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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Operating within police policy in black and white

I didn't go looking for this story, it found me during my morning blog stroll on al.com with the headline Woman leads Huntsville Police on slow speed chase around Target Shopping Center, charged with attempted murder (updated).  

Sounds sensational doesn't it?  Well it's not.  Once you get past the headline and go inside the story, HPD was called after reports of a woman driving erratically in the parking lot of the Westside Shopping Center.  According to the al.com report she appeared to ram a police car and attempted to run down a police officer,  shots were fired by the police officer, they missed.  I'm glad the shot fired didn't hit an innocent bystander, but I digress.  

WHNT 19 reports on the Wild Night at Huntsville Shopping Center  click here to watch full raw video, woman rams car officer shoots in Target Parking lot.    The video is about 5 minutes from start to finish.  IMHO it shows a woman making the HPD officers look like the Keystone Cops.  IMHO the only ones in danger of being murdered were the shoppers at the shopping center being hit by a stray bullet, but that's just me.  I report, you decide.


Compare the arrest of the woman in the above incident to that of  of 80 year old William Fraizer(pictured above) who filed an eight million dollar excessive force and brutality claim after his arrest for attempting to elude police.

This is the video of Frazier's arrest narrated by the City Attorney .  Please watch from beginning to end, about 6 minutes.

This is a photo of William Frazer after his arrest.

Allegations of police brutality by concerned citizens were dismissed by the District Attorney's office and the Mayor, who said police operated within policy.

Looks like there are two different policies to me.

What say you?

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