Cops and a pastor

Read it and sounds to me like the pastor and the rest of the congregation was interferring in police business. But, at least his church will get a new sound system because of his hiring a lawyer.

 

"Congregants say they were in the Iglesia Profetica Peniel church for an early morning prayer when pastor Jose Elias Moran went to assist the stopped driver, a church member, by asking the police what had happened."

I can't say whether the police were justified in the use of the taser or the pepper spray but interferring with a police officer in his duties is against the law.

Pastor or not - he had no right to interject himself into the traffic stop.

"But police say he pushed the officer, went inside the church and returned with 40 other congregants."

I can understand the police using pepper spray to disperse a crowd of 40 people descending on the scene. For the pastor to seek that many others to side against the officer seems to be an act of inciting.

 

Two things in the article stood out to me:

"They treated him as if he were a drug dealer or murderer, but he is a pastor that tries to help the community,"

The police did not know he was not a drug dealer and it seems that Mr. Moran was not cooperative with law enforcement.


"A pastor has to tend to his flock," she said. "That is all he was doing."

Interferring with a police officer is improper. This was not shepparding his flock.

 

Asking a question is not interfeaeing

 

As one who works in the law enforcement world, asking a question could be considered interferring depending on the circumstances.

When an officer is on a traffic stop, they do not know what or who is in the car and bystanders are interferring when the officer needs to focus on the situation at hand.

 

The article doesn't say, but just to play Clinton's advocate, what if there was a language barrier? Obviously, this is a church that serves Mexicans. What if the person in the car didn't speak English and the officer didn't speak Spanish (of course, this is unlikely because we all know how eager Mexicans are to learn English and assimilate into our culture).

So what if the driver didn't understand what was going on and the pastor was trying to explain it to him?