By now, everyone knows the story of Ryan Moats, racing to the hospital to see his dying mother-in-law and being stopped and detained by Dallas police officer Robert Powell.  For about 15 minutes, Powell puffed out his chest and showed the Houston running back that he was strong, tougher, more powerful than Moats, and could make him bend to his will. 

That it happened just this way is shown courtesy of the dash cam and Youtube, so clear that Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle felt constrained to apologize for Powell’s lack of common sense and discretion. 

His behavior, in my opinion, did not exhibit the common sense, the discretion, the compassion that we expect our officers to exhibit.

But the story ignores a few key factors that could have changed everything.  Notably, while Moats, the driver, stayed outside the hospital as commanded by the very important enforcer of public order, his wife, Tamishia, ignored Powell’s command and ran inside.

She arrived at her mother’s bedside just as 45-year-old Jonetta Collinsworth died.

After being the object of hatred and scorn everywhere, Powell has apologized :

Powell, 25, said he had tried to contact NFL player Ryan Moats and his family to apologize directly but so far had not reached them.

I wish to publicly and sincerely apologize to the Moats family, my colleagues in the Dallas Police Department, and to all those who have been rightfully angered by my actions,” he said in a written statement issued by his attorney.

His sincerity is overwhelming.  I’m sure you’re as deeply moved by this as I am, and are shocked that Moats didn’t have him over for an cool drink to discuss how badly he feels.  And now that we’ve wiped the tear from our collective eyes, back to the point.

What if Moats had done the same? What if Moats had decided, in that split second when the officer commanded him to stay, that he would not comply and miss his last opportunity to see Jonetta Collinsworth alive?

Now many have wondered whether it would be reasonable for Moats to claim that he was so overcome with the need to say good-bye to his mother-in-law.  She was, after all, his mother-in-law, and such a need is perceived by many to be, well, too weird to credit.  To remove this issue, let’s assume that it was his mother.  This was his last chance to see his beloved mother, the women who carried him for nine months, bore him, fed him, wiped his brow after football practice, and he loved her dearly.  What if he decided that no pompous child-cop was going to stop him from telling his mother that he loved her one last time before she died?

Would the headline of the story have been Running Back Moats Fatally Shot For Disobeying Cop?  How would we feel about the story then, knowing that Moats had made the decision that it was more important to see his dying mother than to obey the whimsical command of the cop?

Frankly, it’s rather amazing that Ryan Moats kept his cool as well as he did.  Football players are not renown for succumbing to the will of inconsequential people, even when they wear uniforms with shields.  Some of them don’t even pay heed to consequential people. 

And this was a stop for a traffic infraction.  We know, from lore and video, that police tend to take themselves very seriously during traffic stops,  It’s not that they would shoot (or taze) someone for running a red light, no biggie in the pantheon of bad acts, but for failing to obey.  There is no offense that will rile an officer worse than failure to obey.  

While no police officer could get away with shooting a person for committing a traffic infraction, courts have long upheld their right to shoot for the refusal to heed a police officer’s command.  This is the crux of order, and society would crumble without it.  The underlying cause for the command fades to inconsequence, and the only point worthy of note is that the dead or wounded did not immediately obey the lawful order of the cop.  For that, he deserves whatever he got.

If it was you, and it was your mother about to die in a room 100 feet away, and some punk cop commanded you to stand there and obey him to prove that he was mightier than you could ever hope to be, would you?  This was a one-time opportunity to say good-bye to your mother; there was no option of obeying the cop and ever seeing your mother alive again.  Would you?  Would you risk a bullet in the back of your head to do something critical, that could never be done again?

To call Police Officer Robert Powell the poster-boy for the abuse of petty power by a fool with a gun is easy.  Even his chief is disgusted by his monumental indiscretion.  So do we applaud Moats for having kept his cool, having stopped and obeyed rather than ignored Powell and tried to go inside to his mother-in-law’s bedside?  Was his choice, missing the one opportunity to say good-bye to a dying woman, the right one given the possibility that Powell would have been so very upset at not being shown the obsequience due him that he would have physically subdued, perhaps even shot, Ryan Moats?

There’s no need to face these hard questions in this specific case, because Ryan Moats didn’t ignore Powell and go to his mother-in-law’s bedside.  But others have made a different choice, and paid the price for it.  Had it happened here, would Kunkle have circled the wagons around his officer?  Would the public have felt the same sympathy toward Moats?  Would it have been a righteous shoot?

Chief Kunkle explained that officers aren’t trained on how to handle exigent circumstances like this.  Nor is the public, I might add.  Maybe it’s time we reached some agreement on where this line should be drawn so others aren’t pressed to decide whether to obey or risk death for saying good-bye to a dying woman.