Off Duty Officer Pulls Gun and Asks, “Do you want to f*cking take it further?

The story below was sent to CopBlock.org via the submission tab by Nick LeClair. He details an encounter he had with an off duty police officer back in September of 2015.

I had an officer (Adam Garcia) belligerently and negligently pull his firearm on me and asked “do you want to fucking take this further” because my dog barked at him. He was off duty (in plain clothes) and I was unarmed, walking my dogs in the hospital parking lot where my son was at, born just 2 days prior. He held his gun and repeated that statement multiple times. He only holstered his weapon after I started recording the incident. I had asked him to holster his firearm and told him his behavior was negligent as he continued to yell at me, “Do you want to take it further?” I told him, “No I don’t want to die, I just had a son.”

Once I started recording the incident, Garcia holstered his pistol and called the Victoria City Police on his cell phone and claiming my dogs attacked him. Mind you my dogs and I were never closer then 25 feet throughout the entirety of the incident. I filed a complaint with Victoria, TX police department only to find out that the ONLY internal affairs detective is related to him. Talk about conflicting interest.

To go and show that not all cops are as bad as Garcia, some of the responding officers were decent human beings who told me to file a complaint on Garcia. I commend them on their professionalism. However, this is about those who abuse power, the ones that execute children, taze the elderly and who find a way to escalate a situation when the title of your job is “peace officer.” We need to respect constitutional rights as well as the basic rights to life. Like I told the responding officers that Garcia called in on his cell phone, “All I want to do is make it upstairs to see my son who was just born.”

-Nick LeClair

While Nick praises the Victoria, TX police who showed up with deescalating the situation I wouldn’t jump to such conclusions so quickly. First of all, this off duty cop pulled a gun on Nick and in 99% of places that’s called brandishing a firearm. It’s a criminal act and you can bet every dollar you have in your wallet that if it would have been ANYONE else that pulled a gun on Nick they would have been taken to jail immediately.

This what we refer to as “double standards.” When the Victoria police showed up they should have arrested Garcia for his illegal act instead of suggesting to Nick that he file a complaint. Which we all know is going to land on deaf ears and without consequence to Garcia. Instead they (the Victoria police) gave Nick some lip service, postured like they cared and ended up letting a man walk away after threatening someone with a firearm.

Do you think anyone besides a police officer would have gotten such treatment? Of course not! This is also why there’s such a disconnect between police and those they claim to protect. While the police throw the book at you, or one of your loved ones, they routinely bend the rules for themselves. Sure, at times they give you a break too but for the most part it’s “take it up with the court.” Something no cop has probably ever uttered to another while arresting them.