Ryan Moats incident probably could have been avoided with a 911 call
This scenario is playing itself out in the news way too much lately. On March 18th, NFL player Ryan Moats was speeding through Plano TX en route to take his dying mother in law to the hospital. As of press time today, there is not much more information aside from the officer involved, Robert Powell, apparently held Moats and his wife at gun point at sometime after the pursuit had ended in the Baylor Regional Medical Center’s parking lot.
The video is pretty convincing that Moats was acting rationally and was not trying to cause a scene with Officer Powell. Pardon the link as I do not have the actual You Tube video.
http://www.dallasnews.com/video/?z=y&nvid=345818&shu=1
What is not clear is if Moats or his family called 911 ahead of time. There has been no mention of a 911 call or a 911 transcript so I’m gonna assume that is a no. I know that in a moment of crisis, the body is acting on adrenaline and the brain is high on emotions and quick thinking. A simple call to 911 might have adverted what Moats and his wife had to experience, the dispatchers could have relayed the information to field officers, and maybe he could have been escorted, or followed, or whatever…well we know he was followed. Either way, this officer’s handling of the situation was poor and inhumane.
On the flipside, the other issue is that police officers get this way when influenced by a pursuit. Their bodies begin to act on adrenaline and pure heated emotion from the chase and their ultimate goal is to end the chase and apprehend the suspect. It doesn’t matter if a suspect is going 95 or 35, in the eyes of the cops, this is a fleeing car. Again, I am not making an excuse for an officer acting like a jackass but come on, this is how police act in the heat of the chase. It’s human emotion and their primary objective is to stay alive and end a potentially tragic situation when a chase starts. I know people who are police officers and 99.9% of them are not inherently bad people who consciously go on duty to harass and mentally brutalize people who are breaking the law. Powell was wrong….but I feel Moats and his family were equally “unwise” to have handled it the way they did and not realize what could have resulted from it.
It’s clear by the video that Moats was stopping at cross streets and wasn’t really speeding. He simply ignored the police officers lights all the way to the hospital. I just wished that he or someone else would have called 911 before all this started and explained what was happening. We have a system for emergencies, granted it’s not perfect, but it’s all we have and we have to make it work and use it to our advantage. This is the risk that a common citizen runs when trying to act on behalf of emergency personnel and our law enforcement system. Moats had good intentions and was only breaking traffic laws, but when he did not stop for Officer Powell, this is where the trouble starts whether he wanted it or not.
Officer Powell had no clue what was going on inside that SUV and how could he have known? He would have known had the call been made by Moats and I can’t stress this enough, why was a call not made? You can’t get in your car and ignore the police and not expect something to happen, that’s the way it is people, whether or not someone is dying in the backseat. On the flipside of that coin, the minute he heard Moats say it was a medical emergency, he should have instantly changed from apprehender to protector. Powell stayed in angry cop mode too long and Moat’s payed the price and Powell may pay with his job or career.
Alcohol may have played a factor
Hell, its a Charger? I'd try to steal it too.
A Dallas, Texas teen may have already won my vote for this year’s dumbest person/what the hell were you thinking award.
On Feb 2, this genius attempted to carjack three vehicles in South Dallas. While the three would-be victims called the police for help, boy-wonder goes and changes his clothes. Then he does the unthinkable.
He tried to carjack a police vehicle.
A marked Dallas police vehicle.
With the emergency lights on.
With the officer inside.
Seriously.
Mr. Brilliant DEMANDED the officer hand over the car to him. He was unarmed, but he really wanted the car bad, so he DEMANDED the car. The officer reached over and grabbed the teen who shook him off and started running. The news articles say “a short distance later…” which to me, means about 3 feet from the car, the officer was able to catch the assailant.
The teen boy refused a medical exam or medical test, so we won’t know if alcohol played a factor.
Stay Classy, Dallas
And I mean it. I’m not being sarcastic this time. This particular classiness I’m referencing is that of the Dallas Stars.
If you watch ESPN SportsCenter or follow the sites that aggregate funny items of the day, then no doubt you’ve heard the brilliance that is Sean Avery. From Wikipedia: Avery’s success in his job role of distracting other players has arguably made him one of the most hated players in the league.
Before yesterday’s game in the locker room, Avery decided he was going to spout out a little more of his brilliance and gathered the reporters to make sure they caught every moment of his audio genius. Allow me a little bit of a backgrounder: Avery used to date Elisha Cuthbert (AKA 24’s Kim Bauer) who now dates Calgary Flames Defenseman Dion Phaneuf. (Dallas played Calgary yesterday)
Ok, so we’re caught up and ready to hear Avery’s pearls of wisdom: “I’m really happy to be back in Calgary, I love Canada and I just wanted to comment on how it’s become a common thing for guys in the NHL to fall in love with my sloppy seconds, I don’t know what that’s about.”
For that, the NHL Commissioner suspended Avery, indefinitely. And for the first time in my sports history memory, his teammates and team management, were not squarely behind the player. Usually when a player is suspended a team will at least go through the motions of an appeal, or even just speak out against the league’s decision to suspend. Not in this case. If you watched the above video, you see his teammates and management totally laying out on him. If he thought he’d get support for that one, he got crickets. I LOVE what Tom Hicks, the Stars owner said – (paraphrasing) “If the NHL didn’t suspend him for that, we were going to”.
Since he’s arrived in Dallas, his teammates have had to deal with this prima donna. They went to the playoffs last year, and this year they can hardly manage to show up for a game. From what I understand, the Dallas Stars as a team went to great lengths to create a classy, all-for-the-team mentality with players who truly enjoyed each other and loved being on the ice. Then this guy comes in, acts like God’s gift to the game of hockey and spouts his mouth off about everything, making the locker room atmosphere uncomfortable and dreaded. The team-family mentality was fractured when Sean Avery skated in on his golden blades.
Yes, I agree with what you’re thinking – hockey players say a heck of a lot worse things to each other during the game. However, that’s on the ice – while the game is on. This was an off-the-ice intentional insult that just went to far. I personally am all about talking trash and trying to throw the other team off, but this is not an isolated event.
The way the players verbalized their disappointment with not only this comment, but him in general showed great class in my opinion. They made sure fans know that they do not support his actions and comments, and moreover they are done with it.
He’ll be back after he’s been in the box for awhile. He has to be – he’s got a 4 year contract (making more money that Modano, by the way). I hope they can find a way to cut him loose so the Stars can go back to being themselves again, but I’m not counting on it.
They are buying gifts for volunteers, people! Oh the humanity
I like to poke around the Internet looking for interesting stories going on around the country. I found an expose on a Dallas TV station’s site called The Gravy Train, its all about how their rapid transit authority is BLOWING the taxpayer’s money. There are plenty of items on this list that raise eyebrows, but the entire “expose” is sensationalized to the point that its almost a comical knock-off from stories done about AIG and others blowing bail-out money on parties and spas and hookers and blow. (hey, you never know)
You can poke around the site if you’d like, you’llfind a few things like:
- Receipts for dinners, trips and conferences
- Receipts for food purchased from high-end grocery stores
- Travel and entertainment expenses for the employees of the Dallas rapid transit system
I think there may be a new fad in journalism, and I may have also joined the bandwagon when writting about AIG’s Monarch Beach Resort trip or the bonuses still given out to bailed-out companies. This new fad is exposing companies and agencies for spending money <gasp>.
The reality is, businesses have to spend money to be successful. One of the big “Aha! Gotcha!” moments that the Dallas TV reporter was confronting the leaders of the agency with was buying gifts for the volunteers within the agency. The gifts were from Victoria’s Secret lotion line, which currently cost 3/$25 . Victoria’s Secret on the agency card!? You dirty, smarmy people!!! Well, yeah… its a nice luxurious item that these employees can use to feel good about themselves instead of a $30,000 salary. Remember these are gifts to thank the volunteers, who by definition do not get paid, and are less than $10 each. Ooooohhhhh thats baaaaddddd.
They showed them at an event in San Diego earlier in the year. Yes, some of them ducked out of conferences and others went to nice restaurants for meals, some of which might raise eyebrows, but nothing even close to running up a $30,000 spa bill. Should they have stayed with the conference schedule? Yes. But they also didn’t show the what the conference schedule was or whether these people were supposed to be at certain talks or not. Maybe that was their scheduled time off? They might have been playing hooky on a scheduled event, but I didn’t see itineraries.
Another ‘how dare you’ moment the reporter was trying to hang on this agency was dinners and events. One was for what seemed like a fairly nice restaurant, the bill was around $1000 for 40 people. That’s only $25 per person for a full meal. Truly, it would be hard to beat that price at the Olive Garden. Any event planner out there will tell you that was a good deal.
Businesses often need to have events out of the office to conduct employee, vendor or investor relations activities. This is not uncommon and not extravagant. What is extravagant is when organizations spend $400,000 at one time on one event at the nicest resort in Southern California after begging for more allowance.
My point is that some balance needs to be placed in some of these business reports, showing that yes this particular agency (and others like it) is spending money, however a better look needs to be put on their spending. I think I’d rather have an agency maintain a volunteer staff which is rewarded with lotions and gift cards than have to come up with a budget to pay for a full staff and all that goes with staffing.
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