Sarasota Police Storm McDonald's To Catch Drug Suspect
By ANTHONY CORMIER
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Published: July 12, 2008
SARASOTA — Undercover police officers stormed a McDonald's restaurant and ordered diners and employees to the ground as they tried to catch a suspected cocaine dealer Thursday.
The Sarasota police officers were dressed in black, carried rifles and wore masks when they ran into the restaurant on the corner of Beneva and Fruitville roads. They burst through the door at dinner time, yelled for patrons to hide under tables and chased a 24-year-old man who hid in a bathroom.
It was a drug sting that went bad because of a milkshake.
Police say the arrest would have gone smoother if the suspect, Juan T. Dixon, had not stopped at the door of the restaurant to go back and grab his shake from the counter.
...With the squad cars zooming into the parking lot, Dixon turned around to get his drink from the counter.
When he got back to the door, he saw the cars waiting for him and, realizing he was about to be arrested, he ran for the bathroom.
(Click here for the full, original story)
After fighting back the urge to chuckle at the image of a drug trafficker bolting for a bathroom with a Big Mac and Triple Thick Shake in tow (as well as an ounce of cocaine and 100 pills of Ecstasy that he had agreed to purchase from an undercover narcotics officer in the McDonald's), one cannot help but wonder what sort of dire potential for violence or otherwise foreboding circumstances could have possibly led to a drug sting being organized and set in a public place full of innocent people, ultimately leading to a Hollywood-esque standoff composed of masked, rifle carrying police officers bursting into a public restaurant and screaming for all present to “Get down!” in true Point Break style.
The answer is much simpler, and much more dreadful, than one would think. The police had planned it that way for their own safety:
[Sarasota Police Chief Peter] Abbott said it is common for undercover detectives to conduct stings and drug surveillance in public places because they do not want to raise a suspect's suspicions and place officers in greater jeopardy by requesting more remote locations.
Oh, gee golly, Mr. Chief of Police, I understand. It only makes sense to endanger the lives and well being of innocent citizens trying to enjoy a meal as opposed to ensuring that those that make a profession of police work and are, as a consequence, armed with rifles and body armor are the only people in danger.
If this is nobility, then a rapist is a simple romantic.
One should hardly find it surprising that, as stated in the full article, the department was unwilling to stipulate as to whom-- the department or the suspect-- determined that a McDonald's was the optimum meeting place for this debacle. The more cynical of us find this to be an answer in itself, and to speak volumes as to all those involved knowing that this sort of practice is not only selfish and deplorable, but unethical to the extreme.
I am consistently the first to point out the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled (twice in fact) that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect us, which leaves the tired slogan of “To protect and to serve” null and void in any case. But if law enforcement officers insist on this illusion (and they do), is it too much to ask that, if they're under no obligation to protect us from anything, they at the very least avoid endangering us?
What if, as all citizens should, one or two of the patrons in the restaurant had been carrying weapons to protect themselves?
A customer, a woman who did not want her name used, ducked under a table and worried that the masked men were robbers, not police.
"I thought it was a gang," she said. "I mean, they had masks and guns and I never heard anyone say, 'police.' I thought these guys were coming to rob us."
Imagine, if you will, you and your family-- your children, if you have any-- munching away at tasty victuals in your local McDonald's, when masked men clad in black kick in the door and scream for everyone to get down, and do nothing to identify themselves as police officers. Again, we cannot rely on the police for protection, so if you're in any way a responsible citizen with an interest in the protection of one's self and one's family, you're armed. What is your response?
I feel I do not need to belabor the point, other to say that my own personal reaction would lead, at the best, to one dead police officer and me rotting in a jail cell for the remainder of my life for the crime of protecting my family from men in masks.
Friends, if ever there has been an example of exactly how much value law enforcement places on your lives and well being, it lays before you.
To protect and serve... and to fail on both points.
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