Albuquerque, NM — All too often, as the Free Thought Project has consistently reported, police officers will use the term “fear for my life” to justify just about any insane and violent tactics they employ. Also, all too often, these tactics involve killing innocent people. A video submitted to the Free Thought Project this week shows just how insane those tactics can be and also just how close a man came to losing his life.
Bikers and cops have a sordid history and often times, when they meet face to face, police will resort to childish road rage tactics. The case in the video below is no different. However, it could’ve resulted in the senseless death of a man on a motorcycle.
It is important to note that motorcycle groups driving recklessly around high-traffic areas present a danger to themselves and those around them. That being said, the situation is not made any safer when a cop employs deadly force to stop it. However, that is exactly what happened.
According to KRQE:
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The video shows a motorcyclist doing a wheelie on Tramway Saturday afternoon when a BCSO patrol car pulls alongside him. A passenger deputy can be see drawing his gun and aiming it at the motorcyclist as the two vehicles go through an intersection.
BCSO confirmed that is the deputy’s service weapon – not a taser. BCSO says deputies received several calls Saturday of this group of roughly 50 bikers racing and driving recklessly in the Heights.
Deputies says what’s not shown in this video is the bikers flashing gang signs and surrounding deputies as they tried to pull them over.
According to police, positioning one’s fingers in a certain way, to form what they call a ‘gang sign’ is somehow a threat to one’s life. According to their statement, these hand gestures caused the deputies to ‘fear for their lives’ and so one of them pulled out his pistol — out of fear, of course.
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Deputy Felicia Maggard, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s spokeswoman never once said the deputy was wrong for pulling his gun and only noted that the gang signs made them think they were under attack.
“The motorcycles completely surrounded their patrol unit and began directing what deputies know to be gang related signs in their direction,” Maggard said. The horror.
The video does not show any of this, however. It only shows the cruiser speed up to the back of a biker who was riding a wheelie and threaten to kill him by pulling out his gun and aiming it at him.
While this act may seem crazy or rare, TFTP has reported on similar instances before.
Earlier this year, a video went viral after it showed a Chicago cop walking into the street and lob his piping hot cup of coffee into the face of a motorcyclist. The man on the bike goes by Elijah Bling on Facebook and the officer’s crime was captured on his helmet cam.
In March of last year, Fort Worth police confirmed that one of their officers was under investigation after a video was uploaded to Facebook showing him pepper spray innocent people as they drove by on motorcycles. In August, the Department quietly released a statement noting that they will not discipline the officer involved.
After Fort Worth police officer William Figueroa was seen shooting out pepper spray into the faces of motorcyclists as they drove by on a busy highway, he was placed on paid vacation pending an internal investigation. The investigation wrapped up in June. However, investigators left it up to Figueroa’s bosses to decide what, if any, punishment he would receive. He received nothing.
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