Poor judgement

Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. ~Author Unknown

One thing I've learned as a cop is that poor impulse control will land you in jail. While on patrol I made many arrests for things that were completely avoidable. You're mad at a doorman because he won't let you in? Instead of punching him, try going to a different club. There is a purse sitting in the top basket of that shopping cart? I know it's a tempting item but just keep walking. You don't have money for that video game? Go save up a little bit of cash and come back later.

I bring this up because I was recently reminded of a totally avoidable arrest that I made back when I was on patrol. To this day I still don't understand what the suspect was thinking.

There had been a traffic accident in a busy part of downtown. We had a section of the road shut down and I was one of the officers responsible for directing traffic until we could clean up the wreck. It was near a college campus and we had a large amount of vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

I had been doing it for about a half hour and had a pretty good flow going. I'd stop traffic for a bit and let people walk then I would reverse and let traffic go. Things seemed to be going smooth and I had just directed a group of pedestrians to wait and directed traffic to start moving.

I noticed a college aged guy continue to walk out into the roadway despite my directions. I waved my arms and yelled for him to back up. He glanced at me but tried to walk around me. I looked over and saw traffic zooming down the roadway. As he went around me, I reached out and grabbed his arm. I was irritated but I only intended to tell him to get his ass back on the curb until it was safe to cross.

Instead, this guy swept his arm up and knocked my hand away. I went to grab him again and he took off running. Now at this point the guy had crossed the line. Not only did he ignore me, he struck my hand and fled from me. To top it off, he did this in front of 50+ people. There was nothing left to do but put his butt in jail.

Things turned into a foot chase and we started running through campus. I put it out on the radio and units started headed that way. As we ran I kept thinking that I couldn't believe that I was chasing a guy for crossing when he wasn't supposed to. There had to be more to it. I figured the guy must be drunk or had a warrant for his arrest.

We ran all over that campus and I finally caught him as he was scaling a fence. As soon as I got him in cuffs he started telling me how sorry he was and that he shouldn't have run. A quick exam showed he wasn't intoxicated and a records check didn't turn up any warrants.

I questioned him about what the hell would make him turn a simple thing into a foot chase. His reasoning was this:

He said he didn't think I would say anything to him if he crossed the street.

When I did say something to him, he said he didn't think I would actually try to stop him.

When I did try to stop him, he said he thought I wouldn't arrest him for knocking my hand away.

When he ran, he said he didn't think I would actually chase him.

When I actually did start to chase him, he said he thought I would stop after running a few feet.

All I can say is that he made an incredible amount of bad decisions that day. All that could have be avoided if he had just listened to the police. I don't think I can think of a better example of poor judgement.