NFL Player pulled over while Mom in law Dies.
 

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle stood in front of a dozen news cameras this afternoon at police headquarters to apologize for the behavior of an officer who stopped a family outside a hospital emergency room.

Kunkle said Officer Robert Powell has been placed on paid administrative leave in connection with an incident last week in which he stopped a family rushing to visit a dying mother, detaining them for 13 minutes to write a traffic ticket.

“His behavior in my opinion, did not exhibit the common sense, discretion, the compassion that we expect our officers to exhibit,” the chief told a packed audience of media outlets that included Inside Edition.

During the traffic stop, caught on the officer’s in-car camera, Powell berated the driver, 26-year-old NFL running back Ryan Moats, and threatened him with arrest for running a traffic light.

“I can screw you over,” said Powell, 25. “I’d rather not do that.”

At one point during today’s news conference, Kunkle seemed to restrain himself from being even more candid with his views on the incident.

“When we in the command staff reviewed the tapes,” he said, “we were embarrassed, disappointed — it’s hard to find the right words and still be professional in my role as a police chief.”

The chief also praised Moats and his family for how they handled the officer’s behavior.

“They exercised extraordinary patience, restraint, dealing with the behavior of our officer,” Kunkle said. “At no time did Mr. Moats identify himself as an NFL football player or expect any kind of special consideration. He handled himself very, very well.”

Moats rolled through a red light as he and his wife were en route to Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano. A Dallas police squad car pulled their SUV over near the hospital's emergency entrance.

Moats and his wife implored the officer to let them hurry on to the bedside of her ill mother.

“You really want to go through this right now?” Moats pleaded. “My mother-in-law is dying. Right now!”

His wife, Tamishia Moats, said Powell "was pointing a gun at me as soon as I got out of the car. It was the weirdest feeling because I’ve never had a gun pointed at me before under those circumstances.”

Powell then spent long minutes writing Moats a ticket and threatening him with arrest.





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Pullling over is one thing...drawing a gun....well....that's a bit much.

*SMH* It HAD to be Dallas...

That cop was being an ass just to be one. One of my line brothers is a cop and he says that they're allowed to use their judgment in situations like this. I don't know how I would have reacted if I was in the same position.

ETA for the lawyers: Would the family have any standing to collect any damages?

did you watch the unedited video from the police camera?

This made me so mad!! Even after the nurse comes out and says that the lady is about to die and asks if the men can go up to see her, the cop says that he's almost done, then takes minutes more and continues to lecture the guy!!

I hope he gets fired!!!

Here's the article that has the video

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...p.3e9c080.html

I wonder what the possibility of her living would have been if the officer had just let him go....


One of them was needed to sign a rescusitation order...

Poor discretion on his part.

And they are laughing about it at the end of the video!!!

No kind of remorse...gotta love audio and video!!!

The language for the story running on MSN is significantly different. Interesting....

Forget the story....the video is damning all by itself.

and MSN is in bed with Fix News...so of course the language will be 'different'.

Just read it here (AP posted it) and they left out what else transpired (the mom dying after Moats made it in and etc) and other things....wow.

I don't even need to watch the video (can't right now anyway), I am sure that the cop was being an a**. I had just read the story on MSN before I saw this post and the 'clean up' was so obvious.

I heard about it yesterday, but because I couldn't understand WTH the news was talking about, I ignored it. Then, I saw it again on CNN, and was like, HUH?

What DWB? A loved one was DYING! I am sure the driver was not in his right mind to follow every single traffic law. It does not give him a reason to violate the laws, but you can be served by law enforcement in a more professional manner than saying "I could make your life Hell right now, but I don't want to..."

How about saying, "EFF YOU TOO!!!" I though Dallas cops were better than that... Well, let's say Irving, 'cuz I am unsure, but it looked like Irving to me. But if she was in Parkland... :rolleyes: Zale Lipshy or St. Paul, yeah!

For as many people who have driven under "the suspicion", I still like this video.

Just watched the video and I'm pissed off. You have other officer's, security guards, and a nurse telling him that Ryan wasn't lying. How cruel do you have to be to not let someone see their loved one one last time?

This is so ridiculous. I saw it on the local news.

A nurse and security guard went out and TOLD the police officer the woman was hanging on by a thread and wouldn't be alive much longer and he still did nothing.

At some point in the dashcam video (I think it was towards the beginning) the police officer said "I could make this a really bad say for you"

What a jerk.

the pig's still getting a paycheck too...

Because even a "pig" is entitled to due process -- a fair hearing before his pay is cut or he is fired. Which I hope he is.

If there was a legal remedy that would lie because the defendant acted like an enormous douchebag, Moats could retire from the NFL right now.

Disgusting, just disgusting. He had no compassion whatsoever.

He was right in the beginning, stop a car who ran a red light. Afterward, it was a total power trip. What an a-hole.

???

really???

By defendant, of course, I mean the officer as defendant and Moats as plaintiff in a civil suit.

I wouldn't get "due process" if I acted like that to a customer at my job. I'd be fired out-right. He's a public official who is a detriment to the city he works for and the citizens who pay his salary.

So, the family of the dead woman is still paying his salary (assuming they live in the same municipality).

Haha, woah there...let's slow up the right wing media conspiracy train just a tad.

All of the MSN stories I saw were by the AP...so it looks like they were just using wire feeds as well, not their own writers.

It looks like what the officer did was wrong, and after the hearings and process is over, he should be out of a job.

Yep...by a tad...and that's all is needed...

But again, I am not even concerned about the write up, the video IS the story.

I doubt it. Police officers routinely do much worse than act like douchebags. The detention was 100% legal. 13 minutes for a traffic stop where a warrant check is run doesn't sound horribly out of the ordinary. A police officer is not required to be sensitive and understanding of the reason someone committed a crime. Obviously, the officer was a complete, reprehensible asshole. This might be something which prevents him from being promoted, but as to the loss of his job? My guess is that he has to attend some sort of sensitivity training or something to that effect. I'd be really surprised if he lost his job.

I'm by no means excusing his behavior, it's just that I've seen police officers get away with much, much worse.

Oh absolutely - when I say "should be out of a job," I mean in the sense that his behavior has no place on the police force. I wouldn't be surprised though if he got away with some slap on the wrist, though.

Seriously? MSNBC is the polar opposite of Fox News. Not that I like either of them, but making ill-informed statements like that reeks of Tom Earp.

No, not really, I wasn't.

Exactly. You work for a private employer, which can pretty much do what it wants to do within the bounds of its contract with you.

He, on the other hand, works for the government. (He is a public employee, not a public official). Under the United States Constitution (and I'm betting the Texas Constitution as well), the government cannot depive any citizen, including one that works for it, of property (including salary) without due process of law, which means at the least a fair hearing with an opportunity to be heard.

How is MSN in bed with Fox News, exactly? I know MSN carries content from Fox Sports, but I didn't think there was a relationship between the news organizations.

That was the only connection, but again...I was not serious about the comment.

Finally had time to watch the video. Disgusting.

officer=/=offical? either way, the man he stopped still has to pay taxes, and those taxes are being used to pay this guy, while he's on leave.

he is not charged with a crime (that i know of) so how does due process come in?

MOST Dallas cops ARE better than this!!

I live here where this happened. The hospital is Baylor Plano, a very nice hospital in a wealthy suburb of Dallas. No where near Parkland in many ways! The officer was right to do what he did for the first couple of minutes of the stop.

At the point at which a Plano police officer & the nurse came out to confirm the information to the Dallas officer, it should have been O-V-E-R. The Dallas officer has apologized, but there is just no way to apologize for this behavior.

The Dallas police chief, Kunkle, will absolutely fire this moron as soon as the obligatory official review is over. He does NOT like being embarrassed like this.

Anytime a boss's boss's boss's boss has to apologize publically for an employee's actions, you can be sure that it is a "resume generating event".

Bleh...he's lucky he's an NFL player.

an average dude like me would be in court now, waiting to pay a ticket.

The day before, police commanders said Powell told them he saw nothing wrong with his behavior even after reviewing video of the episode

that was taken from the article, he was forced to apologize. he didn't do it because he actually felt bad.

Official typically means someone elected or appointed to a policy-making position.

Like I alluded to earlier, the government cannot depive any citizen of property without due process of law. ("No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Fifth Amendment, US Constitution; and " . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." Fourteenth Amendment, US Constitution)

This applies to more than criminal proceedings. As long as the officer is employed, salary is a property right.

(And all of this is without knowing what the terms of his contract might require or provide about leave with- or without pay pending an investigation.)

Hoodini, even lucky NFL players can be devastated by the death of a loved one. And, I doubt he felt very "lucky" that night losing his mother in law and being detained from her bed side in her final moments by an over zealous and possibly racist cop....

This just gets better
 

DALLAS — Maritza Thomas, the wife of NFL linebacker Zach Thomas, saw a familiar face as she watched the video of Officer Robert Powell detaining Houston Texans [team stats] running back Ryan Moats as he and his family rushed to a hospital to see a dying loved one. That face was Powell’s.

On July 27, 2008, while her husband was at training camp with the Cowboys in Oxnard, Calif., Maritza Thomas was pulled over by Powell for an illegal U-turn near NorthPark Center.

Maritza Thomas was issued five tickets by Powell, four of which were later dismissed. Thomas was handcuffed, placed in the back of a police cruiser, spent about three hours in the Dallas County Jail and was threatened with the possibility of spending the night behind bars.




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This is slightly off topic...but wasn't Zach Thomas married to Jason Taylor's sister? Or was it the other way around, Jason Taylor was married to Zach Thomas' sister?

Sister is married to Taylor..yes

Did the officer know he was an NFL player? It didn't come up in the clip I saw - but maybe I missed it.

NFL player or no, how hard is it to follow the man into the hospital and see if he is lying? If he isn't, how about a little humanity?

Couldn't have been too difficult since a nurse and a securtiy officer came OUTSIDE to tell the cop he wasnt lying.