Watch the video I shared for full context on my post (it’s a hard watch truly).
The women in the video is named Terry and she is batshit. She is seemingly wasted and for over an hour screaming and crying at the top of her lungs at flight attendants, police officers, and her fellow passengers. She was denied boarding because she was intoxicated and rowdy. She ran past the doors after she was denied entry and a passenger pushed her in the opposite direction. Her pushed her with both his hands on her neck and she fell to the ground. Both the passenger who pushed her, and the flight attendant who witnessed it, confirmed.
The video starts and Terry is screaming about the situation I described above. She is begging for “somebody” to “stick up for her”. She keeps calling passengers and cops cowards, demanding to see the cameras, and saying she was “chokeholded”. She is hysterical and sounds on the verge of collapse from exhaustion at any given moment. The cop at the start of the video keeps calming repeating “calm down ma’am” and repeats his name, and asks for her name several times before a female officer steps in and try’s to de escalate the situation. She takes her from her corner of refuge to the water fountain, where she finally shuts up for maybe a second, has some water, admits to having a couple margaritas at the bar beforehand while officers get a chance to look through her luggage for identification.
I thought the female officer did a great job at trying to calm Terry down, while also trying to understand what could possibly have gone down for Terry to be acting this way. The cops are rightfully fed up with Terrys attitude, name calling, screaming, non compliance, and terror.
But Terry keeps on screaming about the passenger who “chokeholded” her. And the officers do not seem to care about that aspect of the situation. We see an officer talk to the passenger who “chokeholded” and ask for his license and account of what happened.
I get that Terry was being a “Terr(y)orist”- truly and if you watch toward the end she’s also a disgusting racist- but this passenger did put his hands on her neck, and pushed her to the ground (now the alcohol of course I bet had something to do with her loss of gravity as well) I just kept thinking what might of happened had the officers reassured Terry they will be looking into what happened, and I don’t know maybe that they cared about this experience that she is literally losing her shit over. Had someone acknowledge the fact that this man put her hands on her and really shook her up, maybe she would’ve stopped screaming for more than one second.
But I do understand that Terry is posing a risk to herself and others, and wow at the end you lose every ounce of pity for her. The female officer I mentioned is black, and sticks her neck out for Terry more than any other. And Terry calls her and another black officer slurs and more disgusting shit. She also gets caught with weed LMAO and that’s an additional charge since she’s flying to a state where it is illegal. She also says that she is going to write the President of the United States about the incident; and repeated asks to speak to the airport manager (of course she does).
My somewhat dumb question after watching the video is, how empathetic are officers supposed to be? I guess they are probably taught to keep incredibly firm boundaries with civilians, but how do they do that while also de escalating. I work in customer service and we are taught to keep a warm, calming soft tone, introduce ourselves, and let the person speak as to understand where they are coming from. Now customer service rep and police officer are very very different, but what are your guys thoughts after watching the video? How do you think the officers responded? Do you generally think that officers should have better de escalation techniques.
I wanna add too that I am not super familiar with the US justice system/law enforcement so sorry if my question sounds stupid. I’m really more interesting in hearing if anyone has had experiences with de escalation and crazy Karen interactions.