A veteran cop was fired and charged with criminal battery after officers reviewed a video of him slamming a woman into her car in Pensacola, Fla.
“We have certain expectations of our police officers, and when I looked at the video, I was disappointed because I felt like that didn’t stand up to those expectations,” Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons told ABCNews.com. “We determined that what we saw on the video was inconsistent with what our policies allow and what state statute allows.”
Dash cam footage from Aug. 2 shows Officer Christopher Geraci telling Abbi Bonds to get back in her car before he grabs her left arm and swings her body into the side of the car, causing her to fall to her knees and bang her chin against the vehicle.
“I’m not fighting you,” Bonds, 29, is heard saying as he cuffs her. “Why are you hitting me?”
These are the “Only Ones” who can be trusted with the guns! Yep!
On a positive note, the review of the dashcam video was done as part of the department’s standard procedures, and the firing was ‘spontaneous,’ not because a complaint or other video made the news. Plus, he’s facing criminal charges just like you or I would if we roughed someone up like that.
This is a case where the system actually worked exactly the way it’s supposed to work when a cop goes bad.
Yeah the sad part is what a rarity this is. Hopefully all the bad PR from police covering for dirty and un-fit cops in the internet age will make this more commonplace.
What REALLY pisses me off is the “Thin Blue Line” that protects the dirty cops.
Back when I was collecting fisheries data for the .gov I was asked to give a talk, and Q&A to new recruits for the company. One part of my talk was to tell stories of the few crooked scientists who attempted to cheat the system. I did this not only to admonish bad behavior, but to inform the new guys that if they found a way to cheat the system we WOULD descend on them like the fist of an angry god. There have also been a few issues where people in my pharma lab decided to cut a few corners out of sloth, and that too was universally frowned upon (fortunately for those oversights were minor enough for a formal reprimand). Doing bad science just hurts everybody so we don’t stand for it….why doing bad law enforcement is protected is REALLY shameful.
When Officer “Roid Rage” Harless got famous for abusing and threatening suspects it SHOULD have had the entire department turning on him faster than the GOP turned on Mr. Aikin…but instead we suddenly found several OTHER documents of past abuse. Why would a cop stand for this? (Assuming the whole department doesn’t operate the same way)
Yeah, lets wait a few months from now when he sues to get his job back with retroactive pay with the Union behind him.