“The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police Department in Boston is currently under fire, after video of an officer hitting an unarmed black woman with a baton on a bus went viral Friday,” thinkprogress.com reports. “When witnesses — the majority of whom were black — attempted to de-escalate the situation, the unnamed officer pulled his gun on them.” Uh, that’s not what I’m seeing . . .

It looks to me like the officer pulled his gun in response to the violence of the woman he’s attempting to subdue (whom he approached in regards to a theft). Which doesn’t look like the ideal response. If nothing else, drawing a firearm in such close quarters during hand-to-hand combat removes one of the officer’s hands from use and puts the cop’s life in danger (via a gun grab). Armchair quarterback. Yada yada yada. Another excellent video for training cops – and collecting cash from the city.

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47 COMMENTS

    • The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Police Department in Boston is currently under fire, after video of an officer hitting an unarmed black woman with a baton on a bus went viral Friday…

      Just feeding the BLM sedition. Why is the race of the criminal mentioned, but not the race of the police officer? Why is it relevant that an arrest-resisting thief is black, but it is not relevant that the lawful police officer is also black?

      Oh, right: because the source being linked is Think Progress.

      I see nothing really wrong with the officer’s actions, other than the tactical issue as pointed out by Farago.

    • Cops got their current reputation the hard way — they earned it.

      When the thin blue line starts cleaning their own ranks, they will earn a different kind of respect. But as long as they cover up for each other, no matter how heinous their brothers act, this is what they get.

      • The smartest thing I’ve heard anybody say all day…….. Black or white it doesn’t matter the race injustice of any type is inexcusable……. Call 911???? Yea after I handle the problem myself, they can clean up the mess…….

    • At 34 seconds into the video, the officer pulled his gun on the second woman from the crowd (in yellow) to close distance on him while he was attempting to subdue the woman in the back of the bus using simple force.

      Their was a crowd present. They were jeering at him.

      Under the totality of circumstance, the officer had the right to use defensive display of his firearm to draw a hard line for his safety against the jeering crowd – of which two had closed distance on him

      He shot no one.

      He setup tactical and legal deliberate indifference if anyone was to -after seeing him point his gun – aggress/close distance on him anyways. That person would deserve to get shot because of the threat that person would then be showing – manifest intent of coming to kill the officer. I see your gun. I dont care. Im coming anyways. Extremely dangerous for the officer (or CHL holder.)

      He cleared the isle with his defensive display which added to his safety. What he did was legal and tactically smart in his situation.

      The officer was using simple force – not very well – to detain the woman. He never pointed it at her.

      • This action would have had more validity if he wasn’t beating a seated, unarmed woman with a baton and screaming like a crazy-person.

        On paper what you are saying makes sense, but taken in the context of the Cop’s behavior, it is just extra-damning.

        I’m all for giving good cops the benefit of the doubt, but this guy was just hysterical and violent from the get-go.

        • After re-watching the video, I realized it wasn’t the officer screaming, it was someone off camera. That and seeing (as was pointed out below) that he only drew when the crowd came aggressively at his blind side and never pointed the weapon at the woman, I am forced to retract my earlier statement.

          Its an imperfect world, but this cop did a pretty good job. He showed a lot of restraint.

  2. She didn’t even end up face down on the ground. I’d say that’s pretty good for her and shows some restraint from the officer.

  3. This sort of inner city attitude on display is why many big city cops have gone to the go slow, extra careful, better to let the perp walk than risk getting hurt or prosecuted. The result of go slow has been an explosion of violence and murder in several large cities this Summer. Look at Baltimore for the best example, and in another ten or twenty years it will look like Detroit.

  4. Video looks chopped to a point that was convenient for the lady.

    I think he put his hand on the gun in case the people coming at him tried to, not as much for her. Charging an officer is overall a bad idea and can get a weapon pulled on you.

    The plus side for the officers is that this should be a well documented resisting arrest case. Not going to say it was clean on the officers part but she definitely wasn’t going peacefully.

  5. Arresting women is the worst, in almost all cases you look like an a-hole, having back-up is vital to gaining control quickly, the longer you play grab-ass, the faster it goes downhill.

  6. I never saw a reason for the officer to draw his gun, in fact it seemed like a really bad idea and I think he recognized that as well. But then again, I never saw a reason for him to be so gentle with the woman either.
    Obviously I don’t know the totality of the circumstances leading up to the arrest, but it appears, from the video, that the officer was either unwilling or unable to physically subdue this woman, even after he was assaulted by her.
    I’m often on the side of the victim in the case of a perception of police brutality, but man, this is just the opposite. The officer looks confused on what to do, and I get that, I never want to hit a woman either. But if, for some reason, I had my baton out and she grabbed it and hit me the way she did him, I would hope to recognize that as the threat it was, and take her down with a throw or a hit, preferably the throw. I would hope.
    Also, there was no “attempt to die-escalate the situation”, and for thinkprogress to even suggest it completely betrays their illegitimacy.

    • Prior to him drawing his firearm the crowd kept getting closer and closer to him(the woman in yellow was within grabbing distance). Having the firearm out caused them to step back. I would not condemn the cop for that action.

      Though I would have recommended calling backup, and waiting it out while keeping her controlled. But we don’t know all the details, and it’s easy to armchair quarterback when you aren’t on one of the cops in the most threatening environments for a police officer(arresting a woman)

      • You know I think you have a good point. He does look back at the crowd several times after he immediately draws his gun. I don’t think people getting close to you is the same thing as presenting a deadly threat, but in this instance, where he was already in a physical confrontation (which I still maintain he should have been much more aggressive with), and he couldn’t really focus on the crowd at the same time, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s not what I would have done, but I’m old enough to know I get it wrong sometimes too.

    • Not being there no one can say much except he was beating her because she was very physically resisting arrest and he pulled the gun when other passengers started to aggressively approach him. In a confined area this cop was willing to use the gun to warn off the other passengers and let them know he would shoot them if he felt threatened.threatened. Thats why the other passengers wisely backed off

  7. I see a LOT of restraint, probably more than should have been used. If he hadn’t pulled his gun he probably would have been attacked by the mob closing in. She didn’t get clubbed, tasered, pepper sprayed, shot, or face planted. What’s the problem? Oh yeah, she’s part of the “protected class” and should have been allowed to go with an apology from the pig hassling her.

  8. Can’t believe so many idiots in one place:

    Those people that came towards the officer’s blind side as the woman was struggling with him…to help him subdue her? I think not!

    Those people who kept yelling “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”…to the officer! Yeah, like that’s going to happen…an officer dropping his gun because some bystander tells him to…these people have been watching too many “politically correct” cop shows on TV!

  10. So a woman is allegedly caught stealing something, she is actively resisting arrest by the cop, punching, kicking, and struggling with the cop over control of his baton; the cop draws his gun in response to the crowd on the bus closing closer to him, with his knowledge that most of the crowd is hostile towards him as the”bad guy”, and according to the report, the cop is in the wrong.

    Wow! Well, as we come to the end of our civilization, the barbarians have free reign, but they are no longer outside the gates as a foreign invader, they are inside the walls welcomed with open arms, being given “space to destroy”.

    “Great civilizations are rarely conquered, they usually commit suicide” anonymous post.

    • >>the cop draws his gun in response to the crowd on the bus closing closer to him

      This is what it looks like to me, too. That one guy got a little too close, and given one hand was already occupied trying to restrain the woman, he had little choice but to pull his gun to stop the mob’s advance.

      O2

      • I agree This was a cop that realized he was about to be beaten by the crowd if he didn’t do something to get them to back down.

  11. You guys are missing the social implications here. The woman is black, the cop is blue, so of course it’s a racial incident.

  13. Just more evidence that citizens should be armed, not government employees. It is well past time to disarm cops and to repeal laws that keep citizens from carrying weapons.

    • Huh? I don’t see how this is an example of where police should not have guns. As I posted above, I don’t think he needed to draw his weapon, but to his credit, he didn’t point it at the crowd, didn’t specifically threaten anyone with it, and then safely holstered the weapon. Why should his right be removed?

    • I was 14. 5’11 and 180 pounds. On a ride along with a local cop. In the day when cops carried revolvers and had motorolas. Cop gets a domestic disturbance call from what is known as section 8 housing today.

      We walk up to the open front door of the place and there is a woman on her back on the kitchen floor. 225-250 in a moo-moo. Man on her chest with his knees and trying to push a large butcher knife into her throat.

      She’s losing the fight and the point is just an inch or so from her throat. There’s not a doubt in my mind that if we hesitated she’d have been dead.

      We scooped him, about 160, under each armpit and whip craked him into the wall. He drops the knife and we have him pinned.

      Boom. Down I go. Hit hard from behind. All I see above me is acres of fat commando ass and legs under that moo moo. I just get my head moved before her hoof crashes down on it.

      Her husband is fighting the cops and I’m fighting her. Hard. The only advantage I have over her is reach and endurance.

      I didn’t see a fight that hard again til the military.

    • I admit to being popped a few times by women myself. But in hind sight, it was always because I was not treating them the same as I would if they were a man of the same size. It’s just hard for me to be that physically aggressive with a woman. It looks to me like the officer in the video is doing the same thing. I would have rather seen him be much more aggressive from the outset.
      I do get that, of course, if he would have done that everyone would be decrying him for police brutality, but obviously they are going to do that anyway.

    • It doesn’t take much time working as a bouncer to learn that disorderly women are FAR more difficult to deal with than men. They know they can get away with far worse behavior than a guy with much lighter consequences. He was certainly easier on her than some I had to deal with. Looks like another instance where it could have been better, but it ended the way it needed to end and everybody walked away without an immediate need to visit the hospital. That counts for a lot.

  16. Might as well toss anything from thinkprogress in the $hitter when it comes to credibility-

    Its a Soros funded progtard propaganda site- its as culpable in the Ferguson Effect as any other leftist rag.
    The damage done to trust in the police will last for generations, thanks to Obama and his dirty civil rights department escalating every disagreement to a racial issue.

    http://rickwells.us/white-house-black-power-strategy-session-with-black-lies-matter-plotting-more-regime-driven-chaos-to-come/

  17. Tactically the cop was in a difficult situation. It appears he drew the gun to prevent the hostile crowd from making things more difficult. what kills me is all the cell phone recordings and the ‘gotcha” moment that these idiots were trying to create. They should simply get off the bus and move along.

  21. I would have beat a hasty retreat and called for backup.Where was the chick going to go? The level of retardation of yelling at a cop to “drop the gun” is mind-boggling. THOSE azzwholes are lucky the cop didn’t shoot one of them…messing with a heavily armed cop is not too bright-black or white. Was the cop “right”? Beats me…

  22. The cop should have called back up and waited. He is stupid for drawing his gun in such an environment. If he was worried about a hostile crowd then he should have waited. The victim! what was stolen and did it justify this extreme action? The cop yelling drop the gun is a tactic they use to justify them murdering people, “they had a gun”. I was a cop and my best friend is retired cop.
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