and more critical than not obstructing a critical care paramedic doing his job:
Maurice White, Jr. is the critical care paramedic seen in the video. In a statement, White says the trooper was upset because the ambulance driver didn't yield when the trooper approached from behind. White says the ambulance driver, Paul Franks, didn't see the trooper.
The trooper pulled Franks over and was going to write a citation for failure to yield, but White says he tried to tell them they were on an emergency call and needed to take the patient to the hospital and that's when the trooper attempted to arrest White for obstructing an officer.
A brief struggle followed, at which point the trooper grabbed White by the throat. Davis' cell phone captured this incident on video. White says the trooper later told him they could continue on to the hospital, but that he would be under arrest once they got there. White was never arrested, but says troopers told him he should be prepared to turn himself in if a warrant was issued.
You could have a dying relative, but what really matters to many of these thugs is that you respect their authoriteh. How dare the EMTs not stop for the police and see what the police want? Who do they think they are, expecting the police to leave them alone while they transport a woman to the hospital? The uniformed heros pulled up behind them, and expected them to pull over and wait while the cop asked them why they, driving an ambulance, might have been in such a rush to get somewhere.
It'll be interesting to see who the prosecutor sides with here, since the EMTs were responding to an emergency call, and the police were not. If a private citizen caused an unreasonable delay, it'd likely be a serious offense since most states criminalize interference with an emergency responder. However, as we all know by now, the police and most district attorneys have a certain... "understanding" of how things operate.
I hope the EMT has a good lawyer.
This is just plain stupid. The police supervisors should be all over that trooper for pulling that kind of shit. Even among themselves there must be some rules.
They didn't do anything against their own, so they didn't break of the rules that exist among theirselves.
My point is that police officers everywhere must and do recognize some limits on their authority. When one so bviously crosses the line, it calles into question where teh line is and reduces the practical amount of authority they can exercise without question from the larger community. THey ought to have a self preservation motive to police their own behavior against the worst offenders lest they all be called to account.
I understand what you're saying, but you don't seem to realize just how little accountability there is for cops in many jurisdictions. Often, nothing short of pistol-whipping an old lady for standing a bus stop or throwing an infant like a football across an intersection would be enough to get them immediately in trouble with everyone in authority. In Chicago, it took a cop being videotaped nearly beating a tiny female bartender half to death for not serving him more alcohol in order to get the local DA to roar "ohhh we're prosecuting this SOB and everyone who helped him!"