We've Got Absolutely Insane Body Cam Video of a Cop Jumping onto a Runaway Boat at 40 MPH
No matter your relationship to law enforcement and your opinion thereof, I think it's fair to say that the increase in bodycam usage has been a pure good. The more information we have about how real police work is actually done, the better off we all are. Like a Supreme Court justice famously said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
So the fact the work these officers do is captured on video holds them to account, as it should be, since they're our paid representatives. But it also gives us undeniable evidence of the incredibly brave work they often do. Here are the details:
CBS News - A Florida deputy sheriff jumped onto a runaway boat going over 40 mph to stop it after its driver fell off, the Pinellas County Sheriff's office said in a Facebook post. ...
The boat was being driven by a man who fell into the water before being rescued by a good Samaritan, the sheriff's office said. The Coast Guard tried using deploy prop fowling devices to stop the boat but were unsuccessful, according to the sheriff's office.
But Deputies Constant and Fernandes were up to the task.
The video footage shows Constant catching up to the runaway boat by matching its speed of about 41 mph and Fernandes leaping aboard the boat and immediately taking control.
"And yes Deputy Fernandes does his own stunts," the sheriff's office quipped in the social media post.
I mean, just look at this POV footage. While the Sheriff's Department's Facebook page was going for the punchline there at the end, it's a point well taken. This isn't some episode of TJ Hooker where some highly trained, full time professional stunt coordinator makes this carefully planned jump under highly supervised conditions with all the safety precautions in place, while William Shatner is back in his trailer in a bathrobe sipping Chivas Regal.
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Neither deputy had the first clue they'd be faced with this scenario when they started their shift that day. There was no chance to plan this out. They don't have a Boat Jump Simulator back at HQ. There was no chance to practice. "OK, first we'll try the jump at the dock. Then in first gear. Then we'll keep going faster until you feel confident you got this." Just live conditions. Full throttle. Open ocean. A total pass/fail test where the only scores are 100 or zero. Miss by a little bit, and you're cracking your skull open and getting bounced into the sea. Or just as likely, getting launched into the prop and turned into chum.
But Deputies Constant and Fernandes didn't have backup. It was them or nobody. They either got the job done, or risked having some other boat get split in two and somebody else get killed. Quite literally, a Do or Die scenario. And they most definitely did. Tell me for one hot second you'd be willing to get up out of your cubicle and put your life on the line like this. I believe that 99.9% of us in the same situation would save our own skins, cross our fingers, and hope the runaway boat runs out of gas. As someone who spends his days at a keyboard writing lowest common denominator crap on the internet, I know I'm in that group.
Just try to bear this in mind the next time you hear about some corrupt cop or one shirking their duty. There will always be those types. But there are always genuine heroes, willing to sacrifice all for the safety of total strangers. And for the love of all that is sacred, somebody buy these two deputies all the drinks they want.