Dallas Police Officer Robert Powell, who delayed NFL player Ryan Moats from seeing his dying mother-in-law, has resigned from the Dallas Police Department. It was likely that Powell would face termination or severe punishment over the incident recorded on his dashcam.
Powell issued the following statement:
“With a heavy heart and great sadness, I resigned from the Dallas Police Department this morning. I made this decision in the hope that my resignation will allow the Dallas Police Department, my fellow officers, and the citizens of Dallas to better reflect on this experience, learn from the mistakes made, and move forward. I still hope to speak with the Moats family to personally express my deep regret, sympathy, and to apologize for my poor judgment and unprofessional conduct. I also want to apologize to my fellow officers. I have sincere respect and admiration for the men and women of the Dallas Police Department and the work they perform daily, and I wish them well.”
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Mike.
the cynic in you is wise. I also very much doubt that the PO is sincere in his remorse.
As Queen of Sheba has pointed out, the use of the passive voice indicates that in his mind the responsibility is not really his, he was unlucky to be videoed acting according to standard operating procedure.
For every case where a law officer is caught behaving badly there are hundreds of other instances that are overlooked. Consider the infamous Tom Coleman cocaine prosecutions from Tulia Texas in 1999. That these were fake was discovered only because of the combination of incompetence with which Coleman carried out the frame ups and the excess ambition which caused him to target so many people that the obvious error rate of failed prosecutions betrayed the incompetence.
Coleman failed to ensure that he could identify and describe the people he was framing and failed to ensure that they were lacking alibis at the times at which he alleged that he bought cocaine from them. This resulted in 5 failed prosecutions, which against roughly 40 targets gives an error rate of 12.5%. This error rate together with the multiple errors undermined all his other cases.
Had Coleman done a competent job of the stitch up, there would still have been doubts in the black community but these would not have been sufficient to get convictions reversed. Righteousness would have triumphed and Tulia would have been rid of 40 niggers doing long sentences.
Consider also if Coleman had still been incompetent but had targeted only 8 people. An error rate of 12.5% would give only one failed prosecution which would be unlikely to undermine the other 7 to the extent that 5 undermines 40.
I believe that Coleman was doing exactly what he thought his employers wanted him to do and considered his conduct to be moral. Certainly there must be more police who think the same way but who lack the twinned characteristics of overreach and incompetence. That means many other lesser Tulias or instances just as large but lacking the smoking gun evidence of their falsity.
Isn’t the passive voice in the English language wonderful? It can deflect responsibility from oneself with such ease. This patrolman’s statement is a perfect example:
I made this decision in the hope that my resignation will
allow the Dallas Police Department, my fellow officers, and
the citizens of Dallas to better reflect on this experience,
learn from the mistakes made, and move forward.
Who, I wonder, made mistakes the fellow officers and the citizens of Dallas are supposed to learn from? I hope we hear that Powell sincerely accepts personal responsibilty for his mistakes and apologizes to the Moat family without resorting to the “Mistakes were made” sidestep usually employed by those in positions of authority.
I suggest a job as an *unarmed* Wal-Mart Greeter or a late-night carwash attendant/watchman under direct supervision and under the surveillance of security video cameras running 24/7.
The cynic in me doubts that the PO wasn’t pushed a little. I hope though, for his sake, that he is sincere in his remorse.
I would also hope that for Dalllas PO’s that this serves as a cautionary tale that all people of color in expensive (or used cars) are fair game for abuse of their authority.
From the article:
“Attorneys for Powell say he still wants a job in law enforcement.”
“Like Will Rogers said, ‘Good experience comes from bad experience,’ and I think he’s learned from it and will in fact be a better police officer after this incident,” said Livingston.”
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It would be hard to imagine him being any worse of one now.