Cop Catches Old Man Trying To Kill Himself Off Balcony
HuffPo- A cop is being praised for acting quickly to rescue a man just as he began to jump head-first off a sixth-floor balcony in Hamden, Connecticut.
Officer Justin Martin’s bodycam video shows just how close a call it was ? as Police Chief Thomas Wydra noted, just one more second may have been too late. “His actions are certainly heroic,” Wydra said, according to the New Haven Register.
Martin was responding to a call of a “combative resident” at the Whitney Center senior living community, the Hamden Police Department noted in a Facebook post on Tuesday. As he spoke with staff, he saw a man run away and Martin ran after him up stairs to a roof terrace.
There he saw the man “dive head first” over a short railing, but he managed to grab his legs, pulling him to safety, police said.
Just in the nick of time! Good thing this old man was wearing tight jeans instead of sweatpants, or else he’d be a naked pile of broken human. Nice hustle from the cop. Hat tip to these new body cams. Gonna lead to a lot more videos of heroic police officers, and of course the occasional… bad video. Not even gonna open that can of worms because I’m going somewhere else.
The headline for this article stated that a hero cop had “rescued” a man from jumping off the balcony. I changed my title to “catches” because if a guy is trying to jump off a balcony and you prevent him, is that rescue? He’s made a choice, and I kinda feel like people should be allowed to do what they want with their lives, even if that means ending them. Provided he’s not landing on a group of children down below or something. Or like a huge box of applesauce, because it’s delicious and that’s a waste.
This brings up the controversial question of whether or not suicide should be illegal. In America, it was actually a felony to commit suicide in many states until 1980. Of course, it’s tough to prosecute a dead guy so the law rarely lead to legal ramifications. As such, it’s really just a meaningless philosophical question. Libertarians say the government has no business telling us what to do. They hate seatbelt laws, for instance. Others will say that having a law against suicide will help discourage people from killing themselves. Who knows. Discuss among yourselves.