RashyNullPlanet

Some well-meaning but very stupid folks in Ypsilanti, MI catalyzed another unnecessary police escalation and derailment of a family’s lives:

While she returned to the car to get her cell phone so she could locate her friend, Emily Brumbaugh said, her husband approached the group.

“I heard, ‘Give me my kid,’ and ‘You’re not getting him,”’ she said.

At that point, that crowd was guilty of kidnapping.

The idiot cops who arrived on the scene didn’t help by sorting things out or dissipating tension:

Egeler said Lloyd Brumbaugh ran to the boy and picked him up, but Washtenaw County Sheriff’s deputies had arrived by then. He said he was told to put the boy down so they could talk. Brumbaugh complied, but when Deputy Katrina Bourdeau reached for the boy, Brumbaugh pushed her away and grabbed him, Egeler said.

There is no dispute that the Lloyd is the father of the boy, so when the deputy attempted to take Brumbaugh’s son, she became guilty of attempted kidnapping. Getting between a parent and his child is like getting between a grizzly and her cubs: you’re just asking for serious? trouble. Surely even a cop knows that, and should be able act accordingly without escalating the situation.

Emily Brumbaugh said she was placed in a patrol car until she calmed down and Brumbaugh was taken to a hospital, and didn’t learn where her husband was until he called her from jail at 7 p.m. that night.

And at that point the police made themselves guilty of kidnapping both Emily and Lloyd.

Unfortunately for everyone, cops everywhere are increasingly shooting first and asking questions later, if they bother to ask questions at all. As far as I can tell, they operate on only one premise: their authority must be respected at all costs.