TexasCHLforum.com

Why doesn't everyone just carry pepper spray? It's cheap, very effective, and it causes zero alarm when you carry it with your finger on the trigger. I have found from personal experience that a teenager will switch from fight to polite in a fraction of a second when a pepper spray canister is pointed at their face.

Is it even allowed by police policy to detain a perp uncuffed by holding on to their clothes? Sometimes you just have to cut bait.

The crowd seemed to be ever growing. I kept wondering what the older gentleman with the stick was going to do. Unless you've got cuffs, a badge, and backup on the way, it just doesn't seem like a good idea to detain someone. Maybe I'm just seeing it from an LTC's perspective, but it seemed like a powder keg from the very beginning. It's a miracle no one was injured.

When touching and tugging starts to happen, you have to weigh the benefits to the risks involved. Would it have endangered anyone to let the kid go? Would it have endangered anyone dance around with the kid with a bunch of good Samaritans trying to rescue the child.

Why didn't he announce that he was law enforcement to the crowd and ask for someone to call 911. This man had zero visible identification indicating that he was a peace officer. If I see a man wrestling with a screaming child who isn't his parent and shows zero indication of being law enforcement, I'm getting the pepper spray out before he manages to get the kid in a van. This little push shove match almost cost lives.

The kid was probably a little punk, but he wasn't a danger to the the surroundings, but the crowd and the situation got rapidly out of control. This was not a felon, so I believe a reasonable person would have just let go.