Apparently, all it takes is a few inches of snow in Washington D.C. and all hell breaks loose.
Over the weekend a winter storm dropped some frosty white stuff over the nation's capital, and inspired a few people to start a friendly snowball fight at the corner of 14th and U streets. The first problem is that they began throwing snowballs at passing cars. The second problem is that one of those cars contained an undercover D.C. detective. The third problem is that he emerged from the car, clearly pissed off, and brandishing a sidearm (without first identifying himself either, it would appear).
Luckily, no one ended up getting shot. Also luckily, more than a few people have camera phones these days and recorded the entire absurd incident. We can only hope that Detective Baylor looses his job over this.
Obviously, the only acceptable response to snowball chucking is the threat of deadly force. If you let those hooligans get away with this, they might soon move up to throwing balled up newspaper, and then where will we be? Chaos will reign over the streets as society slips back into a Hobbsian state of nature...at least that's my guess.
My favorite moments of the video:
- At 0:20, the gun is clearly visible in his left hand.
- At 1:16, after the crowd realizes there's no immediate danger of a snowball fight turning into the O.K. Corral, they begin to lecture the cop with "You don't bring a gun to a snowball fight". Amen.
- At 1:58, even after back-up has arrived, Baylor initiates physical contact with one of the people on the corner.
- At 2:12, he ACTUALLY ADMITS that he drew his weapon. Pardon the expression, but this is the smoking gun of the whole thing. His ass is getting fired for sure.
- At 2:47, the group of snowballers takes control of the situation, getting his name and, soon after, license plate number. Good thinking, guys.
- At 3:10, Baylor (still apparently wanting to make a bigger ass of himself, charges into the crowd after someone.
- At 3:37, he emerges from the crowd with the one guy who was clearly behind the whole thing. Good detective work, mister detective.
- At 4:00, (this might be my favorite part) someone in the crowd points out that it is, indeed, snowing, which means the heavens above are just as responsible for Baylor's Hummer being covered in snow as the people throwing snowballs.
I think he's going to regret those few minutes for the rest of his short career in the D.C. police force.
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Also, it's a sad commentary on the city of DC that someone takes out a gun and no one moves. No one leaves the scene. There's an eerie calm at realizing he has a gun. Maybe this is too common a phenomenon to merit much panic. It only gets crazy when they realize he's a cop.
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