“The crowd almost jumped on him and they would have been right to do so. I would have loved to see them hold him down and handcuff him with his own cuffs.”
You are nuts. The officer showed amazing restraint considering the mob behavior he was there to end.
The teen girl disobeyed lawful orders from a police officer in a mob situation and got herself in trouble. Other girls came rushing over which was also incredibly stupid of them, but they backed off when he warned them to. Then a couple of large fellas also circle around and ignore his warning for them to get back. He rightfully drew his weapon, and that is what it took to get them to back off.
The officer deserves to be reprimanded for using foul language. Other than that, he did his job.
The teens involved here need to learn a lesson about how they could get themselves and others killed by taking part in the lawless activities of their peers and fighting with cops. When the criminal activity started happening, they should have got out of there quickly. Instead, some of them wanted to see the show, argue with the cops, and generally make a bad situation worse.
I have had to deal with an out of control cop who came into a situation with wrong information and proceeded to approach like a bull in a China shop. He was looking for anything to charge me with but found there was nothing to use against me. I responded respectfully, cooperated, but when he tried to intimidate me by inferring that I needed to follow his unlawful order, I called his bluff. He backed down.
This is NOT that situation. Those teens might not have been the ones trespassing, assaulting people, or disturbing the peace; but they were contributing to the problem and interfered with the leos trying to do a difficult job.
The teen girl reacted as anyone would when an officer runs up and grabs you. The crowd reacted to the officer because it looks like he is attacking her.
Look again at the video- there are two officers calmly walking towards that same group, and then officer dumbass RUNS past them screaming and swearing, and grabs the girl and tries forcing her to the ground.
She was not fighting him, she was trying to protect herself from injury. The crowd around her reacts to SAVE her- and he has to draw his gun to make them back up- causing further panic.
He escalated the situation and was almost forced to shoot, and then he would have claimed it was justified because they attacked him.