Police officers have a difficult and dangerous job. They are the thin blue line between order and chaos. Just putting on the uniform and heading to work means the officer is putting their life on the line to protect us.
They deserve our appreciation and our respect.
However, that is a two-way street. We expect the police, who hold immense power, to act professionally. Unfortunately, that does not always happen, and last week we saw another example of that in Marion County.
Monongah Police Chief Nathan Lanham pulled over Beth Delloma for having an expired registration sticker. According to Delloma’s attorney, Joe Shaffer, Lanham was dressed more casually than a regular uniformed officer and she asked for identification.
Lanham refused and became irate. From there, the situation escalated. Shaffer said on Talkine that Delloma thought Lanham may have been impersonating an officer and she tried to escape by driving slowly to her home about thirty yards away.
Lanham followed and from there a video taken by a Delloma family member shows Lanham pointing a gun at Delloma and ordering her out of the vehicle. “You roll up that window I swear to God I will f—— shoot you,” he yells at her. “Get out of the f—— car.”
“She became very fearful,” Shaffer said, and understandably so.
The video shows Lanham walking out of the frame and then returning with what appears to be a sledgehammer which he uses to break out the driver’s side window. Delloma then gets out of the passenger side and tries to run away. Lanham tackles her and puts her in handcuffs while she is screaming for help.
Delloma ends up in jail facing a criminal charge of fleeing in a motor vehicle with reckless indifference to the safety of others. Fortunately, Marion County Prosecuting Attorney Jeff Freeman made quick work of the trumped up allegation and the charge was dismissed Monday morning. “The facts in the complaint do not support the charge,” he said.
One can reasonably argue that this could have been avoided if Delloma had simply complied with the initial request by Lanham for her license, registration and proof of insurance, and in hindsight driving away did not help. But as Shaffer said, “We’re talking about a 49-year-old woman who is very intelligent, and she’s aware of cases across the country where people impersonated police officers and pulled over women. The shirt he (Lanham) had on can be purchased on Amazon.”
But the police officer is supposed to be the professional. All he had to do was provide some identification, but instead the video shows Lanham escalating to the point where, with gun drawn, he was threatening to shoot Delloma. The video could be used in training for how not to manage a traffic stop.
Small towns have trouble attracting and retaining police officers. The pay is poor, the hours are long, and the risks can be high. However, officers still must be held to a high standard. If a police officer is going to behave as Lanham did during what should have been a routine traffic stop, are the citizens of Monongah actually safer?