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And also an example of leniency towards police officers.

Link

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Edward Krawetz , the Lincoln officer convicted of assault , won't be going to prison.

He was sentenced in Providence Superior Court Monday to 10 years, with all 10 suspended. Krawetz was also ordered to attend mental health counseling.

"He's a hardworking guy so hopefully he'll be able to pick up the pieces and move forward with his life," said defense attorney John Harwood.

In January, a Providence Superior Court judge convicted Officer Krawetz of felony battery with a dangerous weapon.

Krawetz was accused of kicking a handcuffed woman outside Twin River casino in 2009 after the woman tried to kick him. The incident was caught on surveillance camera.

Krawetz was removing Donna Levesque from the facility for disorderly conduct. While testifying in his own defense, Krawetz said he kicked Levesque in self defense.

He waived his right to a jury trial in January, and instead opted for the judge to hear the evidence.

It's not the first time Krawetz has been convicted of assault. In 2001 he was convicted of misdemeanor assault after a confrontation with a man who was jogging with friends in Cumberland. He was suspended for 30 days following that case.

Copyright WPRI-12

That said, Krawetz did claim the woman he kicked had previously kicked him while seated.

Maybe he was yelling "my life is threatened" and that's why he has avoided conviction?

/sarcasm

She tried to kick him first. He's in a tactically superior position and she's a dumbass. He's just helping Darwin along. Not seeing what the problem is. It does apear he has some sort of stealth suit on though, because only the top and bottom of his leg are visible. Its Da Aliens!

Slightly OT, but if you assault a Policeman in America, or commit a crime which is witnessed by police, and you run off (with him chasing) and then end up on your property, can you shoot the policeman and claim self-defence?

Power trip.

Not if they have the half leg stealth suit you can't. You think you're safe then BAM! KPow! Meow! you're on the ground. Stealth ninja Po Po has struck again.

Frazzled wrote:She tried to kick him first. He's in a tactically superior position and she's a dumbass. He's just helping Darwin along. Not seeing what the problem is.

He's in a tactically superior position, striking a seated, handcuffed woman. His choice of response not only cost him his job and ensured that he'll never work in law enforcement again, it was almost certain to do so. He's even more of an idiot than she is, especially since she was intoxicated. Had the kick inflicted a serious head injury to the woman, which was likely given the relative positions, his problems would have been further magnified.

Moreover, if I defend myself against a woman from a tactically superior position, I would be in prison.

Jihadin wrote:Power kick.

Fixed that for you.

And the cop has mastered the art of Street Fighter style combat.

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:She tried to kick him first. He's in a tactically superior position and she's a dumbass. He's just helping Darwin along. Not seeing what the problem is.

He's in a tactically superior position, striking a seated, handcuffed woman. His choice of response not only cost him his job and ensured that he'll never work in law enforcement again, it was almost certain to do so. He's even more of an idiot than she is, especially since she was intoxicated. Had the kick inflicted a serious head injury to the woman, which was likely given the relative positions, his problems would have been further magnified.

Moreover, if I defend myself against a woman from a tactically superior position, I would be in prison.

Pssh party pooper... and not one word abut this new stealth technology thats dropped all the way down to the local constabulary.

You know, if they can stealthize the human thigh, they can stealthize a wiener dog. Lots of wiener dogs.

My Children, the 12th Sign Has Been Reviled! Our Day Of Liberation from the Cat and Squirrel Menace is at hand! To War!!!!



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Jihadin wrote:Power trip.

Looks more like a Power kick to me...

Frazzled wrote:She tried to kick him first. He's in a tactically superior position and she's a dumbass. He's just helping Darwin along. Not seeing what the problem is.

Unfortunately fro that cop, we live in a society of laws, and cannot go around kicking whomever deserves it. If that was the case, then I could get nothing else done all day and would have a crippling head-kicking related RSI.

The peelers can get away with all sorts of gak, always have done.

That rank hypocrisy is the single biggest reason why such a large amount of people dislike Policemen.

My circle of friends is pretty middle class these days, except for me obviously.

One is a top engineer for the national grid, one is a criminal attorney, another is a mental health worker, none of them have ever been arrested to my knowledge, but they all dislike the police, even the most liberal amongst them.

I don't know what its like in other parts of the country, but from many pub conversations I think that the overwhelming majority of people either actively dislike the police, or at least lean towards dislike, and I am the exact same, I just support the police because I hate criminals more.

The fact of the matter is, in both the UK and the US, coppers get away with the gak that citizens would get fethed for, they are only human of course, and they have the same temptations as any of us, nobody has an issue with a bobby acting like anybody else..but they don't seem to have to deal with the same punishments as the rest of us though!

I have read literally hundreds of cases the past decade, a bobby doing 159mph and not getting punished, killing peoples dogs, running people over, beating the gak out of people, corruption, bribery.. the list is fething endless.

Needless to say, here is a similar case.

A policeman who was caught speeding in his car at 159mph was found guilty of dangerous driving today - but got off without punishment.
PC Mark Milton, of Telford, Shropshire, today appeared at Ludlow magistrates court for a retrial after his previous acquittal was overturned.
District judge Peter Wallis said that the West Mercia police traffic constable had been driving at 'eyewatering speeds' but gave him an absolute discharge.
That means that PC Milton will not face any punishment, although his lawyers have confirmed that they will appeal the conviction.

http://www.metro.co.uk/home/19058-policeman-caught-speeding-gets-off-free#ixzz209jKuOjb

Id fething love to see me get an absolute discharge if I got caught doing 160mph.

feeder wrote:

Frazzled wrote:She tried to kick him first. He's in a tactically superior position and she's a dumbass. He's just helping Darwin along. Not seeing what the problem is.

Unfortunately fro that cop, we live in a society of laws, and cannot go around kicking whomever deserves it if we get caught on camera.. If that was the case, then I could get nothing else done all day and would have a crippling head-kicking related RSI.

Corrected your typo.

Everyone's glossing over this stealth wienerdog thing. Its like the news reports of the zombies. A few reports - meh wierd news, then all of the sudden you're fighting off zombies with a bottle of TUMs and a roll of toilet paper, all the while your ankles are being gnawed on by a pair of wiener dogs. You don't want to be fighting off the zombies with a bottle of TUMs do you?

In other news, we are hopeful that the pseudo seizure thing the Mighty TBone had Wendesday is nonrecurring and related to his alleregy like fit. He's not done it again, and except for very quickly climbing into my lap during a short bought of thunder whilst I was watching Predators has been completely normal since (read complete and utter donkey-cave of the universe).

I'm more interested in whether him being a policeman affected the sentence. I know that if I were a judge convicting him, that fact would make his sentence longer as the point of policemen is that they're trustworthy, don't make rash decisions and, well, don't do stuff like that.

p_gray99 wrote:I'm more interested in whether him being a policeman affected the sentence. I know that if I were a judge convicting him, that fact would make his sentence longer as the point of policemen is that they're trustworthy, don't make rash decisions and, well, don't do stuff like that.

It hugely does, it makes them much more lenient.

Ten years suspended?!

If you have a bound woman, seated and bound, who is no threat to you in any possible way, and you needlessly kick her right in the fething mouth, you get sent down 99 times out of a 100.

And half the time, people will be beating the gak out of you if they catch it.

But not if you're a cop.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Slightly OT, but if you assault a Policeman in America, or commit a crime which is witnessed by police, and you run off (with him chasing) and then end up on your property, can you shoot the policeman and claim self-defence?

No, becouse you know it is a cop.

mattyrm wrote:

p_gray99 wrote:I'm more interested in whether him being a policeman affected the sentence. I know that if I were a judge convicting him, that fact would make his sentence longer as the point of policemen is that they're trustworthy, don't make rash decisions and, well, don't do stuff like that.

It hugely does, it makes them much more lenient.

Ten years suspended?!

If you have a bound woman, seated and bound, who is no threat to you in any possible way, and you needlessly kick her right in the fething mouth, you get sent down 99 times out of a 100.

What if she is wearing a hoodie?

Also you generally can't use that defense while "in commission of a crime" as noted in the scenario given.

Now back to the omen of a horrible new alliance between the wiener dog legions and zombie postal workers.


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CT GAMER wrote:

mattyrm wrote:

p_gray99 wrote:I'm more interested in whether him being a policeman affected the sentence. I know that if I were a judge convicting him, that fact would make his sentence longer as the point of policemen is that they're trustworthy, don't make rash decisions and, well, don't do stuff like that.

It hugely does, it makes them much more lenient.

Ten years suspended?!

If you have a bound woman, seated and bound, who is no threat to you in any possible way, and you needlessly kick her right in the fething mouth, you get sent down 99 times out of a 100.

What if she is wearing a hoodie?

It depends. Did she have a bag of Skittles on her?

It's just sad. Whilst I generally approve of harsh and decisive action against actual threats against society, it gets more difficult to defend law enforcement by the day. From the outside, incidents like these just make the whole service look like sadistic donkey-caves who are just waiting for someone to park their car the wrong way so they can go vent their frustration over low pay or whatever. As long as that car looks like a cheap, used model of course.

I'm tempted to say that those are "just a couple bad eggs in the casket" and you'll always have "exceptions from the rule", but looking at security videos where you see whole teams of cops just standing by and looking as one of them goes berzerk, or hear about cases where an entire department has obscured investigations and tried to make evidence disappear, it starts to look more like a pattern. The fact that law enforcement, like the military, creates a strong bond between people, and that it works closely with the judicative branches doesn't make it any better.

The worst is that you start thinking about what doesn't get caught on camera, because really, how big is the chance that the 5 m² an arrest happens on is caught on tape?

Seems to be an issue of especially large cities with a high crime rate and bad working conditions for the officers, mostly, as well as a lack of internal policing. I've noticed this in parts of Germany, too. Fortunately, Ireland is an entirely different story, but around here the cops don't even carry guns, so I guess the situation just hasn't "escalated" to the same level of violence vs violence as elsewhere.

You know, most of the time I'm against intrusive survailance from Governments, but if it'd stop this and allow the world to know what's actually happening, then I'd vote for it.

My old man told me he got arrested for drunk and disorderly on a stag do in Newcastle once, and during the scuffle to arrest him he threw an elbow into a coppers face.

He said 2-3 hours later he was sleeping off the hangover in his cell, and the copper he hit came in with a mate and they knocked the fething gak out of him with their truncheons, I saw him when he came home, I think I was about 10 or 11 at the time, and he had a corking shiner, a few lumps on his head and a bust lip.

At the time he told me he fell down the stairs and grinned, but in subsequent conversations since I grew up he told me the truth, and said that basically they said to him the next day "We will drop the assaulting an officer charge we could throw at you, if you take no action over your injuries" and of course he did and left with a caution for being drunk. He said this was pretty much the SOP for a drunk ever clipping a copper during the 80s and 90s.

Now, Im a rough and tumble kinda bloke, I wouldn't give a gak if they beat his ass at the time.. even in the back of the van or something, I dont think bobbies should act like saints considering the scum they have to deal with.. but hours later?!

They should be above that gak. I never mistreated any prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan even if I really wanted to, because we are professionals and that kinda gak makes you look like a Mickey Mouse outfit. And it is for that reason I dislike policemen.. Not because they are fallible and human, but because many of them are extremely unprofessional and seem to not enforce the high standards internally that they push upon the rest us.

Admit it Matty, you're just jealous because they have stealth thighwear.

I think it's probably just down to them having the wrong attitude in that case. They may be humans like the rest of us, but they should at least try a little harder to be saint-like than the rest of us. Self-defence or reacting to being hit, fine, but an overreaction or reacting hours later?

Admit it Matty, you're just jealous because they have stealth thighwear.

Thats San Francisco right?

Stealth thigh wear is for wussies.. If you cant take a few shots in the pills, your not man enough to be a copper in my book!

And still look professional when you take the hits to the "pills"

Matty, going 'commando" because stealth thigh wear is for chumps!

mattyrm wrote:

One is a top engineer for the national grid, one is a criminal attorney, another is a mental health worker, none of them have ever been arrested to my knowledge, but they all dislike the police, even the most liberal amongst them.

Personally, I think it's because most people's impression of them is as the tax-collectors of the highways. Only time you see them is when you get pulled over for doing 35mph in a 30 zone, and meanwhile things which you would though should be the purpose of them, i.e. the protection of the public from real criminal elements, seems to get short shrift. I read the other day that they have started fining people for giving 'warning flashes' to other cars, a common practice in the UK if you've just gone past a cop with a speed gun and you see someone coming in the other direction and about to enter it themselves.

But, then its the politicians that are to blame for it, when you have someone like David Blunkett saying years ago that in the eyes of the law parking on a double yellow line is the same as theft... this quest for austerity is starting to slip into every part of society - I had to lie to my doctor about a year back about being resident in the UK. The fact that I had been overseas for more than 6 months meant that, despite paying taxes for the other 12 years or so of my working life, I wouldn't have been able to have a suspect lump removed on the NHS.

Pacific wrote:
Personally, I think it's because most people's impression of them is as the tax-collectors of the highways. Only time you see them is when you get pulled over for doing 35mph in a 30 zone, and meanwhile things which you would though should be the purpose of them, i.e. the protection of the public from real criminal elements, seems to get short shrift.

At least in the US there have been significant increases over the last decade regarding the use of SWAT for trivial affairs, which certainly doesn't help. The prevalence of surveillance cameras, camera phones, and the 24-hour news cycle also mean that a lot more stories with significant evidence are present in the public consciousness. There's also, at least in my dad's generation, the memories of the way police were during the 60's and 70's, and a lot of sensitivity regarding the abuse of power as a result.

Also, some cops are just dicks, and you tend to remember the guys that were dicks rather than the ones that were simply professional. Of course, I've met some really awesome cops as well, but they tend to be the guys working in schools and ERs; basically lower stress positions.

Does anyone have the whole video? I'd like to see that, but it does look bad for the cop. The only reason I'd want to see the video is to see what was right before this frame, maybe 10 seconds of video. If she was sitting on the curb hurling insults, that's one thing, but if she was getting up then I'd want to see even more.

There is a possibility that she had kicked at and hit the cop multiple times in the 30 seconds to a minute before, even with handcuffs on. If that's the case, then he has the right to kick her to get her to stop. Might be a little excessive to kick her in the head, but she has more than 50% responsibility if she is not settling down.

The reason I say this is I've fallen for the single frame of the video new report before. We had a cop in the local area who shot a young lady that had a knife. The news reported it as a travesty and showed the picture from the video of the lady being shot from 2 ft away, no knife in the picture. The public was outraged but then the whole video was shown. You see the young lady about 20 feet away from the cop, yelling at him, spitting at him, then she seems to calm down, drops her head for a few second. Next thing you know, she is charging toward him, knife clearly in view. The cop managed to draw his gun and shoot her before she stabbed him, but she was in stabbing range when he shot. The frame that was printed was one of the only ones that did not show the knife (knife in her right hand, body was blocking the view of the knife at that second) but almost all the other frames from the start of the charge till she was laying on the ground showed the knife clearly. I feel bad for the family, since she was clearly on drugs and impaired, but if you pull a knife and charge a cop, you are going to get shot. An opinion article pointed out that a person armed with a knife that is within 27 feet will be able stab a police officer, more often than not, before the police officer can draw and fire.

So, let's get the whole video here before we decide and if she was still trying to assault the cop when she was handcuffed, then let's err on the side of the cop. When the cops have you restrained, be restrained or your going to get hurt.