Quote Originally Posted by OK BBQ Eater Anonymous View Post
You are the one saying tackle... I say he was hired to remove him from the field... Which is what he did.
No one is upset that the guy was removed from the field. No one is upset that the guy was handcuffed. No one is upset that the guy was arrested. No one is upset that the guy will have to pay an appropriate fine. All those things are perfectly acceptable.

Are there situations where tackling a fan who runs onto the field would be appropriate? Probably so. If the guy ran out during an active play, it may be reasonable to use more force. Some guy running out there while the ball is in the air has a greater chance of getting slammed into by a player, or tripping a player up, potentially causing an injury because he's an extra guy who is not supposed to be there. But this was during a TV timeout. If he was running all over the field, evading police officers who had tried to use less force to take him into custody, then an escalation might have been appropriate. If you can't get him off the field any other way, then it may be what you've got to do. But that hadn't happened here.

There are several different questions here, and your earlier post highlighted that. First, was the level of force appropriate? This is a question for a jury to decide. Personally I believe that the level of force used was excessive. Now, the level of damages involved in this case appear to be pretty low. A jury could decide that the police officer used too much force, and then turn around and award the guy on the field one dollar in damages. Those are seperate issues. But what Midtowner was referring to earlier was whether this is what he was hired to do.

The question is whether the police officer was acting within the scope of his employment. Let's say I'm a 7/11 clerk, and some kid steals a piece of gum from the store. When I catch him doing it, I whoop his ass. This action may exceed my legal authority to prevent theft from the store. If I'm just doing that on my own accord, then I'm the one who is liable. What any decent attorney will try to do is get money from 7/11 itself, because they have a lot more money than I do. So the question becomes, how responsible is 7/11? If they told me in my employee training "if some punk kid tries to take candy, you kick him in the back of the knee and then slam his head into the floor. That's part of your job", then 7/11 is absolutely liable.

Your claim is that the police officer here "did his job". The question is, what are OU's policies towards removing someone from the field? What are OHP's policies? Remember that even if OU or OHP told him it was a-ok to tackle a fan on the field, it doesn't automatically make it so. They don't have any authority to allow their employees to perform tortious acts. Just because 7/11, or OU, or OHP, says it's okay, doesn't mean it automatically is. If OU trains him that way, and they are wrong, then they become liable.

Does that make sense?