Cop pulls gun on snowball fight

[Bramble]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...qHWhgD9CNRFA80

So in a nutshell a big ol' snowstorm in D.C. A bunch of people started a snowball fight. Sounds like fun yes? Well this officer's car got hit by SNOWballs and his reaction is to jump out and pull his gun on the snowball fighters. Say, yeah THAT'S an oh so reasonable reaction. I mean if they were throwing ICE or ROCKS or A GRENADE or something I could see jumping out to stop it. But a freaking SNOWball??? Wow.

[lordlundar]

Sheesh! the cops in New York STARTED the snowball fight. This cop is nuts.

[jackfaire]

Uhm yeah a little too trigger happy.

[Greenday]

It's not like a snowball hitting your windshield could impair your vision and you could crash and die as a result. Oh wait, that has happened. Pulling his gun was probably too much but he had to do something.

[LeChatNoir]

It's not like a snowball hitting your windshield could impair your vision and you could crash and die as a result. Oh wait, that has happened. Pulling his gun was probably too much but he had to do something.

Because stopping, getting out of the vehicle and issuing a friendly warning would have been too much to ask. Would have been easy enough to say, "Hey, you guys might not want to throw these in the direction of traffic, it might impair someone's vision and cause an accident." The people were clearly a threat that warranted armed intervention.

[daleduke17]

Do you know what is hitting your car when you are driving by? Could have been ice pellets, could have been pellets from a gun (like a bb or something similar).

[blas87]

There have been instances around here where people were innocently enough just having a snowball fight, but maybe there was a rock or ice inside the snowball that caused damage or hurt someone.

No, it did NOT warrant him pulling his gun, but I will say that not every snowball fight is light and fun, because sometimes people can get hurt.

[Android Kaeli]

I'd say that pulling a gun is too much, but I've driven in snow before and wouldn't want some random person pelting *MY* car with snowballs. There's no telling what's in those snowballs, could be rocks or ice, and could actually do damage to the car or, worse, the driver and any passengers in the vehicle.

What if someone had done that to a moving car and the snowball hit it in the wrong way to make the car crash into something? Yea, fun and games alright.

[jackfaire]

Saying something yes.

The fact he pulled a gun indicates he was reacting from anger not as a cop but as a person. Cops can't afford to react like that. What if his gun had gone off and shot someone.

[Fryk]

Do you know what is hitting your car when you are driving by? Could have been ice pellets, could have been pellets from a gun (like a bb or something similar).

That's true, until you look at your windshield and see snow on it. Then I believe most of us would think "snowball", not "grenade".

[Bramble]

At any rate the stories I have read on this said that the snowball fight was happening on a street that had almost no traffic on it. The officer was also in his personal car so it's not like they saw a police car and decided 'Hey i know lets chuck snowballs at it.' They actually stopped the fight to push a marked police car out of the pile of snow it got stuck in.