Officer Threatened NFL Player Outside Hospital

11:14 AM Posted In , Edit This 0 Comments »

"As a storm of outrage gathered over his department, Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle called a news conference Thursday to apologize for the behavior of an officer who detained a distressed family outside a hospital emergency room.
Kunkle said Officer Robert Powell had been placed on paid administrative leave in connection with the incident last week, in which he stopped a family rushing to visit a dying mother, keeping them for 13 minutes to write a traffic ticket. The woman died before two of the family members were able to see her."

I do think this was predicated on race. First off, unless the person is inebriated, why would you threaten to arrest someone for running a stop sign?
Secondly, an officer is only supposed to draw a gun when they feel threatened. Granted, as a football player, Moats is undoubtedly a large man who behaved very appropriately given the situation. If any family member of mine was dying I wouldn't have been nearly that coherent. It was a man and his wife, her grandfather, and her great-aunt. If they had been white, how threatened would the officer have felt? Especially after they had explained that it was an emergency?
The officer should have helped them get to the hospital, not threatened arrest.

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