Cop & Kids Video

By now most of you have seen the viral video of an El Paso police officer pulling out a weapon and pointing it at a crowd of kids during an arrest. The cops' actions were in no way reasonable or proportionate to the situation.

And as typical with these scenarios, Facebook and the rest of social media has simplified this incident down to its dumbest common denominator: You're either with cops or against them.

And as you'd expect there's an "I Support Cops" meme that everyone thinks shows what a great citizen and American you are.

But lets speak a little truth to power shall we? Identifying a mistake made by an officer doesn't mean you're against cops. It means you want better from them because we are the safest community in the country.

If you take that rationale out to its illogical conclusion, anyone who ever criticized the quarterback of their favorite NFL franchise for throwing an interception, or bumbling a play would therefore automatically be a fan of the opposing team.

Stupid, right?

But that is what all these "I heart Cops" memers are implying all over social media.

The reality is this - those little kids in the video need a good ol' fashioned ass-whooping for the way they behaved. Those kids are a reflection of their parents and their parents and the elders in their family should be completely embarrassed by their behavior. They have failed those kids and those kids need to learn a health respect for authority and need a lesson on how to comport themselves in society.

But they should never be taught to not question authority.

Those kids were awful and I don't know anyone that saw the video below that doesn't agree. The worst of the crowd was the mother, who is now all over television trying to rewrite history like she was some do-gooder. She was an awful example to her own children and an awful example of how a parent should behave in that situation.

I guarantee you if I was in that situation as a kid, I'd want the cops to get me in the back of a unit as quickly as possible because my parents would beat the brown off of me for acting like that. The cops would be pulling a gun on them because my dad would have his belt off and my mom would have a chancla in her hand and I'd be getting a Summer Slam-style beat down from my parents for acting like an ass in public.

However, the facts are what the facts are. There was a crowd of disrespectful little brats who were frankly playing off of each other and trying to show off (something you often do in the barrio to cement your place amongst your peers) and a mother who is, well, a terrible mother.

But as bad as the behavior of the children and the mother were, the facts are it was a group of unarmed children that were name-calling a police officer.

They are kids. They do dumb things because they are kids and are learning. There isn't a one of you reading this that hasn't done something as a kid that you don't regret.

YOU SIMPLY DON'T PULL A GUN OUT ON UNARMED CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY ARE CALLING YOU NAMES.

Period.

The officer was in a situation he didn't want to be in. It certainly doesn't feel good when people are calling you names. It was probably hot that day and you've got kids calling you names and an adult female shouting at you.

But threatening deadly force was neither reasonable nor proportionate against a group of unarmed children that were name-calling.

If it were, then there would be a lot of kindergarten teachers pulling out heat every time their classroom gets unruly right around nap time.

Criticism of one cop doesn't mean you're anti-cop and if you think that, then there's something wrong with you. I mean that - there is something seriously wrong with you if you believe that you should blindly and universally support a police force under any circumstance.

Ask yourselves, what if he had discharged that weapon? Would you be okay with a cop shooting at unarmed children? Then why are you okay with him threatening to use deadly force?

Hell EPPD can't even use pepper spray on a minor deliberately. As a matter of policy they recognize the difference between a child and an adult.

But another disturbing thing in the video is the officer who goes after the person filming the video. He was recording the incident. That is 100% legal. Sure he was saying stupid stuff, but we have a little thing called the First Amendment. He wasn't breaking any laws and he wasn't interfering with the situation, he was far enough back to catch video.

The officer turns toward him only after the kid says he's going to "put a complaint" on them. Instantly he's grabbed by the officer and cuffed. THAT is something to be concerned about. Its abuse of authority.

Its also a sign that the cops had lost their cool. They are humans, it happens. But they are fully-trained peace officers. Their job is to deescalate a situation, not make it worse. At the end of the video, more officers arrive and frankly, they show the professionalism of the EPPD we are used to seeing. The situation was much worse when they arrived because the kids and mom were even more agitated because the officer had already pulled the gun on the kids. They arrived on the scene and were much cooler and immediately started to deescalate the situation.

If you don't think the officer that pulled the gun needs more training, then what do you think of the other officers?

Put your memes away, - being critical of a cop who pulls out a gun on children isn't being anti cop. I know a lot of officers who can count the number of times in their career they've pulled their weapon from their holster and it was never at a kid.

Believe it or not, you can be sophisticated enough to think the kids were being bad, the mom is awful, and the cop was wrong to pull a gun on children all at the same time.

The bigger issue, as pointed out by my friend Mark Alvarado, is how is that community repaired from this incident? There has to be a reason the crowd felt the way they did. And police should be able to do their jobs freely. Community policing is about trust. This is where leadership comes into play and that is what is needed right now.




Also I should acknowledge that EPPD is handling this better than they've handled situations in the past. Remember a while back when they were blocking people from their social media pages if someone was critical of the force?

They aren't doing that anymore.