Off Duty Chicago LEO pulls gun on pregnant woman

[jon5212]

If we stick with the original story that some "A" hole came up to my wife and started running his mouth he'd be out cold on the ground in 3 seconds flat. I'll let my attorney handle it from that point.

I will protect my family with whatever means are necessary.

 

[Classic]

Another "Police Investigate Police and Find no Wrongdoing" story.

 

[EvilBlackGun]

Agreed.

And the point of having the a-hat on the floor is to keep it there, on its belly, by any means necessary. Try to kick any weapon away, safely.

If we stick with the original story that some "A" hole came up to my wife and started running his mouth he'd be out cold on the ground in 3 seconds flat. I'll let my attorney handle it from that point. I will protect my family with whatever means are necessary.

 

[finity]

I agree the cop started it. However, no crime was committed until the husband battered the officer. Self defense is a justification for committing the battery. No one denies that the husband touched the officer in a rude or insolent manner. That being said, if the husband story is believed, I wouldn't convict him if I was on the jury!

My point was just that the husband is at fault also for escalating the situation and resorting to physical violence. I agree that the cop started it and his subsequent actions were deplorable.

Look at the IC for self-defense.

It says that force is justified to terminate or PREVENT a threat of physical force.

A person is justified in using reasonable force against another person to protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force.

Note that it says IMMINENT. That means it's going to happen sometime in the very near future.

You don't have to wait to get beat up before you fight back. You don't have to wait for your pregnant wife to get punched in the stomach before you take action to prevent it if FROM YOUR VIEWPOINT it reasonably looks like the LEO was going to do something.

If I was a husband who walked up on some unknown guy berating my (pregnant) wife who then subsequently made what I considered to be a threatening move toward us I think that a small shove would be the very definition of my use of reasonable force.

How hard do you think a person has to be pushed to commit a battery? Do you think there is a pressure test to determine if it was a battery?

I don't blame the husband for protecting his family. I do think it was probably a poor choice to escalate the violence with his pregnant wife there.

What if the guy was a lunatic with a gun who was not a police officer the rest of the time???

What if the guy who was a lunatic who was going to kick the crap out of his wife when the husband perceived the threat of him moving toward them?

Should he have just stepped out of the way & let the guy continue (what the husband thought was) the first move to a physical attack on the chance he shouldn't intervene to protect his wife because the lunatic MIGHT be armed?



I'm not sure why you had to qualify that last sentence with "who was not a police officer the rest of the time".

It makes no difference if the perceived lunatic was a cop or not. If the guy acts like a lunatic then he gets the same response.

This Story as told doesn't pass the smell test. I imagine that yes the offduty cop did the right thing and call this couple out.

Call them out for what? Having too many items in an express lane? What gives the cop or anybody else the right or the authority to call anybody out for that except the store manager?

Please don't try to justify what the cop did. If I caused a scene in the express lane like that I would fully expect to get the crap knocked out of me by the pissed off husband. This guy should have expected no less. But he did JUST BECAUSE HE'S A COP.

It's not NORMAL for a guy in line at walmart to start going off on someone, insulting their intelligence, asking them if they were on welfare for having a few extra items in the express lane.

I think everybody involved in this story earned a big fat "F" for how they behaved. There's no need for the off-duty officer to scream at and intimidate a pregnant woman simply because she's inconsiderate. There's also no need for her husband to shove the off-duty officer. Get in between them and yell back if you want, but walking up and shoving somebody is wrong. I don't see why the off-duty officer then decided to pull his gun and "wave it around." I'd love to see the video on this.

That's the problem. (According to the husband) he didn't just walk up & push the guy. He walked up, saw that his wife was upset & pushed the cop back when the cop stepped toward him.

Isn't bullying the proper response to a lack of courtesy?

Maybe in your world.

In my (reasonable, civil) world a lack of courtesy isn't met with physical force. I don't think I'd like to live in a world that condoned violence for "dissin" someone. We already have that type of world in the thug culture.

No thanks.

If you'd seriously pull a gun on someone for yelling at your wife, you really need to reconsider whether you should carry or not. That's not the kind of comment that gives much reason to believe somebody is mature enough to be carrying a firearm.

And if that cop thought it would be reasonable to pull his gun on the husband of a pregnant woman who he was just in the process of berating for a slight shove then maybe he shouldn't carry a gun either.

Also, I'm not sure how a slight shove could be construed as an act that required the response of deadly force to be used. You can't threaten to kill someone for a little push. I'm sure if a non-cop would have done that then he most likely would have been arrested but because it was a cop it's A-OK

If for whatever reason he wanted to include the fact he was employed as an LEO, I don't see how he can't do that as well.

Because he is now using his position of authority to get someone to act a certain way UNDER COLOR OF LAW when he had NO LEGAL AUTHORITY to act in the first place.

Cops are always enforcing store policy by proxy. Many store policies get enforced for one reason and one reason alone: The cops show up. Why? Because a person flat out refuses to obey store policy that they leave after violating some other store policy. Granted, refusing the obey an agents request to leave the property becomes criminal, that part of the trespass statue has more to do with the enforcement of store policies than anything else in these sorts of situations. All these calls have one thing in common: Violations of store policy. Not stealing, not beating someone else....they break a store policy, get asked to leave, they don't, cops get called for a trespasser. The cops are enforcing private retail store policy by proxy.

And if the store managers had asked the cop to intervene to get her to follow store policy then that would have been completely different.

A cop can't just unilaterally decide that he is going to enforce some random store policy of his own volition without being asked to do so by the property owner.

It may have helped to bolster your case if the cop was actually in uniform & had acted with the professionalism that he should have used instead of just berating the woman. Neither of which was the case.

Face it. He was just a grumpy ******* who was pissed because he was having a bad day & decided to pick on a helpless pregnant woman then whipped out his gun when the husband came back & confronted him over it.

Ooohh. What a tough guy.

Another "Police Investigate Police and Find no Wrongdoing" story.

Wolves guarding the henhouse...