Posted on 06/24/2005 7:14:36 AM PDT by Millee
An Aurora Police officer is facing disciplinary action after an incident in which he pulled his gun on another motorist during an off-duty altercation on the highway.
It started with a lane change on I-225.
That's the part everyone agrees on. What everybody doesn't agree on is whether or not the officer - who was off-duty, out of uniform and driving his personal car - should have pulled his gun on the other driver.
"I put my signal on and started to merge lanes when my fiancee tells me that there's car over there," said Parker Bell.
Bell admits he cut off the other driver. However, Bell says the other driver still had time to slow down - but wouldn't.
"The person driving this pickup then takes the shoulder - speeds past me - (and) they're just waving their hands and yelling inside their vehicle," Bell said.
Then, Bell says he got mad, too.
"I was upset and I was angry and I flicked the person in the blue pickup off," Bell said.
Bell's fiancée, Ashley Meadows, says she tried to calm Bell down.
"They were both kind of antagonizing each other - the guy would pull on the side of him and say something, or look at him or something - and then Parker would get mad and he would say something back," Meadows said.
The blue pickup exited at Alameda. Parker Bell - who says he was taking his pregnant fiancee to a doctor's appointment around the corner - got off at the same exit - pulling up behind the other driver.
Bell says he saw the man staring at him again in his rear view mirror - and that Bell again made more hand gestures.
That's when the other driver got out of his car - gun drawn - and approached Parker Bell - who was still sitting in the driver's seat. His fiancée says she immediately reached over, rolled up Parker's window and locked the doors.
"When I saw the gun, I was like: 'Oh my God - he's going to shoot him,'" Meadows said.
Turns out the other driver was an off-duty Aurora cop - but Bell and his fiancée say they didn't know that because he wasn't displaying a badge.
Ashley called 911.
Bell and Meadows say that the officer pulled on the door and told Parker to open it and show him his driver's license. Only after trying unsuccessfully to open Bell's car door does Bell say that the officer showed his badge.
Ashley's 911 call appears to back up that account.
But Aurora Police Chief Terry Jones says the officer, Mark Asmussen, has a different story.
"The officer indicates that as soon as he got out of his truck he held his badge out and approached the car with the badge in front of his body," Jones says.
And, Jones says if the officer felt threatened - as Jones says he apparently did - then he was within policy to have his gun drawn.
Bell and Meadows see no reason why the officer should have felt threatened. They say Bell was still in his car with his seat belt on, with his fiancée and his two year old son. They say at no time did Bell give any indication he was going to get out of the car.
Jones says the officer apparently didn't feel the same way. Even so, Chief Jones says Officer Asmussen could have handled things differently. He could have called in an on-duty officer to handle the situation.
"Get assistance from a marked car that's on duty and then you avoid all these circumstances," Jones said.
Asmussen is now facing discipline in the form of a write up in his file - but the discipline is not for pulling his gun.
The discipline is for the traffic ticket he wrote Parker Bell after the incident. Since Asmussen was off duty, Chief Jones says writing Bell the ticket went against department policy.
Nevertheless, the chief doesn't plan to drop the ticket against Parker Bell. He says the evidence suggests the ticket - which was for an illegal lane change - was warranted.
Bell plans on fighting the ticket in court.
Yes, FLICKING is a hangin' offense!!! As bad as stealing a man's horse!
Maybe not. Brandishing is a misdemenor in most states HOWEVER, what hurts is that here in Virginia, the judge SHALL confiscate your weapon and hit you with a fat fine!
What evidence? The story from the angry, off-duty cop? How is an unauthorized ticket warranted?
Don't try it in NY.
"It's mildly irritating to be flipped off, but to be flicked off then I say the gloves come off! ;-)"
There are degrees of flicking off. If there is foreign matter attached to the end of your finger during the flicking incident then it rises to the level of assault and you are allowed to defend yourself. I think it's called the booger defense.
So it's okay for a cop to pull a gun on somebody on a freeway off-ramp if there's a traffic dispute? Sakes, the guy should have just kept driving and observed for a while to see if he was really being followed. If the driver behind wasn't trying to run the off-duty cop off the road, gunning his engine, or edging forward threateningly, the cop doesn't have a leg to stand on. He should have just taken down the guy's license plate and reported him later (or, as the police chief suggested, called a uniformed cop).
It's not okay for a cop to use his position to bully and threaten people because somebody behind him is flipping him off. I would expect a cop to act better than the average citizen out there.
The discipline is for the traffic ticket he wrote Parker Bell after the incident. Since Asmussen was off duty, Chief Jones says writing Bell the ticket went against department policy.
Nevertheless, the chief doesn't plan to drop the ticket against Parker Bell.
This makes a lot of sense. The cop is receiving disciplinary action for writing an unauthorized ticket, but that same ticket is going to stand. I'm curious as to what a judge would say about that.
If I were the judge for traffic court, I would chew the cop's ass and tell him he's damn lucky he's not facing charges for felony assault. (The way I see it, the cop was threatening to kill the other party for pulling his gun. Cops are trained to use minimum force necessary and do things to cool off a situation, not radically escalate the situation up to the line of using deadly force.)
"Hold muh badge and watch this..."
I stopped the agressive driving and the gestures about 20 years ago when people started shooting each other in California.
So I would never get into this kind of altercation.
That being said if the angry cop, from a civilian vehicle, in civilian clothes, brandishing a gun would have been killed by a legally armed Colorado citizen - he would have no one to blame. And a jury here would never find someone guilty even if he was flashing a badge.
I would imagine that the civilian will refrain from future aggressive driving tactics all the same.
I worked at a company years ago selling telecom gear. There was a short hothead sales man who routinely got into verbal altercations in traffic. He was out with his manager headed to a sales call, flipped off a fellow who pulled in front of him, then got stopped in a traffic jam behind the fellow he had just offended. The fellow in front got out, walked back, pulled a revolver and put it in his face then pulled the trigger. He said "You are dead". It was unloaded, but Mr Hothead promptly soiled himself. The manager told me it adjusted Mr Hothead's attitude.
Sheesh its only traffic!
Am I missing something? I thought it said that Bell cut in front of the officer, then the officer used the shoulder to pass him and started screwing around in front of Bell?
Clear case of "power trip" cop.
Sounds like they're both jerks. Hard for me to be sympathetic for either of these losers, in fact, these are the kinds of folks who are causing all of the accidents and road rage incidents that have made our highways a battleground.
I commute in northern VA. If I drew down on every idiot driver on the roads I'd never make it to work... and it's only a ten mile commute.
LOL. It works.
A guy that can't control himself ends up crapping in his pants
put the state in your posts, there are a bunch of places named Aurora,,,LOL
"facing disciplinary action "
And not arrest and prosecution for Felony Menacing, a class 5 felony???
Colorado Revised Statute 18-3-206. Menacing.
(1) A person commits the crime of menacing if, by any threat or physical action, he or she knowingly places or attempts to place another person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury. Menacing is a class 3 misdemeanor, but, it is a class 5 felony if committed:
(a) By the use of a deadly weapon or any article used or fashioned in a manner to cause a person to reasonably believe that the article is a deadly weapon; or
(b) By the person representing verbally or otherwise that he or she is armed with a deadly weapon.
One more incident to prove there is a double standard between the people and the government.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.