LF: Father & 7yo daughter held at gunpoint by ‘insane & violent’ police officer

Title: Father & 7yo daughter held at gunpoint by ‘insane & violent’ police officer
Source: Russia Today
URL Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/355930-arizona-police-gunpoint-car/
Published: Aug 14, 2016
Author: RT
Post Date: 2016-08-15 14:08:31 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 7003
Comments: 66

A father and his young daughter claim they were terrorized by a highway patrolman in Arizona while they were en route to the Grand Canyon on Friday.

Ken Walton, who is from California, described the horrifying ordeal in a lengthy Facebook post where he and his 7-year-old daughter were held at gunpoint after being pulled over by the out-of-control highway patrolman.

“Tonight, I was arrested at gunpoint by an Arizona highway patrol officer who threatened to shot me in the back (twice) in front of my 7-year-old daughter. For a moment, I was certain he was going to kill me for no reason,” he wrote.

Walton had been making his way to the Grand Canyon in a rented car when he was pulled over by the Arizona Highway Patrol who had been tailing him for a few miles.

“I hadn’t been speeding so I wondered if perhaps the car had a broken taillight or something. I rolled down my window and waited,” he said.

Rather than approach the driver’s side, the officer instead “rapped on the rear passenger side window with his pistol.”

His daughter who was “sitting inches from the barrel of his gun, jumped with fear as the officer yelled at me to roll down the front passenger window, his service weapon pointed directly at me.”

While the police officer continued to shout orders, the young passenger panicked and attempted to get out of her booster seat to roll down the front window. It was at this point that the agitated officer screamed at her and pointed his gun at her.

Walton said he then exited the car he assumed the position to be arrested at gunpoint.

“Then, as I had my hands in the air, he yelled, at the top of his lungs in a voice I will never forget, as my daughter looked on in terror, ‘Get your hands away from your waist or I’ll blow two holes through your back right now!”

The father said he was “utterly terrified,” at this stage. “I’ve heard stories of police yelling out false things like this before they unjustifiably attack someone as a way to justify the attack and I thought this was what was happening to me. I braced for bullets to hit me and all I could think of was my daughter having to watch it happen and being left alone on the side of the highway with an insane, violent cop.”

After being arrested, he was placed in the back of the police car and Walton then confronted the officer for threatening to kill him. He also got the patrolman’s name - Oton Villegas - and his badge number.

“He stood by his story that I had made a threatening movement toward my waist, and I said it wasn’t true, and he said this wasn’t the place to discuss it. He let me go attend to my daughter but continued to ‘detain’ us for another 20 minutes as he talked to his supervisors, presumably plotting damage control.”

The dad is now deciding on if he will take legal action, but added that his daughter was “thoroughly traumatized by the event.”

In March, a police officer was charged with second-degree murder after shooting dead an unarmed 26-year-old man in Arizona.

Body camera footage of the incident, which took place in January, confirmed the victim, Daniel Shaver, pleading with the officer not to shoot him as he crawled along the hallway outside his room at the La Quinta Inn in Mesa.

The relationship of the police to the people in this country is coming to a head.

I always have, my whole life. But I am not blind to what has been going on. And they are rapidly losing my support. I used to always give them the benefit of the doubt. Now, I have pretty serious doubts. I no longer trust them the way I did.

Truly I tell you that if the police do not clean up their act pretty significantly, that the people are going to turn on them, and then the politicians, seeing where their bread is buttered, will go with the people and the police will start to get crucified legally, whether they deserve it or not.

The way things are trending will not go on without an inevitable backlash. The police are losing me, and I am a pretty good bellwether of middle class white center-right Midwestern America. The police are on their way to losing me, and they have to discipline themselves to knock off this crap.

If they won't, when I go over to the other side on this, well over 50% of the public will be arrayed against them, the politicians will follow us, and the police will start really suffering severe legal backlash and personal repercussions for excessive behavior. The presumption they are right will be stripped and the protection from personal liability will be removed.

And if that means fewer people want to do the police job, we the People will accept that and just arm ourselves more, rather than accepting the police going on as they are.

This is one of those things that anybody with clear sight can see coming. The police are really getting out of control and are behaving in an unchecked way that will certainly provoke the imposition of stricter checks and balances. The pendulum will swing. It always does in reaction to things like this.

I haven't abandoned them yet, but I am really getting frustrated and angry with them, and frustrated and angry with the attitudes of their wooden- headed supporters, who literally justify ANYTHING. That never works in America, not ever. Americans are not Prussians, and we just won't accept certain behaviors because we "must". Politically, things change.

On another thread there was an argument about Vietnam. Truth is, the American people gave the political leadership 14 years, from 1961 until 1975, to exercise its judgment. The political leadership, both parties, failed badly, so that by 1975, when the North invaded the South, the American people were adamantly opposed to sending any more forces or lifting a finger, so the President had to stand by helplessly and watch our ally be overrun by the Communists and be destroyed, with a million plus dead.

Once the American people turn, they turn. The authorities are given huge tolerance and huge leeway, for awhile. But if they abuse it - and the police are abusing it - people begin to get pissed off. And when they do - and they always do eventually - then nothing can save the side that had made itself odious in the eyes of the people.

The police are doing that now. I used to trust them. Now I don't. This is happening all over. It's not because I'm a dupe who is being propagandized. It's because the new generation of combat-veteran police do not seem to comprehend that we, who pay their paychecks, are not an enemy civilian population that has to be coerced. They are acting like they did in Iraq, and we will not tolerate it forever. If they don't open their eyes and change their manner, the political structure of America will turn on them.

There is still time for them to change. But that time is running out. When a completely innocent man and his daughter experience what happened in the story, and the police response to a really terrifying incident is that they should blame the car company because a hysterical cop pulled a gun on them - the lack of understanding and sense of entitlement on the part of the police becomes strong and clear.

Cops make mistakes. But when police departments come out with arrogant and self-serving statements like that, they are hastening the day when they completely lose everybody like me.

They need to police themselves FIRMLY. And they need to do it NOW. I'm not requesting it. I'm telling them that.

Police behavior is making it more likely that Hillary Clinton will win the election.