So as long as people take the fetal position or otherwise bow down to the authority figure even if that authority figure is being abusive or disrespectful? You do realize a lot of times 'getting in a cop's face' is no more than asking them a question?
Sheesh ...
typical for a UT prof! No comprehension of what the student wrote, or reading your own meaning into the words. So
again, what I wrote was .."getting in an officer's face" that usually has real meaning to 99% of the populace.
Let's make it about how stupid, mean spirited, uncaring, and self centered some of 'UT's finest' can be now. YOU opened the door.
OK, not you specifically, don't know you; but as of now, you have no basis to paint the officers involved with that brush.
1. It was 2 in the morning in a residential apartment community and the police had received several(?) calls about the
loud party.
2. First visit by the cops: They did the right thing, in that they initially told them to ratchet down the party noise and left.
No sooner than they were gone, back up went the noise, so they had to be called back.
3. Second visit by the cops: They again did the right thing by telling them they really did have to hold it down, and left.
Neighbors in any apartment complex have a right to expect sleep on any night. I know that complex
and students who live there that are making their own way with little sleep between school and a job.
Now the police get a report of a fight breaking out.
4. THIRD TIMES CHARM!! Noise and fighting. They HAD to come back. If after two previous visits by the police, ANY comment showing resistance to their instructions as, during their THIRD visit they attempt to coral a party that has gotten TOTALLY out of hand and fighting has erupted could justifiably be seen as belligerence.
Ratcheting the noise back up is only the first mistake of those young men
after the cops were called the first time and it showed a disregard for their neighbors and the kindness the cops showed
the first time. Yes ... KINDNESS because the cops could have, and had every right, to make more out of it on the initial visit.
After Nam, in 72, for first year and a half when back in school, I was going "a hundred miles an hour with my hair on fire". I lived off campus, had some big parties and I was the one who had to answer the door when the cops showed up... more than twice. So don't go saying I don't know what it's like to be young and in college.. I totally, totally do. And I know there are some bad cops, but I also know that the vast majority are good. The officers involved in this incident gave the partiers every reasonable opportunity, and they didn't take it, the first OR the second time.
What would be said of the sheriff's office had they not corralled the party, and we were mourning the deaths of some young athletes who died Sunday morning trying to drive drunk back to the jock dorm along that dangerous windy Cherokee Trail. The police are damned if they do and damned if they don't. I have a too long list of dead, maimed (and one suicide from being unable to deal from the facial disfigurement of the accident) from Tennessee's failed, deadly experiment with an 18 year old drinking age.
Ah ... probably useless to argue with one has that air of "Ah'm a perfesser, ah got's more up here in mah haid then you. An you jus' wait til ah'm tenured,
then ah
really will!
