What do you see?
Until I see a beautiful young woman, Notre Dame and area businesses should know I'm not spending a dime on them. I haven't for 3 years now, and until I see something more pleasing than this ugliness, that's the way it'll continue to be.
(Note: I don't think I see "brutality," but I'm certain I see a "law enforcement professional" not acting like he's very professional. I think the video creator would have done well to title it something else.)
By Pat November 14, 2010 - 10:42 pm
At the very least, you should at least provide some context here.
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By domer.mq November 14, 2010 - 10:48 pm
Are you thinking the cop may have had a reason for losing it on the kid?
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By Pat November 15, 2010 - 8:01 am
Maybe, yeah. I mean, the cop does seem to lose his temper. But what are those kids yapping about?
If you click through to YouTube, there is no explanation there either. One of the ‘highest rated comments’ though says how South Bend wouldn’t even be on the map if not for ND. Okay, yeah, South Bend is Rust Belt through and through, but that type of self-entitled attitude is disgusting.
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By domer.mq November 15, 2010 - 9:12 am
I’ve no problem with a cop arresting someone if an arrest is necessary. What I don’t understand, and I don’t think can be defended, is that the cop went about it completely wrong. Shoving the kid and yelling, “I haven’t ruined anything yet!” makes zero sense. If the cop, before the shoving, has determined an arrest is necessary, then shoving the kid away from himself isn’t tactically sound. It’s legally hairy, because if the kid trips and falls and suffers an injury, the cop is screwed. And along with all of that, why the “I haven’t ruined anything yet!”? What’s the point of that? Just grab the kid, cuff him, and walk away from the scene. This cop did nothing to diffuse the situation. He’s a lousy cop.
Further, what’s truly worrying is that if this cop escalates like this (and he’s apparently in a leadership position), then how would that same individual react to a more intense situation? By what increment does a situation need to escalate before this guy goes way overboard and creates a massive, national news piece of a disaster? This guy isn’t showing that he’s fit for duty in this video.
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By Pat November 15, 2010 - 9:31 am
I agree the cop handles himself poorly and unprofessionally. No question. Not exactly on the “brutality” level, but poor judgment nonetheless. (Not sure anyone should their job or their pension over this.)
Still, there is little context, and we don’t know what that kid is mouthing off about. Realistically, I suspect those guys are drunk and being a bit stubborn and probably a bit emboldened by the presence of their friends. Also, does anyone else find it curious that, while getting arrested, the kid looks right at the camera and shrugs? Who really was the one looking to make a scene here?
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 9:41 am
Pat, I just can’t relate to watching a cop shove a citizen around, especially one making no threats of violence to himself or the officers, and going, “yeah, well, what was he saying though?” If he said something that warrants arrest, fine, arrest the kid. But I’m not going to just shrug off a cop shoving around a citizen. You’ve got the entire paradigm backwards if you’re just shrugging that off. And believe me, I’m quite supportive of law enforcement professionals. I just expect them to actually be professionals. In South Bend, they haven’t shown any capability to be professional since about the time ND FB showed any capability to be elite.
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By Pat November 15, 2010 - 10:16 am
Listen, Domer, I doubt you know any more than I do what that kid was saying. How do you know what, or if, he was or wasn’t threatening to do, violent or otherwise?
The cop acted unprofessionally, lost his cool, no doubt. (Count this as me NOT merely shrugging off the cop’s actions.) But the kid, very likely, is not exactly acting like a prince. Does this matter? Maybe not. But this isn’t exactly cops releasing the dogs on a picnic either.
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 10:28 am
Pat, the point is, even if the kid said something threatening, the cop’s actions make zero sense. It was a poor tactical maneuver. It was backyard brawl behavior you’d expect to see from a kid behind the high school, not from a law enforcement professional. That’s the point: The folks who are patrolling ND football games are not showing themselves capable of professional behavior/tactics.
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By Pat November 15, 2010 - 10:39 am
And that’s fair, and I’d agree. It’s unbecoming of a law enforcement professional.
My point was to inquire about the context and to suggest that fans don’t always hold themselves to the highest standards. Consider though that over 80,000 people attended that game, almost entirely without incident. On the whole, it’s a pretty good effort from everyone involved.
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By Titus November 14, 2010 - 11:09 pm
You know, in all fairness, this is a cop being an ass. I’m not really sure this counts as “brutality.” It counts as a lot of bad stuff, but I think “brutality” is when, e.g., he whales on the kid with a nightstick. This is just bullying—inexcusable, sanctionable, and inappropriate, but not necessarily “brutal.”
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By SDI November 14, 2010 - 11:30 pm
Call it whatever you want. It’s unacceptable. I have no idea why mounted police are even needed at a ND game.
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By DagerOne November 15, 2010 - 10:06 am
Best I’ve been able to ascertain, mounted police exist for visibility in two senses. First, the officers can see over a lot of tents, SUVs, etc. in the tailgate lots that they wouldn’t be able to do on foot. Second, more people can see them and take notice that they’re being watched. Whether we NEED police presence…well, that’s something else.
It’s NOT an issue of response time, obviously. They’d look like something out of a Warner Bros cartoon if they tried to cover any ground on concrete in those crowds.
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 10:12 am
I’d hate to see them try to handle a serious situation, given that they are amateurs.
http://www.sjcposse.org
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By tjak November 14, 2010 - 11:57 pm
I am just kind of happy we won the game. I have never been to a home game before, so this is new to me. Maybe you guys could of talked about how great this game was and then made an issue of these jackasses. Sorry guys I was on a high and came to your sight to see your take on the game and found this stuff. Maybe should have brought this up on Tuesday.
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 12:09 am
Well, to fully cover a great game, I wanted to spend some time on writing it up. So it’s still in the works. This took 3 minutes to post.
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By Bad Kermit November 15, 2010 - 12:22 am
I assume they arrested him because he has no soul.
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By daybreakboys November 15, 2010 - 5:37 am
Bad Kermit wins.
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By daybreakboys November 15, 2010 - 5:39 am
Maybe we can get that d!ckbag, Neil Young to write a whiny protest song about this.
/NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!
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By Danno27 November 15, 2010 - 7:26 am
Yeah I’m with tjak on this one – kind of confused. Did they arrest the kid? All he did was sort of stand there and look at the cop. what a weird video.
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By DagerOne November 15, 2010 - 7:41 am
My question is…what happened before the video? In order for someone to think “hey, I better get this on film” I have to believe they saw this escalating for one reason or another and for a bit of time before the filming started. We see the kid say one thing and then get shoved and eventually cuffed. What was the officer asking him to do, how many times had he been asked, etc.?
And I don’t see brutality or excessive force in any event. *shrugs*
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By DagerOne November 15, 2010 - 7:45 am
Watching it again, best I can tell is the officers on foot asked them to clear the way for the mounted officers and the kids refused?
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 9:08 am
I sent the video out a few cops I know (related to me), and they’ve all said the same thing: This makes zero sense. Even if the kid is mouthing off, and/or there is a reason to arrest the kid, the shoving makes no sense legally or tactically. If the cop wants to arrest the kid, just do it. If the kid is presenting a danger to the officers or to himself, there are appropriate ways to handle it. Shoving and yelling, “I haven’t ruined anything yet!” isn’t, shockingly, considered an “appropriate way to handle the situation” among actual law enforcement professionals I know.
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By Nate November 15, 2010 - 7:57 am
You know, I generally fall on the side of “law and order”, my sister being a cop and me in the military and all that. Generally I feel that the people who whine and complain about “the law” are doing so because they are doing something against it. That said, from what we see in the video, the cop’s out of line and it makes no sense. I’m with some of the others here–it LOOKS like the cop is being a dick and when the kid didn’t immediately comply with whatever, he cuffed him. If anything the other kid seemed to be more confrontational. Without a greater context, though, I can’t definitively say the cop did something wrong…just that it might look that way. With all the crap in recent years we’ve all heard/seen about ND/SB cops and excise police, it’s easy to assume something is up. I’d assume that too. All I’m saying is the video doesn’t have enough to it to say for sure.
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By domer.mq November 15, 2010 - 9:15 am
I’m quite pro-law enforcement. I’m related to plenty of law enforcement professionals. Actual professionals. My main criticism, for years, has been that the “law enforcement” folks walking around ND during game days have seriously lacks any professionalism. There were several things done wrong by this cop. He escalated a rather calm situation, he risked injury to a kid by shoving him, he apparently made the entire matter personal by yelling, “I haven’t ruined anything yet!”
This one instance is a small matter, but it’s the continuation of a pattern at ND that I find intolerable.
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By Joe Magarac November 15, 2010 - 11:45 am
FWIW, I don’t think that police officers are generally considered to be “professionals” in the sense that you are using that word. In a basic sense, a professional is anyone who does something for money, and in that sense cops are “professionals,” but so are NFL players and the sandwich artists at Subway. In a more elevated sense, a professional is someone who gets an extensive theoretical education and then advises people on how their real-life problems should be handled in accord with that theory (e.g., priests, doctors, lawyers). That’s not what cops do.
I don’t mean to be a tool by making this comment. I just think that police officers should be critiqued on grounds other than “professionalism.” The question for them is always: was their response appropriate to the situation? Here, I think the answer was “no.”
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 12:13 pm
That’s an interesting point of view, but I vehemently disagree with it. The role of police is to protect and serve the citizenry. The citizenry entrusts the police with a massive responsibility; one best not left to people who think they can approach it with anything failing professionalism.
Being a police officer isn’t anywhere near akin to making sandwiches or playing a game of football. It’s far more similar to being a lawyer, a surgeon, etc… and anyone who would insinuate otherwise does a disservice to the profession.
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By Nate November 15, 2010 - 7:07 pm
yeah, I agree–most of the activity (at least that you see in the news/ND blogs) shows ND/SB law enforcement more concerned with harassing students than it is stopping murders just yards from campus. It’s really easy to see this as a continuation of a bad pattern. It’s sad and I think there needs to be an independent review of the security activities around the ND campus on gameday.
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By Navy Guy November 15, 2010 - 9:39 am
I’m not an ND guy, but ND fans are rarely a problem, and the fan atmosphere in South Bend is fairly controlled and congenial. Do they need the horses, or is this just a nice place to take them out for a ride?
I’m also pro-law enforcement, but this cop is just being a tool. What exactly was this kid doing to deserve the shove? He doesn’t even have a beer in his hand.
Notice how the cop’s buddies bring the horses in to block the video. Must be part of the training.
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 9:46 am
I’m not sure how much training they actually get. For one, on the job application to be a mounted officer there, there is a question about whether or not the applicant has access to a horse. (So yay, neither the mounted cop or the horse are all that trained for crowd control.)
Here’s the actual application… (pdf)
http://www.sjcposse.org/posse_application.pdf
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By DagerOne November 15, 2010 - 10:18 am
I know it’s a perfectly acceptable term, but I still chuckled to see the application and see that they refer to themselves as a “posse”.
Heh. Posse.
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By Bus7 November 15, 2010 - 10:41 am
They’re profiling gingers
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By ActionPak1 November 15, 2010 - 10:54 am
lol
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By IrishMoon November 15, 2010 - 5:01 pm
Youtube is saying it’s a private video? Can it be public?
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By domer_mq November 15, 2010 - 5:08 pm
It’s not our video. I’d imagine the owner of the video made it private due to a pending lawsuit or legal issue.
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