When are law enforcement officers the greatest heroes? When they stop the small percent of other officers abusing their position, shaming their badge, shaming their profession, and shaming their departments.
This is what happened in Seminole County, Florida, when a Seminole County Sheriff's Department was on his regular beat, and in a 45 mph speed zone, a car sped through the same at 80 mph.
That car was an off-duty officer on his way to work, the kind of officer who felt entitled to break the law, because he is the law, not unlike Trump and the Republican Party and their illegitimate SCOTUS, who feel entitled to break the law on a regular basis, because they are the illegitimately-installed law.
Though the same makes the majority of America sick and tired of the same, which is why Trump and the GOP were voted out of power (and likely never voted into power, because remember Hillary won the popular vote, because she was more popular than Trump), but there isn't much ordinary folks can do when the people they depend on the most for justice have been corrupted and have targeted them with harm, other than plead to other U.S. law enforcement to stop them, which often goes into a black hole of little to no effective response, but not always.
Too often U.S. law enforcement and/or their corruption and/or their abuse of power dominates the news, and so UpRights News decided to create a news column that celebrates when U.S. law enforcement are heroes, to give credit where credit is due, and here credit is due, because it is hard for U.S. law enforcement officers to go after their own, because of a "blue family" and "got your six" culture that makes doing the same unpopular, but it actually happens all of the time.
For example, U.S. law enforcement regularly arrest other officers for DUIs, cannibalism, sex crimes, abuses of power, corruption, murder, and the like, and so we wanted to create this column to showcase what an effective and fair justice system looks like, by showcasing who we consider heroes.
All that said, we are going to balance some of these pro-blue hero stories with some of the stories where those we trust the most violate the public trust, and in doing so shame their departments and their professions, because some very sick people are drawn to positions of power, because they enjoy abusing the same, based on their dark triad personality types, as specified by Harvard's Dr. Martha Stout, in her book, The Sociopath Next Door.
When we balance our pro-blue hero stories with zero stories, we aren't attacking U.S. law enforcement as a profession, but rather we literally want to give aid to those departments whose bad apples are making their whole department look like crap, because the conduct of a few of these bad apples really does cast a shadow on the ability of the public to trust the whole department, even when the same isn't warranted, compounded when abuse of power is covered up, resulting in more abuse of power, resulting in more mistrust.
We also intent to write some articles about local heroes who aren't in law enforcement and who do amazing things for their communities.
Accordingly, this first article of this series looks at a balanced story of heroes and zeroes in Seminole County, Florida, where one hero had to stop a zero, for refusing to follow the law, and then fled the scene thereafter.
In the case of Seminole County, Florida, the following is what happened and how the Department handled the same with total professionalism, making them heroes in our book.
As reported by CBS, "A police officer was relieved of duty after an altercation with another law enforcement officer was caught on body camera, authorities said. Alexander Shaouni, of the Orlando Police Department, is facing charges as well as an internal review.
Shaouni was apparently on his way into work on June 6, according to a copy of the arrest report obtained by CBS News, when the Seminole County Sheriff's deputy on patrol saw a marked patrol car speeding.
With no emergency lights or sirens activated, the police-issued vehicle was going "80 mph in a posted 45 zone," according to the report. The deputy had to drive at over 90 mph to catch Shaouni when he did not immediately pull over, according to the report.
Footage released by the sheriff's office showed part of the pursuit — as well as the heated exchange between Shaouni and the deputy.
After eventually stopping, Shaouni stepped out and asked the deputy: "What? I am going into work, my man. Why are you trying to pull me over?"
"Because you're going 80 in a 45," the deputy said.
"I am going into work," Shaouni said.
On the video, Shaouni gestures to his police uniform and asks the deputy, "What does it look like I am dressed for?"
The deputy then asked for Shaouni's identification — to which Shaouni responded, "No." The video shows him heading back to his car.
Shaouni is facing charges of reckless driving, resisting an officer, and fleeing and eluding a law enforcement officer with their lights and sirens activated, according to the arrest report.
Departmental officials told CBS News in a statement that Shaouni had been "relieved of duty pending the Seminole County Sheriff's criminal investigation and OPD's Internal Affairs investigation.""
We were so impressed by these heroes, we wrote the department and recommended a commendation for this deputy.
These are the kinds of leaders and heroes every law enforcement agency needs to lead entire departments, unlike the Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones types, who "disappeared" $100 million in COVID funds, who refused to allow the United Nations to inspect his facilities of horror, and he was accused of sexually harassing and/or sexually assaulting 30 of the female employees under him, including trying to unzip their pants, while Scott Jones was married, and who thus brought enormous shame onto his department and his family, gross mistrust, and which sullied the fantastic work that other deputies were doing, making him a zero and not a hero in our books -- are reasonable inferences. Heroes don't behave like this.
And yet there are so many other deputies and officers who do an amazingly hard job well, and the last thing they need is to be associated with the shame that the likes of Scott Jones brings down on them, their departments, and their profession. A few rotten apples really do impact the bunch in ways that the public just can't appreciate.
This is how villains and organized crime behaves, and we know of other crimes Scott Jones furthered, which aren't hard to find if you know where to look.
Imagine getting up in the middle of the night for your shift, where you are going to have to scrape somebody else's kid of a sidewalk or highway, whose been torn in half, and the like, and how hard it is for you to do that, and then you have to go and inform the kid's parents that their kid has died, and then you might have to do this more than once per shift every day of your life, and then you race off to stop some Republican nut job holding his kids and wife hostage with a gun, who you try to stop from killing them before he kills himself, but not before he tries to end your life by shooting at you, and you do this work every day, for decades, and hope and feel that you are making a difference in the world, only for the public to totally hate and mistrust you, because the likes of Scott Jones brings shame onto you, your department, your profession, and all that brutally hard work. That's a crap sandwich by anyone's measure, which is why when heroes stop these zeroes we applaud them, and we recommend them for commendations, and we will feature them in this news column, to give credit where credit is due.
Those who treat everyone in an equal manner and who don't look the other way when one of their own is violating the law and harming others, and who will chase them down, at risk to themselves, and to their own careers, to make sure justice is applied equally. That's what a real hero and real leader looks like, as a model for the American justice system.
As with all of our articles we publish, this article is also subject to our legal disclaimer below.
SOURCES AND ATTRIBUTES
[1] https://unsplash.com/@umby
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-police-officer-speeding-dispute-alexander-shaouni/
[4] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/174276/the-sociopath-next-door-by-martha-stout-phd/