When we’re caught in the whirlwind of times like these it’s worth remembering that police officers are human. They might be mostly heroes in blue or gray, but they can fail. Certainly, if they don’t live up to their oath to protect and serve they should be reprimanded or perhaps fired, as they case requires, but we also shouldn’t fall for the mainstream media’s narrative that they are or should be separate from us, as in the only ones with firearms. As good citizens we are allies of law enforcement. Cops can’t do their hard jobs without our support.
Good law enforcement officers also want law-abiding citizens to have the right to carry concealed. They know we make society safer when we do. Law enforcement can’t catch the bad guys if citizens don’t call in tips, report odd behavior, and use old-fashioned American common sense.
As the America people aren’t the helpless sorts The New York Times wants them to be, even pretends they are by ignoring stories not convenient to its narratives on guns, a number of armed citizens have even come to the aid of law enforcement in recent years.
- A Police Officer was Being Attacked
On February 2, 2018, a police officer confronted a man, identified as Paul Douglas Anderson, after spotting the man’s feet dangling from a donation bin in Springville, Utah. Anderson climbed out of the donation bin, but then he refused to take his hands out of his pockets.
When the officer got closer Anderson suddenly took his hands out of his pants pockets and started to pummel the officer.
For another story about armed citizens helping law enforcement officers, check out the May issue of any of the NRA magazines.A man named Derek Meyer was driving by and saw the police lights flashing. Then he saw Anderson punch the officer in the face. Meyer quickly turned around. When he got to the scene he leaped out with his pistol in his hand.
“I carry a gun to protect me and those around me, but primarily I carry a gun to protect my family first and foremost,” said Meyer, who has a concealed-carry permit, to FOX13. “Outside of that, if I were to use my gun to protect anyone it would be law enforcement or military personnel.”
The police officer’s dash cam recorded what happened next. Meyer aimed his handgun at Anderson and ordered him to stop attacking the officer. Anderson turned and ran away and was later found hiding under a flatbed trailer. Anderson was arrested and faces several charges.
The officer suffered a fractured eye socket and lacerations around his eye.
“Had he not been in the right place at the right time, who knows what would have happened,” said Cpl. Cory Waters of Springville Police.
Meyer said that he decided to share his story because there aren’t enough “good stories from responsible, gun-owning people.”
- A Cop is Surrounded
On Feb. 5, 2016, at about 3 p.m., just west of Philadelphia in Upper Darby Township an officer found himself being attacked by multiple high school-age kids. The local high school had just let its nearly 4,000 students onto its densely populated streets in this troubled neighborhood of rowhouses. CityData.com shows that Upper Darby’s crime rate far exceeds that of even nearby areas of Philadelphia. At this time of the day, according to Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood, there are always at least a half dozen police officers patrolling Upper Darby. Nevertheless, that day, an officer found himself outnumbered and alone.
Local residents had reported fights taking place in three locations in Upper Darby. The biggest fight was not far from the high school. Forty or more people had circled around two combatants.
An officer jumped out of his patrol car and ran right into the middle of the fight. “As he breaks up the fight, he takes one kid and then the other jumps [on] him. Now he’s fighting two of them and he’s calling for an assist officer at the same time,” Chitwood told philly.com.
The officer had more trouble than just the two who were fighting. Some in the crowd, sensing that the cop was in a desperate position, began to get aggressive.
But then a good guy with a gun, who has a concealed-carry permit, ran out of his nearby residence with a handgun. He yelled for the teens to get away from the cop.
“He had the gun in his hand, but he didn’t point it at the kids, he just told them to back off,” Chitwood said. “If this guy didn’t come out and come to the aid of the officer, this officer would have had significant problems.”
The good Samaritan kept the group of teens away from the officer until other officers arrived. The officer who’d jumped into the brawl ended up with “significant” hand injuries, but he is alive.
Meanwhile, many in the media didn’t report that the bad situation was stopped by an armed citizen. Few have even bothered to ask what would have happened if this citizen had been prevented from exercising his constitutional right to bear arms.
- An Armed Citizen Stops a Thug from Using a Cop’s Gun
On Jan. 16, 2016, in Bastrop, Texas, an armed citizen stopped a man from using an officer’s gun. In this case a man was attacking Bastrop Police Officer Dylan Dorris outside a gas station. Somehow the bad guy had gotten his hands on the officer’s gun.
“I remember thinking stay in the fight. Just keep fighting, keep fighting. Do whatever you can do, just stay alive, you need to go home,” Dorris told the Statesman.
Luckily, an armed citizen named Scott Perkins saw the fight, pulled his self-defense handgun and didn’t hesitate.
Perkins moved in and leveled it at the attacker while shouting, “Freeze!”
The suspect, Kenton Desean Fryer of Arkansas, ran away, but was soon arrested.
“I’m alive today because of [Perkins],” Dorris later said. “There are no words to explain it. He’s such an outstanding citizen. He’s here for our country, our community and you really feel the love.”
These three examples show we are all in this together. When average, law-abiding Americans can be a part of the solution we have a safer, freer and better society.
The decision, of course, by any one of America’s millions of citizens who chose to carry concealed to help an officer or another person in desperate need must depend on the situation at hand. A private citizen with a gun could be mistaken by responding law enforcement as a bad guy. Still, these good citizens used their freedom and common sense to step forward appropriately when an officer needed them.
This is why a lot of police officers have actually asked citizens who are willing to take on this responsibility to carry. My local sheriff, Paul Van Blarcum, is a good example. Just after the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack, Blarcum publicly asked his deputies to carry off-duty and he wrote in a Facebook post: “In light of recent events that have occurred in the United States and around the world I want to encourage citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO.”
“We can’t be everywhere,” Blarcum said. “So I looked around and noticed that we have about 10,000 people with permits to carry in this county of about 180,000. I think the people that are out there who do carry concealed right now are at least as proficient with their [guns] as police officers are.”
His deputies have to qualify with their pistols twice a year, and for many of them that’s all the shooting they do, he noted, while people who chose to carry tend to shoot more and are probably more proficient than many law enforcement officers.
He appreciates law-abiding citizens who carry because, he said, “We’re partners with the public in crime prevention.”
