This is already a few days old in Seattle, and the overwhelming majority of the public here thinks this officer did nothing wrong (myself included). These girls were fools. All he was trying to do was give them a ticket for jaywalking across a VERY busy street. They became verbally abusive, drawing a crowd, then started getting pushy. You can clearly see in the full video (not some of the edited ones a few TV stations have been showing) that the officers tried to calm the girls, but it was the girls who escalated the situation. When that girl pushed him, knocking him back on his heels, she should've expected the type of response she got. That's what happens when you are aggressive toward a law enforcement officer. How was he to know she wasn't going to grab his gun? She certainly wasn't behaving rationally! He did a good job of stunning her, keeping the situation from escalating.
The Seattle-Tacoma area has had at least six law enforcement officers murdered in the last 6-8 months. Combine that with the fact that the area of Seattle where I've heard this happened is not the friendliest part of town and has gang issues. Combine that with the crowd that had gathered to egg the situation on, and in fact even tried to shield the girls from the cops. Let this be a lesson to young people that you should LISTEN to police, not mouth off to them, and certainly not raise a hand at them.
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