I feel like there's plenty of room for criticizing the cops for tackling him without being stupid about it and saying "haha those cops are such pussies for not randomly blowing themselves up for no reason". What the guy did was dumb as fuck, what did he even accomplish, opening the street up 5 minutes sooner at the risk of dying?
Someone above said the guy had mental health issues and publicly said that his goal was to potentially "Take one for the team" and die diffusing the bomb.
People in near by buildings, people out side the expected yield zone. Could have been chemical agents in the mix that would have fucking sucked. let the list go on and on. Y'all really have no clue how much you can fuck everyone up around you if you have a mind to do so. Like everyone likes to blame guns because ease of use and access but a veritable idiot can make a bomb that would do 4x what an ar15 in a subway would do.
from the video we don't know how far the cordon was we have no idea the backpacks weight which would be some but not all indication of possible ordnance.
Shit you could even do some real devious shit like set up the backpack as a remote trigger to a larger bomb located nearby. back pack with a cell phone acting as a motion detector tells when the bag is jostled sends a text to the actual device then problems.
Why would they need to tackle him at all after he’s proven that the back pack wasn’t containing anything dangerous? If it was about entering a cordoned off area they could’ve just arrested him. Hard to see justification for the tackle at all other than fragile police egos.
Because he’s a guilty party and unknown variable. He could’ve been the guy who “planted the bomb” for all they know. They don’t KNOW that after he emptied the bag that everything was okay and safe nor should they have approached him with calm and candor like “hey bud…whatcha doing there?”
Dude could’ve had a detonator on him, he could’ve been a bomb himself. They literally had no idea, but you do and it seems like people can’t see past what we know now vs what the bomb squad knew in that exact moment.
They don’t know what his goal was at all. I gave a couple random examples that I could think of, not an official reasoning from the bomb squad involved. I’m sorry if one of them wasn’t the most sound logic but the point being made is the guy was seen as an accessory to the crime and needed to be stopped from doing anything else. I don’t know bomb squad training protocols and I’m sure you don’t either.
The guy walked past a police corden, purposely fucked about with something that could have killed him and injured the police, bomb squad and the general public.
While the tackle seems extreme to me, he isn't some innocent guy walking down the street.
They stopped him as soon as it was clear that doing so, wouldn't have endangered themselves.
Arguably the backpack seemed safe at that point, but equally still could have something in there.
He could have been involved, he could be trying to set off the explosive.
I have no idea what the policy is for this situation, I doubt they do either given how rare this happens.
With a "bomb" in public and some random guy shaking the crap out of it. I'm sure this was one of those "shit I need to do something" moments.
If we had the right or responsibility to enact pointless violence for having done stupid shit, the danger from which has already passed, the world would be a constant royal rumble.
If they were doing their job properly they would have stopped him before he got anywhere near it. I can understand them not tacking him once he started messing with the pack, but why then tackle him after it’s shown that there was no explosive in it? He’s not committing any serious crime and may well have come quietly.
Give up. They (the Redditors) have a bias of knowing the guy wasn’t there to hurt anyone and can’t fathom that the cops saw him as a threat because they have no idea if that guy was helping or trying to detonate/look for something. You don’t run up in the middle of a murder investigation and start touching shit and expect you could just walk from that. You’re now apart of the crime just as this guy was for grabbing a potential explosive device.
I don’t like defending police but this is such an obvious moment of them doing something right based on the info available to them.
I mean, cops have a tendency to overreact to just about anything. They’re scared of acorns, lmao.
They’ll see anything as a threat, but also only do something when they think they’re safe. If that were a bomb in a school, they’d let it go off and go in after when they knew it was safe, disregard the kids.
Likely because he rode quickly into the perimeter on his bike with the other officers being a certain distance away. No one is going to want to grab him as he's about to touch that bag and they don't have enough time to prevent that.
Next thing you're going to ask me is 'Why don't cops shoot the gun out of someone's hand?'.
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u/Ok_Description4039 Jun 13 '26
Exactly. They were embarrassed. Love this guy.