer was in the wrong here (and clearly he was, in my opinion), not only by trying to enforce as a law something that clearly isn’t but also when he lost control of his emotions, swore at the couple and used force against them that wasn’t warranted.
He comes across as a bit of an idiot, a bit of a thug and to be honest, as a bit of a prick. But when I put my ExCop’s hat on, I wonder why he has reacted the way he did. What contributed to this over-reaction?
Last week we saw a bunch of young police officers handling a situation outside a Countdown supermarket in Christchurch. Another massive over-reaction in my opinion, one possibly brought about by inexperience, but with a number of similar instances coming to light, I wonder, are these cops’ attitudes and behaviours inbuilt, are they a result of a lack of training, or maybe, are they as a result of the pressure being put on them by their bosses?
I did a long time in law enforcement, and I have seen plenty of these types of interactions. Hell I have been guilty of my fair share. I have sworn at people who frustrated the heck out of me, just like the Silverdale officer did, although not when I knew I had a camera recording me.
And this is what worries me most about this video. By acting as he did, while being filmed, it may be that we witnessed that cop simply reaching the end of his tether. It happens sometimes, and although I believe that the young man is making a complaint against the officer, I think there are bigger issues at stake here. Yes, he will be investigated, he may even be charged with assault. Police are actually notoriously hard against their people. In my opinion, they would sooner charge their own for an offence rather than be seen by the public as being corrupt.
Well, at least that was the way it was when I was still in the job. Has it changed under the last two Police Commissioners? I guess we will wait and see, but let’s have a think about what might have been going on in the head of the Silverdale cop.
The thing is, we don’t know what else is going on for that cop. Has he just come from a horrible crash where he held a six-year-old girl as she died in his arms? Had he been up most of the night because he couldn’t sleep after picking up a seventeen-year-old’s brains after he blew them out of his head with his dad’s 30-30 because his girlfriend had just left him? Had he perhaps been assaulted himself, had a massive fight with a meth-head offender who was armed with a knife? Had he maybe just run over his own cat in his driveway during his lunch break?
The thing is we just don’t know what is going on in his head. All these things have happened to me. I don’t know, maybe I was a dick to some people I dealt with afterwards. There are certainly situations that I regretted over my 20 years on the job.
What strikes me with this event though, is that cop’s loss of control. To me, he didn’t want to be there in the first place. Was he ordered to go to that place and police the customers? Had he been called to the scene by Pak-n-Save so he had to attend even though he knew the whole thing was a crock? It is certainly easy to lose your cool when someone isn’t playing the game the way you want it to be played. The young fella was certainly not making life easy for the officer, and that is fair enough. I guess he knew that the officer only has evidence against him if he gives it to him. It’s the old story, you have a right to silence, sometimes you just need to use it so you don’t incriminate yourself.
To me though, this officer took the whole thing too much to heart. He could’ve simply said “don’t do it again” and left it at that. He could have cleared the job and gone on his way, but he chose to argue, an argument that wasn’t backed up in law, so he was always up against it.
It is apparent to me that this officer, at that time, was too stressed to be at work. I suspect that there are other things going on in his life that might be piling up on him, and it is hard to see this for ourselves at the time. He will likely look back on this incident and recognise just how badly he behaved.
This officer, to me, looked like he didn’t care anymore about what was going to happen to him. I remarked to a friend that I wouldn’t be surprised if he drove back to the station and resigned, it seemed that he had given up caring about his job and he was over it. I actually wonder if he did just that?
In any case, what needs to be happening here (in the humble opinion of someone who’s been in this situation, on both sides) is that the man’s supervisors should probably have seen this coming. I would suspect that there will have been a rumbling around the office about this officer’s demeanour. Maybe not, maybe everyone is feeling just as bad and they can’t see it, but at the very least, his sergeant should now be placing him on stress leave.
In the NZ Police and many other governmental organisations, stress leave is available as of right. There are no real time limits to how long you can have off, and it doesn’t come off your sick leave allocation, it is free leave if you will. And it is important to have this provision in the Police and other occupations such as nursing, where you need to be making sensible, lawful decisions day in and day out.
You can imagine what might happen one day when someone who is too stressed to function at the required level makes an even bigger mistake. This time it was just chucking a phone at a dude and telling him to “fuck off”, in the big scheme of things it’s not a biggie, but imagine if as might happen in the States, a weapon was drawn?
So was this cop in the wrong? Absolutely. Was there a better way to deal with the situation? Of course. Should his bosses have seen it coming and stepped in to help earlier? Probably.
Hey, maybe the cop is just a dick. Who knows, but maybe there will be more to this story.
I still back (most of) our regular cops on the road. Yes, there are some idiots out there in Policing land. To be honest, I would put most of the big bosses in that category, and maybe it is simply because the sewer always flows downhill but if that’s the case, there needs to be a clean-out up there.
If the cop on the road is being told that the most important thing they can do with their day is to hassle young people because they went shopping together, then we have bigger problems ahead.
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