A woman ran onto the ramp at the Atlanta airport on Monday. Police pursued and caught up to her. At their initial encounter, with an officer speaking to her behind a Spirit Airlines plane, she walks off – and skips for joy! Law enforcement pursues, slowly at first. Then she begins to run.
An officer runs after her, and shoves her from behind down onto the ground. He handcuffs her, and then throws her into the vehicle the other officer drives up next to them.
If you’re at work, or around children, then sound off for this. All you can hear is exasperated commentary by the people taking the video, and their language isn’t entirely safe for work or work from home:
She decided she wanted to find out a lot. I could probably have just stopped writing at “Spirit Airlines Atlanta.” In the past year alone, a Spirit Airlines Atlanta passenger went berserk after being denied boarding; Spirit had to shut their gate door to block rowdy passengers; and two of their passengers brawled at the gate… to mention just a few incidents for this one smaller airline at a single station.
Let’s hope this woman retains a top Atlanta-area personal injury attorney. Law enforcement (or for that matter, any person) can only use as much force as reasonably necessary to stop a threat. Pushing a woman, who was posing no threat, from behind in the manner shown in the video is unacceptable use of force for which the officer and agency should be liable.
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Atlanta Personal Injury Law Group. 404-476-7686
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The woman is nuts but it’s too rough in this context. Especially the way she was manhandled into the car while handcuffed. Could easily dislocate her shoulder or broke her arm/wrist. When there clearly was no need for that. He let his emotions cloud his judgment there.
@Dignity – How lame, ridiculous, absurd to use this to promote your business. There is no way to know whether she was a threat or not. You don’t know whether she was going to run to the plane with the engines running and get sucked in. Do you know that? Yeah I didn’t think so. Or run into other vehicles causing injury to herself and others? Yeah I didn’t think so either. Leave the thinking to others who are more sane.
@Dignity
You are shameless. That was the appropriate use of force to stop someone from a highly restricted area from hurting themselves or others. You and your victimhood mentality is the worst form of cancer in America.
Fine use of force – she needed to be stopped immediately and immediately removed from the tarmac. I’ll be the first person to call out cops for excessive use of force, but he got her down on the ground quickly. The ONLY possible issue and that would involve a minor admonishion at most – is that he may have been able to get her into the car better as he had backup by then.
@Dignity: So how do you propose the officer should have stopped her? Taser? Tackle?
I did wince when he tried to lift her into the car by one shoulder, but still going to give a pass there as the middle of the tarmac is just not a place you want to **** around or give the person a other chance to run off. It’s a hazardous area.
The Airport Police Officer looks like he is used to manhandling women from the way he picked her up and put her in the car.
As I have said before, Spirit (as well as Frontier) carry passengers that Greyhound will not touch.
AI & Mantis, you are correct in your criticism of Dignity. Unlike APD chasing a criminal, Dignity apparently is out chasing an ambulance.
She found out.
Thankful she wasn’t Black or she’d be dead. I live less than 20 minutes from ATL and am Black. Screw y’;all haters, but I’d have shot her sorry ass.
Repeal the 19th.
@Phat Chance
More than one study has shown that black people are less likely to be killed by police than whites.
You can drop your victim complex.
@Andys – what data are you referencing? According to Statistics, it’s 5.9 per million for Blacks versus 2.3 for Whites from Jan 2015-Jan 2024 More than 2x higher chance for Blacks being shot and killed by police than Whites. If you’re looking at totals, that’s misleading, since many more Whites than Blacks in U.S.
@Andys: Wrong. It’s true that in any given encounter with law enforcement, a black person is no more likely to be killed by police than a white person.
But Black people have a LOT more encounters with law enforcement, so any given black person is much more likely to be killed by police than a white person.
And that’s just police encounters. Factor in the justice system overall (deaths in jail/prison) and it gets worse.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12187
And another study.
Can we put to rest the talking points of blm yet?
Nor sure about that. It seems Bureau of Justice statistics show about the same rate of police initiated contact for Whites and Blacks. It’s just that Blacks are more than 2x likely to get killed in those encounters.
Play stupid games, win even stupider prizes. Seriously, anyone with half a brain knows not to eff around in secured areas of an airport. Maybe she’ll learn from eating an asphalt sandwich but something tells me not to hold my breath.
No sympathy, she asked for it.
Anyone else humming Chariots of Fire watching this?
“Highly restricted area” open to anyone who has no high-school education and can heft baggage. But TSA says so. Quiet now, rule follower. The sterile area, or as you call it “highly restricted area” is not a “take down woman on hard concrete area.”
LEOs everywhere are power hungry and use every opportunity to demonstrate it. This is no exception. WHAT THREAT DID SHE POSE EXACTLY? None. WHY WAS A VIOLENT TAKEDOWN NECESSSARY? It wasn’t. WHY COULD SHE NOT BE PLACED INTO A VEHICLE WITH RESPECT AND DIGNITY? Because LEOs are a-holes. The ones who can’t get a real job and end up as university policy or airport police are the worst.
Don’t flout the laws. Don’t do it with amateur cops playing “hardball” so one day they can get a day job.
Good police work. Let’s hope some liberal DA doesn’t set her free.
@ Andys – your first article says rate of shootings are same, not killings. Second one is regarding results from a simulator experiment with 80 officers. Not real life data. Real life data shows Blacks have greater than 2x likelihood of getting killed by police. Reality does not support your claims.
Welcome to Spirit, “The Greyhound Bus Of The Sky”.. I will pay 10X times more than ride on that flying ghetto liner.
Dignity, do you also represent idiots that run amock on a professional sports field too?
ABSOLUTELY appropriate use of force for a woman running from police, in violation of federal terror laws, on the tarmac of an airport. He shoved her, nothing more. He then cuffed her and she wouldn’t stand.
Far less painful than if tased, or if he tackled her, both also reasonable.
What are the police suppose to do? Just run after her aimlessly until she gives up? Surround her with pillow toting officers?
People saying she was abused are part of the problem with society today, not the solution.
@Dignity: Good thing you know what you’re talking about. Hint, you don’t.
Author Gary Leff: I saw no throwing.
@Dignity
ACLU ? Really? How come they are not defending any of the January 6 political prisoners? I guess it doesn’t support their goal of a communist utopia.
Interesting range of comments. Sounds like the lady was loaded rather that joyful. The pushdown was rough but very effective…no qualms there, but then he unnecessarily man handled her…the scene was contained, backup vehicle was there, threat was neutralized. He seemed very angry and handled the woman roughly at that point IMO with no justification.