Taken together with videos of officers and/or people getting hit by passing cars on the highway, and the way she was oblivious to the traffic, he had two options: wrestle her or taze her.
DING! DING! DING!
Exactly. Lots of cops, wrecker drivers, and general citizens get severely injured or killed when they get caught in between cars on the freeway. When I was learning the job, and when I was teaching others, "get out from between the cars" was one of my most repeated instructions. Where I worked we had nearly 300 miles of freeway and lots of my co-workers have wound up permanently disabled or dead working the freeways in just this kind of situation.
Wrestling would have worked better from a PR standpoint.
I'm from the old school, from the pre-taser days, and the days when only supervisors had tasers and they were only used on the ultra combative mentally ill. Back then, when somebody said "F*** you, I ain't going to jail" it meant the fight was on.
Now, right up until my second month on the street I was kind and respectful to the occasional grandmother type who didn't want to cooperate. Lot's of "please cooperate ma'am" and pretty gentle laying on of hands. I was criticized repeatedly by my trainer for not taking appropriate action in those situations. Then, one night, somebody's drunk pissed-off grandma decided to try and go kick some younger bimbo's butt because she thought she had made moves on grandpa.
The top of this gal's head barely came up to the height of the badge on my shirt. Didn't look like she could hurt a flea and to look at her you could imagine her baking you some cookies. She was standing in front of me weeping about the whole situation when the anger suddenly kicked in.
As she took off running in the bimbo's direction while screaming "I'll kill you b****!" I tried my usual "I don't want to hurt this old lady" methods. The next thing I knew I had an ice pick sticking out of my back about where my kidney was. No more Mr. Nice guy. I cleaned granny's clock for her and put my knee on her neck while I handcuffed her. My trainer graded me that night in "use of force and control methods" at the top of the scale.
That was not the last little old lady that tried to do me in.
So, yes, wrestling her could be a better PR move, one that I would personally be more comfortable with. But if that had been me there that day, about the second time that granny bowed up on me I would have snatched her left hand and tried to bend it around her back and up to her right ear while pushing her face in the trunk. So, I guess the question is: which is better to see, granny get zapped with no permanent injury, or granny get her butt kicked and go to the ER with some bumps on her noggin?
