“They should have called 911 and informed them of their situation.
And if this woman was in that dire of a situation, she should have called an AMBULANCE.”

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Your compassion and the uncanny knack you have for 20-20 hindsight is remarkable. I thought talking to a policemen was like calling 9-11. Wonder why he didn’t call the ambulance since he obviously was going to make them wait while he wrote another motorist a ticket. Ever met an authoritarian you didn’t like?

This guy was #3 and having a ‘bad day’. He is on everybody’s MA State shit list this week- as it should be.

That citation WILL be suspended – as well as the officer. You watch!

If this was true, there would be many more accidents than there are. The fact is that most people exceed the speed limit and are technically guilty of “speeding” on a daily basis. That does not mean that they are “out of control.”

True – but this is the kind of story escalation that happens every time a cop is reported to have done something wrong or stupid. They story gets retold and embellished in ways that make the civilian in the encounter sound worse and worse so that the cop can be presented as acting not only reasonably but with restraint.

Remember the young woman with the circuit board with flashing lights on her shirt at Logan Airport who wound up facing a phalanx of police armed with machine guns? By the end of the first day she was regularly portrayed as “acting suspiciously,” as “edgy” and “nervous,” carrying “a fake bomb,” and “trying to avoid security.” None of it was true.

We see it here as in response to your comment Sally has come back with “Speeding is driving out of control.” But just as there no indication he was driving “out of control,” there is no indication in the article that he was speeding. It’s just made up. It’s what always happens.

This was a medical emergency and as soon as the officer was notified of the medical emergency he was acting negligent in detaining them further. He risked the health of the mother and even the life of the child.

The proper thing to do in such situtations is to either permit the couple to continue on their way or if he feels he just has to issue a ticket to an anxious father rushing his wife to the hospital for delivery, then he should have escorted them to the hospital, and once the mother was safely in the hands of trained medical staff, then issue the citation.

Used to be cops were smart enough (and human enough) to do that. Apparently that is no longer the case.

nowhere in either JT’s write-up or the newspaper article does it say they were “DRIVING OUT OF CONTROL”. Why the reporter felt it was relevant to mention the father’s numerous speeding citations I don’t know, but there was no indication of “driving out of control”!

Calling 911 would have been a good idea; are these folks the only couple in North America (besides me and my husband) who don’t have a cell phone? They could have easily called 911 from the traffic jam… if they hadn’t been so distracted by their situation otherwise.