Just a Hairy Special Snowflake supply clerk with no field experience, shooting an Asymetric carbine as a Try Hard. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.
"If I had a grandpa, he would look like Delbert Belton".
True story...and one I learned a lesson from:
I'm living and working in NY and get a summons for jury duty, requiring me to go in person to the courthouse to get released.
On the way to the subway I see two men fighting on the corner of Woodhaven Blvd and Jamaica Ave and one guy is really pouring it on the other.
I yelled at the guy to break it up and flashed a badge. Literally, the guy doing the beating looks at it and shouts "you're Treasury, you got nothing to do with this. I'll shove that badge up your ass."
I'm like shit. I gotta be in court in a half hour and now I'm in a jam. I can't shoot the guy and I don't have time to spend giving a statement at the precinct.
I swear this is true...I remembered in some movie that was popular back then that a character called for police and an ambulance. (Lethal Weapon, Dirty Harry?) The bad guy asked why he called for the ambulance and the cop said it was for him if he didn't quit what he was doing or something like that.
There was a phone booth feet away from the fight so I dialed 911, identified myself and asked for police and ambulance to come to the corner of Jamaica and Woodhaven where the fight was in progress. The guy heard me, stopped the beating and ran off, yelling that it was his brother-in-law. I don't remember what the beef was about...but I'm thinking it was about his sister, the wife of the one getting the beat down.
I got off easy that day and learned not to intervene if I wasn't going to fully engage. The fact of the matter was that prominent in the back of my mind in the instant was what would happen to my career and life if I end up fighting the guy, he starts getting the better of me and I have to (at least try to) draw my gun and end up killing him. I didn't see a lot of upside coming out of it. (Especially if I would have been the one who ended up shot with his own weapon.)
From that day on I became a lot more selective on engaging and getting involved in such matters , especially while armed...which was pretty much always.
Last edited by blues; 04-22-2018 at 08:19 AM.
There's nothing civil about this war.
A couple things
I’m talking more in generalities than absolutes
When I say i would intervene or act that’s not saying I would just walk up and shoot (besides a couple extreme examples)
cops don’t usually beat (what I consider beat on people at least) on people...a guy wrestling with a woman trying to get control with a strike here and there to get her to move or react then I would wait and watch for more info vs a guy on top of a woman going mma ground and pound on her, I’ll intervene and take my chances that it’s not a cop
A couple guys beating on another guy usually means at least one is putting the boots to him...Thats in the same catagory as beating someone with a bat or club as far as risk for serious injury or death so I’ll intervene and take my chances that they will stop and leave, stop and argue or stop and explain but at least they stopped or they could stop and attack me
I’m comfortable explaining myself to the proper people I’ve had to do it quite a few times (a few because I intervened on someone else’s behalf) over the years, while it’s scarier than the actual incident I’m comfortable with the process and my chances of favorable outcomes based on my judgement and actions
It sounds like you’ve thought about it and have considered at least some of the consequences. I hope it works out for you.
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My posts only represent my opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of my employer. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.
My posts only represent my personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official policies of any employer, past or present. Obvious spelling errors are likely the result of an iPhone keyboard.
I fully understand that intervening in situations could get me into trouble, in your instance unless the guy was putting the boots to the other guy while he’s down or bouncing his head off the curb then it’s just a fight to me and I don’t care...most grown men can’t throw a punch that will do anything more than just a nose or lip so if it’s fight other than watching I see no need to insert myself
I think I have thought it through completely, like I said I’m comfortable with my decisions whether they are correct or not
Hopefully it won’t have to work out for me anymore, I spent a little over 17 years repo’ing everything from buy here/pay here cars to heavy equipment almost exclusively in Detroit flint and Saginaw
Now I work on airplanes in the middle of nowhere Florida, my main concern now is keeping hogs off of 80 some acres of airport
wsr, I didn't mean my story to be a cautionary tale for you specifically. I was just using the conversation between you and DB as the basis for my post as it brought up the recollection.
It's a strange world and strange how things derive from it. Incidents like these are what prompted me to get into law enforcement to begin with.
1. 1977: Walking down the street with a couple of female co-workers in Ozone Park to go bowling in an after work league. A guy is beating a girl who he has across the hood of a car, and is alternately hitting her and whipping her with a belt. I run at him yelling if you want to fight somebody, fight me. Fortunately, the guy is startled and backs off...making excuses for himself.
The girl tells me to mind my own business..."it's a boyfriend, girlfriend thing".
The two women I'm with make me out like a hero and call themselves "Charlie's Angels." I say that night if I'm gonna do stupid shit like this I'd better start going to a dojo. Which I do. A Shotokan dojo on Queens Blvd for the next few years. Fought in NY state championship as a low level green belt a year or so later. (Lost to guy who came third for that division.)
2. 1978: My former girlfriend is mugged and severely beaten in Brooklyn by a thug which causes her to be hospitalized at Kings County Hospital for a day or two. I'm so upset for not being there to protect her that I can barely see straight. The cops at the Snyder Av. precinct caught me taking down details from the mug books about mopes she thought might be the perp. Long story short, cop says rather than getting myself in a jam, if I want to do something, why not join the force. I hadn't thought of going into law enforcement (seriously) prior to that.
It became my mission from that day.
Strange what the world holds in store for us...unbeknownst to us at the time.
There's nothing civil about this war.
I’ve been retired from LE for 10 years. My personal decision tree is pretty straight forward. If it’s not worth killing someone over, and dealing with all that entails, then I’m going to be a good witness. You will never know the outcome ahead of time, so you better be prepared for where it could end up.
If I intervene today, I’ve already decided that I’m prepared to take it all the way. The circumstances where I’d be prepared to do that is a pretty small set.