Posted on
April 15, 2015 in
That’s a cop allowing a girl to get out of a minor-in-possession ticket by winning a game of rock-paper-scissors.
Here‘s Burleson County Precinct 2 Constable Dennis Gaas’s take:
Gaas says he found out about the incident last night. This morning he told all three officers that they will not be allowed to work security at future Chilfests. He also notified the two departments the officers work for so they can decide whether further action is warranted. Gaas declined to say what departments the three officers work for.
Giving the underage drinker a break is not what got the officers in trouble. Gaas says doing so is an officer’s discretion. But when they “play games to get someone out of a ticket, I have a problem with that,” Gaas said.
Gaas said he hired officers from nearly 60 agencies to work security. They issued 113 citations. According to the Burleson County Sheriff’s Office, 44 people were arrested at Chilifest.
Gaas was upset by the officers’ actions saying, “it gives all of us a bad name.”
No, it doesn’t. Humorless twits like you give “all of you” a bad name. The cop cut a girl a break; he should have. He gave her a few seconds of stress; that’s okay too. Texas Monthly’s take is smart, but I think they’re missing what’s really going on here. They’re missing it because the girl won the first round.
I think that Gaas and Texas Monthly’s Dan Solomon assume that the officer would have written the girl a ticket had she thrown paper the first time. I’m not convinced. Rock-paper-scissors can be played best-of-n, where n is any positive odd number.
I hunch that if the girl had lost the first round the officer would have offered best-of-three, and kept throwing scissors.
If the girl hadn’t caught on to the game by best-of-five, then, well, she was intoxicated and probably should have been ticketed.
The TM article wasn’t bad at all.
I just wish they (we all) didn’t feel the need to reflexively state-bow with phrases like:
“Underage drinking is illegal, and rightly so…”
Your take is very good. I wonder if he was that sophisticated?
Best police-in-action video I’ve seen in a long time and the idiot Constable ‘Gass’ doesn’t have the sense to run with it.
I’d suggest that if you’re a cop and *don’t* have a sense of humor it’s time to move on.
I think the officer did exactly the right thing. He made her sweat a bit, then let her off the hook. I bet Jesus smiled at that. That was a Police Officer, and not a humorless Cop.
https://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/Officers-in-Trouble-over-Rock-Paper-Scissors-Incident-at-Chilifest-299720861.html
There’s the video.
Random punishment, spin the wheel for convicted offenders, might very well do better in terms of deterrence. And it would be “fair” in a way. But In my opinion it would still be wrong.
It’s not far off what we have now. Whether someone is caught, prosecuted, convicted, and punished for a crime depends on things other than his culpability.
If we cared about culpability we would see no difference between the person who shoots to kill and hits vs the person who shoots and misses. Also the person who drives with a .2 BAC and gets arrested would get punished more than the person who drives at .1 and is unlucky and kills a person.