…Like I stated before I don’t agree with the arrest on the spot…
…the officer was well within his rights and was not abusing his power.
It seems you have a contradiction to deal with.
If you “don’t agree with the arrest on the spot” you must have a reason why. I think you stated you would’ve handled it in a different way. Fine. I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you disagree with the arrest on the spot because it was unnecessary and THEREFORE an abuse of power.
I’m just connecting the dots.[/quote]
I love these types of discussion as we are handling ourselves like adults and not attacking anybody personally. The reason I don’t agree with the arrest on the spot is because I don’t know if the salt on the burger caused the officer to get sick. We don’t have the officers side or the report. We don’t even know if the officer tasted salt.
If it was salt then I can’t get past the point that the officer took more than two bites to figure out something was wrong with the burger. That would also make me believe that it wasn’t salt on the burger like the cook said. I would not be surprised in the least that when more details of the case come out from the police department that a co-worker who doesn’t hate cops told the officer that his co-workers messed with the hamburger intentionally. We are getting all of our information from the suspect.
You are very much speculating that I think the arrest was unnecessary and there was an abuse of power. The officer was well within his rights to make the arrest by the powers granted to him by the State of Georgia. Here in Texas I can arrest you for anything illegal with the exception of speeding and having an open container. That means I can arrest you for not using your turn signal, having a brake light out, or any other traffic violation you can think of. Is it feather legged.
Sure but if I do it I’m not abusing my power and there would be a good reason for me to have to do that meaning there are some extenuating circumstances like you’re fleeing the scene of a misdemeanor crime where I can’t arrest you if I didn’t witness it or if your going to commit another crime if you’re not taken into custody for the traffic violation.
Hell, I hate cops but I’ll concede that while I’m not on your side here, there’s at least a little bit of room for gentlemen to disagree. I think yours is a reasonable position to have.
mike[/quote]
That’s fine Mike. Your entitled to your opinion. I don’t know why you hate cops but I’m sure you have a good reason. Everybody hates cops until they need one. “note: message forwarded to the Idaho State Patrol”. lol just kidding with ya.
“Doing the crime”? Holy Fuck! Oversalting a hamburger may or may not be a CRIME but arresting someone which includes handcuffing and overnight detention in a county jail for doing so is so grossly out of line and preposterous it defies description.
George Orwell? Are you following this case?
Now you’ve said you’re a police officer and if so you know what it’s like inside a jail. Now you tell me that if YOUR 18 year old daughter oversalted a hamburger at her job at Wendy’s and another officer cuffed her and put her in jail overnight for doing so, WTF would your feelings be right about now? Somewhere in the 180 degree range? Answer this question truthfully. If you say, “No, I’d be perfectly fine with it. She deserved it”, then you’re full of the very bottom layer of stuff in the primary treatment tank at your local wastewater treatment plant.
Nope, I’ll tell what you’d say. You’d say “That fuckin’ Lawson (or whoever, just picked that name out of the blue). He aint got no business locking up my daughter for THAT. HE REALLY STEPPED OVER THE LINE THIS TIME. Don’t worry, I’ll make him pay”.
Now I will concede that there may be more to this than the news report outlined. And if that’s the case and some diabolical misdeed was done I will change my tune and humbly apologize. I mean it.[/quote]
What do you think happens when someone commits a crime. They get arrested. She would have been arrested later when the grand jury indicted her and issued a warrant. The crime wasn’t salting the burger it was serving the over salted burger. For crying out loud it’s McDonalds. How many billions of dollars do they have? They can’t afford to throw away a 50 cent piece of meat than risk a lawsuit for pushing someones blood pressure through the roof or get arrested for serving the tampered with burger.
The crime is reckless not intentionally or knowingly. I laugh at lawsuits all the time then crap my pants when they win. Take the cigarettes lawsuit. Don’t people know that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. If people intentionally do things to their body then they should have no recourse. This girl did something to another person’s body.
Yes I would be pissed off at the officer if it was my daughter and it was totally unintentional but the problem here is the meat should have been throw away and they didn’t do it. The salting, if it was even salt, was accidental but the giving it to a member of the public was reckless. I’d be pissed off at my daughter for serving the burger because I’m on who believes that people should own up to their mistakes and decisions they make.
I believe something can be “legal” for an officer to do, i.e., your above examples, but still be an abuse of power.
To use your example, on a sunny afternoon my 67 year old saint of a mother is arrested by you for not using a turn signal when making a right hand turn at a remote west Texas four way gravel road intersection where you can see to the horizons in every direction and there are absolutely no vehicles in sight anywhere (save yours but you’re hiding behind the Wall Drug billboard).
You immediately pull her over. Handcuff her. Read her her rights. Put her in your squad car and take her to Alpine - 75 miles away. Leave her car sitting at the edge of the road. She spends the night in jail and is arraigned by the judge the next morning for failure to use a turn signal.
Did you just commit a legal act? YES, I guess so according to what you posted above.
Did you just abuse your power? YES, regardless of what you posted above.[/quote]
Push I agree with you 100% on the example of your mother. That would be an abuse of authority but not to the point where the officers actions were deemed illegal or unconstitutional and open the officer up to termination and the department to liability. There are differences between abusing your power in the minds of people (such as your mother’s example) and official oppression/acting under color of law/violating someone’s constitutional rights.
If your example really happened then I would be leading the charge in saying what the officer did was F*%ked up but the officer would still be within his authority. For the record I don’t think that would ever happen. Texas law enforcement is given the authority to arrest people for minor traffic violations as a tool to accomplish other goals. It is not to use as a crutch when you’re having a bad day and want to make someone else have a bad day.
That would be totally ridiculous and uncalled for. I don’t see what the officer did in this case as unreasonable but that’s my opinion. I also think it would have been reasonable to write the report, file the charges, and let the courts decide if the girl needed to sit in jail. But of course it all comes back to the fact that we don’t have any first hand knowledge of the case.
Sure I know that Push. You may have gotten me confused. That’s what I was referring to by filing the case at large and forwarding it to the DA’s office. Arrest warrants are typically issued after indictment though. That’s why you see all these celebrities turning themselves in and posting bail, ala Mike Vick.
I assure you my friend that I am a well grounded police officer who believes in the spirit of the law which is what a lot of this discussion is based upon. Laws are written in black and white but the spirit of the law is what should be enforced.
[quote]reznor wrote:
Union City Police public information officer George Louth said she was charged with the misdemeanor reckless conduct because she served it anyway “without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it.” She may have accidentally over salted the burger.[/quote]
If it was actually just a salty burger, salt is an emetic, meaning it makes you puke, so it doesn’t really mean that anything was dangerously wrong with the burger just because porky puked after eating it. It’s a good thing puking doesn’t cause serious harm because I know a lot of people have done a fair amount of that during their college years.
While some folks might be overly anxious to find abuse of authority, others are far too anxious to find that police actions are always justified.
There was no need to arrest the girl, immediately, except that the cop was angry. He apparently let his personal feelings drive his use of authority. After cooling down, if there were grounds for arrest, such as serious tampering, he could certainly have done so.
Sure Vroom. I can totally see that happening. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time. One thing though has anybody actually seen a photo of the officer. Everybody seems to think he is fat because he ate at McDonalds.
[quote]PGA wrote:
Scotacus wrote:
Intentionally eating something that tastes bad/wrong seems to go completely against human nature, so I’ll side with the cop on this one.
This makes ABSOLUTELY no sense. Why the HELL would you side with some dumb ass that kept eating something that “tastes bad/wrong.”[/quote]
My point was that if it was just salt, as the employee claimed, then it would have been tasted immediately and likely spit out. If the cop, or anyone, tasted something that was immediately bad/wrong/suspicious it is just human nature to immediately spit it out/stop eating.
The article didnt state that the officer found the burger immediately suspicious but kept eating anyway, which is what the employee, and you, is implying. So I’ll side with the cop on this one, assuming he is not a suicidal, masochistic idiot, which is what youd have to assume to think he would just keep eating something that was obviously tainted.
