Man drowns as Arizona police watch: ‘I’m not jumping in after you’
- Thread starter cigaretteman
- Start date
Wow, you sound absolutely jaded and miserable. Did you have some encounter shaping your horrible outlook, or have you taken the actions of a couple of bad apples throughout time, and generalized them to the millions and millions of acts of great policing?
1. Judging someone else’s (a stranger’s no less) apathy through police cam audio/video is subjective.
2. Citizens pay police officers to deal with the homeless and mentally I’ll on a daily basis, often for 10-12hrs a day. I think walking several dozen miles in their shoes should be a requirement before casting judgement.
3. If we are to expect perfection out of every officer, every officer will fail.
LOL, whatever. This “liberal” understands the danger of trying to save a drowning person without proper equipment and training. And yes, I agree the actual victim and your hypothetical Trump hatter would be equals in the moron contest and that your predictive skills suck.
We’ve had this type thread before and SCOTUS has ruled that police are under no obligation to save anyone. Whether Black, brown white smart or dumb their only obligation is to save themselves, draw a paycheck and once in a while do some on the job shooting practice.
They would have gone in, and a swarm of other officers would have appeared out of thin air to assist. Nobody should think otherwise.Well we will agree to disagree. I think one of the cops would jump in after an attractive damsel in distress without much thought.
We don't know the guy's mindset, but he was most likely in an unhealthy place mentally. It is not the obligation, or even proper for untrained officers to go in the water. What I saw was a lack of seriousness, and they should have called for properly trained people. One guy at least made an effort on looking for a boat.
I'm just saying I'm a little surprised there wasn't at least an "oh crap, anybody got something we can throw out there!?" moment.
Here's a hypothetical -- maybe unfair, but still -- if the subject in question wasn't a skeevy homeless dude, but instead a mildly intoxicated Arizona State coed like the one pictured below, do you think the behavior and effort level of the officers would have been any different?
I am going to answer honestly, I like to think I would try to save any drowning individual if I thought I had a pretty good shot at succeeding, I will say I would probably accept lower odds in trying to save her.
In that area of Tempe town lake there is no public access so there wouldn’t be any life preservers to throw
I used to think these bad acts by cops were random and rare, confined to small depts who had trouble hiring qualified people.
Now, with body cams and cell phones, we're realizing they are NEITHER random or rare.
Plus, I'm not naive enough to believe cops are being vetted properly in many jurisdictions.
Personally, never had a negative interaction with LEO.
I definitely agree with the vetting issue. It seems many departments happily welcome those who've been fired from others. That's where my major problems come from. Every work force is going to have a bad guy in their midst. But when it's recognized and removed and then another force actively recruits that bad dude, then it's intentional.
Ya know, not everything needs to be political and those of you who make everything political get throughly trashed by people who know you when you're not around.
Make a great day
That's like hating all teachers and thinking they are rife with bad actors when 99.9999% of awesome people and a few get busted for being pervy molesters.
Like I said...we're just more aware of shitty cops because now it's on video.
And I think the percentages of unqualified law enforcement are much higher than you're willing to admit.
I carry two and a throw rope just in case this happens to me.
I certainly would not expect the police officers to jump into the water to save the guy. However, I think that police should have the mindset that when someone puts themselves in a dangerous situation, they have to be thinking about what they might have to do to intervene. I would feel a heck of a lot better about the situation if, as soon as the dude hit the water, one of the officers said, "Oh, f&ck. All right - we'd better find something to throw to this idiot if he gets in trouble out there. We got a life preserver or some other flotation device in the trunk? Or maybe just a rope?" Maybe something was going on like that that wasn't evident on the body cam. Deservedly or not, these guys look kinda bad based on the video alone.
People who don’t know how to swim should stay out of the water
unless you’ve seen another body cam video, what was in the link showed that the guy looks like a good swimmer and he was joking around by getting in the water. It also looks like these were cops on bikes, but maybe there was a nearby car. Who knows what cars have in them. Are they supposed to pack fire extinguishers if someone decides to self-immoliate?
I don't know, what are the potential things that they may be expected to help with in an emergency setting, and what can be fit in a car. A life preserver with a rope is fairly small, and drowning does happen, so seems like a useful thing to carry.
Of course if they were cops on bikes then that wouldn't be possible.
Its amazing how some of you will make every single issue or incident political. Damn do you wake up and breathe controversy and discord.
Now to play devil's advocate with myself and to show I am reasonable, if you watch the video there are two police SUVs in the background. If those have flotation devices in them, when shit hit the fan, I would hope they attempted to get them to the guy.
- Sep 13, 2002
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Well that is the point with the critics. I haven't really heard anyone say these cops should have leaped into the water. But maybe casually strolling around making zero effort to help wasn't the best course of action.
But in turn, he 's not struggling in the video, and you don't know what happened when he did start to struggle.
- Sep 13, 2002
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You are playing word games. Obviously, by "what happened" I meant what actions the police took, not what actions the swimmer did not take to prevent drowning. They could have sprinted to the SUV when he was struggling to get something that was there, but it was too late by the time they got back. Or maybe there was nothing to get in the SUVs. All the swimmer had to do was turn on his back and float there. There were no waves and the water was smooth as glass.
- Sep 13, 2002
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I trust the reporting ---- it is my understanding the decision to not show the rest of the video was due to it being disturbing to viewers, but presumably the reporters watched it and reported what they did --- which was that the officers at the scene made no rescue attempt.
This article says:
- "Attempting such a high-risk rescue could easily result in the death of the person in the water and the officer, who could be pulled down by a struggling adult. Officers are trained to call the Fire Department and or get the Tempe Police boat. That is what officers did here," the statement said."
- "The city said it is reviewing water response protocols with Tempe Police and assessing equipment needs for officers and the need for placement of rescue equipment around bodies of water."
Arizona investigators are reviewing officer conduct after a man drowned in a reservoir during a domestic dispute call | CNN
State and local agencies will investigate the death of a man in Tempe, Arizona, last month who drowned after police officers responding to a disturbance call did not enter the water to reach the man, city and state officials announced Monday.
They very well could have done what they reasonably could with the resources they had, and followed protocols. If not, then they did not, and I am sure the investigation will bear that out. Seems premature to condemn the police, and to judge their conduct based upon a result.
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Yes, I agree. I don't blame the cops at all for not going in to save him, but the lack of concern was not a good look. There could have been more of an effort on their part to find something to throw to him.
They probably thought he wasn't drowning until he drowned. They probably didn't believe he was really in distress until it was far too late.
I'm just saying I'm a little surprised there wasn't at least an "oh crap, anybody got something we can throw out there!?" moment.
Here's a hypothetical -- maybe unfair, but still -- if the subject in question wasn't a skeevy homeless dude, but instead a mildly intoxicated Arizona State coed like the one pictured below, do you think the behavior and effort level of the officers would have been any different?
While you're not wrong in a world of generalizations, it definitely goes both ways:
Conservatives will be pissed off since the cops didn't do anything.
If the swimmer would have had a BLM hat on they would have called him a moron and that the world is now a better place.
That would "own the libs" wouldn't it?
How is the cop supposed to know the guy wasn't armed or just wanted to drown a cop. Police made the correct decision.
Here's a thought. If you can't swim stay out of the Fing water. So sure, blame the Cop for not risking their lives for a complete moron, whom they told YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO SWIM IN THE LAKE! (next thing we'll hear is he was deaf I suppose............., for Libbyland Drama Queens to fabricate to get their daily fake outrage on).
It pains me we are roughly on the same side, based on what we currently know. I don’t agree with your language.
I know it can't possibly be the dumbest thing you've ever read on here. Of course it's a joke, 69% of my posts are dry humor, or in this case wet humor...
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