I think it’s safe to say that most people would step in to aid an officer if they seemed like they needed help. That’s the right thing to do, but it’s also important to realize when you’re possibly causing more harm than good.
That’s what happened while an officer was pursuing a suspect, which they ultimately ended up in a parking lot.
Seeing that something was out of place, an armed citizen in a Jeep made the decision to involve himself. He pulls up in front of the suspect’s car so that he wasn’t able to move forward.
Once the suspect sees that he’s boxed in, he rams the Jeep in an attempt to get away.
At this time, the officer gets out of his car in an attempt to detain the suspect who was just trying to flee moments before, and is trying to do so again.
The officer is met with a shotgun in his face, which he is able to fend off and push to the side. But when the armed citizen sees the shotgun, he starts firing at the suspect with a firearm of his own. Out his window. In the direction of the officer.
Give the video a watch and them come back to us;
There’s a lot to talk about here, and John did a great job dissecting the situation.
If this were me, I’d get myself to a better location while on the phone with 911, all while observing what’s going on. Depending on the situation, I may try and yell out to the officer to see if he needed any help.
We don’t know what’s going on with the person inside the vehicle, and we also don’t know what would have happened if the armed citizen hadn’t drove up to the incident.
The suspect could have simply been arrested, but of course there’s the chance that in any event, this officer was going to be facing an armed suspect like we saw in the video.
But reality is; we just don’t know. Firing out of the window was risky business, and we can clearly see how close the officer was to the suspect. You’d better be a good aim, that’s for sure.
Just look at how close the two of them are;
How do you think the armed citizen handled this? Was he within boundaries, or did he cross some lines?
One thing is for sure; This officer handled himself extremely well. Not only did he have a gun in his face that he was able to deflect, he also had gunshots coming from an unknown person who just rolled up on his stop.
