“The United Airlines employees could have flown on another flight, even been booked onto another airline—anything but cause this man to be treated like he was…”
The recent video of a man being forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight really made question why police used force to remove a passenger who had not done anything wrong other than have his number randomly chosen so someone else could take his seat.
This had me wondering, as both a cop and trainer of law enforcement officers, what justification the airport “police” used to lay hands on the man and forcibly take him from the plane. I watched for some signs that he fought back but didn’t find any. He didn’t make any type of aggressive action. Therefore, under what law or code did the police on that plane have a right to remove a paying passenger who had done nothing wrong? The victim, who broke no laws, literally did nothing other than sit in a seat he paid for and was physically removed for being picked at random.
The use of physical force by police is a closely regulated, heavily watched area that gets scrutiny from all sides. In this case, I am looking at it from the trainers’ and veteran cops’ perspective, as well as the legal side. I have been trying to think of some justification for using force to remove this man from the plane when he had done nothing wrong. I can’t come up with anything that would lead me to believe that the use of force was justified. This is very disturbing to me.
Think of it this way. If this is justified, what is to stop them from doing this repeatedly? In addition, the reason they gave for doing it—to make room for United Airlines employees—is not reason enough to do what they did to that man. The United Airlines employees could have flown on another flight, even been booked onto another airline—anything but cause this man to be treated like he was.
This incident needs the public’s attention and needs to be looked at by federal authorities. We do not allow our law-abiding citizens to be physically attacked by anyone, let alone the police, when they have done nothing to deserve such treatment. I am sorry, but this is one time that I have to say that the police (and, of course, the airline) went way over the limits of their authority. We need to make sure this kind of treatment of our citizens does not happen again.
Chris Wagoner is a Senior OpsLens Contributor and U.S. Army Veteran. He has been in law enforcement the last 35+ years. He specializes in LE Firearms Instruction, and is in charge of a large Police Academy in North Florida. In his spare time Chris is a freelance writer and posts his articles on “Down Range with Chris Wagoner“.
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