I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe that happened; maybe you’ve seen something else. It’s possible it’s all a lie, which would be an abuse of power. It’s possible that what happened meets the probable cause standard needed for whatever charges were made, but falls short of what’s needed for guilty convictions in court. It’s possible what happened meets the probable cause standard and could possibly meet the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, but the charges are still dropped or reduced due to negative press and lawyers being lawyers.
Do you extend that to citizens? The girl with two black eyes can introduce one as evidence, but the second is just proof that she didn’t learn her lesson? The clerk that gets shot and killed should have taken cover behind the pole instead of arguing with the robber?
Edit(thought I’d responded):
No, but the recognized standard is “probable cause.”
Exactly and you’re choosing to run with the police officers story in support, which is contested via eye witnesses and doesn’t make logical sense by itself. Your prerogative but my whole point is that ramrodding a charge on a lie, thereby abusing power and public trust to side-step probable cause, is a problem. And I would extrapolate this response to the rest of your reply reshaping the context.
Do you happen to have access to the exact accounts of the eyewitnesses? I haven’t seen them published.
How many eyewitnesses are there?
Did they witness the same events during the same time frame?
Are there at least two eyewitnesses to any particular time frame that agree?
Right now, I need some eyewitness quotes, or the eyewitnesses are little different from the mysterious and all knowing “They.”
The only evidence that I have heard is the pants of the officer who claimed to have been dragged by Scottie’s car.
Instead there have knee-jerk responses around “their jobs are hard even if it is true so it doesn’t matter”, “we all make mistakes but accountability should be different in this case”, “only the police are capable of telling the truth”, “default to the police story even if it’s wrong to set an example for the bigger picture” et cetera. I’m paraphrasing, but see these sentiments as part of the broader problem.
As mentioned, police are a vital force for society, they do have a tough job (self-chosen) and deserve respect for the majority of what they collectively do. They do not deserve blind trust or especially suggested hall passes for optics, however. Like any role with power over major consequences, they deserve recognition for holding a place of great respect by filling it with integrity.
And, as mentioned, not all police are bad. Most are good. Police who make mistakes are good, but made a mistake and hopefully owned it.
Police who confuse their own orders, grab moving cars or trip and make up a story about being dragged depending on whose story you believe (out of spite? Embarrassment? Anger? Pride?) and then run with bullshit charges that could effectively end a life are not good. And the ability to hide behind a line of defense and support under false pretenses for something so egregious is not good. And appears to be what we are seeing.
It is problematic, and even if it took 190 posts to agree I’m glad we can.
From the article, this eyewitness doesn’t seem to supply much of a defense to clearing Scottie of all responsibility.
"According to ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington, who witnessed the incident, Scheffler was trying to drive around the crash scene on a median. A police officer instructed Scheffler to stop, but Scheffler continued to drive about 10 to 20 yards toward the entrance.
At one point, an officer attached himself to the side of Scheffler’s car. Scheffler stopped his car as he turned into the entrance of Valhalla Golf Club.
After about 20 to 30 seconds, Scheffler rolled down his window to talk to the officer. The officer grabbed Scheffler’s arm to pull him out of the vehicle, according to Darlington. The officer reached inside the vehicle to open the door, and once Scheffler was pulled out, he was pushed against the car and placed in handcuffs."
In the dark and rain, with flashing lights, with a sole eyewitness, any attorney worth his salt could throw all kind of doubt to the accuracy of a single eyewitness.
Considering the chaos, two, or more would add tremendous credibility to the account of a single eyewitness.
Cute. But very lame as an analogy against more witnesses being a better case.
As I said 30 or 40 times, Scottie should be ticketed for failure to stop. Assuming the original story and basis for my post is accurate. The assault charge is my contention. It was a dumbass move to grab a rolling car. This is actually my point.
Considering developments in the story, the whole thing is bullshit. Scottie was told by a uniformed officer to proceed as is apparently standard for golfers at PGA tournaments, and then his car was tackled by a plain clothes officer in a yellow vest. This would be understandably confusing. A cop just told me to go and now a parking lot attendant is attempting to wrestle my car. Probable cause? I don’t think so.
Anyways, I looked in to Zecarlos claims of withdrawn charges amd saw that both Scottie and the officer have allegedly stated they do not believe the charges should continue, but it’s too late. They were brought and now the DA decides, and I would circle back to judiciously following best practice in making arrests to begin with and expecting best practice to be the accepted norm. False alarm, I hope, is not best practice to you. For fun make an erroneous 911 call today. Maybe report a bomb in a government building. For extra fun, after you’ve been arrested and charged, let everybody know you’re sorry and that you decided you didn’t mean it. Let me know how it plays out …… for you.
Out of all of the cases where you could make a case against QI, what is making you choose this one as your hill to die on?
There are a lot of cases with a lot more known facts and a lot less possibility for good old fashioned bribery. I’m not suggesting that a rich public figure would EVER change people’s minds about what happened with a bag of money. I’m merely suggesting that if someone ran me over, the best way to get me to decide that I wasn’t run over would be with a bag of money.
Don’t trust the media, but trust the police report? Lol, wut? You don’t think think cops exaggerate, and flat out lie on those?
How bout you watch the videos, see shefflers car going 3mph and then stopping immediately when officer dumbdumb bangs on the window. This cop was a POS before this incident, as shown by his long disciplinary record, and this incident is just additional proof of that.
We are likely closer than you think. But if there is an encounter with a police official and the officer is knocked off his feet and uniform ruined and with some injuries regardless how minor, feeling like you ignored his directives, then you are likely going to get charged with an assault. That doesn’t mean you will be found guilty in court, or that the case will even get to court, but you are very likely to be arrested.
Just keep in mind, no one but the officer (and maybe Scottie) know how fast the car was going when the officer put his arm to prevent Scottie from driving further. Most logical guess would be zero or extremely slow, unless the officer was a double digit IQ moron.
How about we ask someone who has lived the job? I will be satisfied with his opinion. @marine77 are you willing to comment?
I particularly like this topic. I can think of a “best practice” that needs more consideration much more than this minor issue.
When driving down the interstate with cars going 70+mph, if a patrolman believes that you are speeding or driving careless he will pull you over to the side of the interstate. How about pulling the car over at the next exit? And get completely out of the proximity of cars and trucks speeding by, even illegally by not observing the “move over law”, some less than a foot away. One mistake would likely kill someone. The “move over law” was great improvement, but a pullover completely out of the proximity of 70+mph cars and trucks would be less risking.
I had a flat tire on the interstate and have never felt so vulnerable in my life changing the tire on the side of the road. At least it was around noon on a sunny day.
When an officer is taken to the ground and suffers some injury and, in this case ruins his pants, is the party who seemed to ignore a directive from the officer likely to be charged with assault?
Not necessarily… could fall under various levels of resisting. In 15 years, I had zero use of force complaints but had a shit ton of resisting arrests… never got injured though. If there’s evidence of a suspect trying to injure an officer purposely or does so in an attempt to flee then yes.