Officer Gilroy of Ft Pierce Police Department and the abuse charges.

In the early morning hours of October 6th, my coworkers and I viewed the video of Officer Gilroy detaining then arresting a 15 year old juvenile. There was an instant debate over what we saw. On the first viewing of the video, I have to admit it was not hard to react shocked by the images. Being at work, the volume was turned down and we are all distracted by phones or radios so we watched it again and again. The debate grew. You either agreed or disagreed; there is no middle ground on this one. The majority thinking by hard core LEO Dispatchers in St Lucie County were in agreement with Officer Gilroy's actions but there was still one or two dispatchers that refused to see reason. And that's fine, we are all entitled to our opinions and OMG this past weekend I have heard a few.

This was my first weekend back on midnight rotation and the crazies seemed to have crawled out of the wood work; their rants fueled by vicious cop videos and worthless law enforcement tirades all over the media. We received calls from many media outlets. A few callers offered to critic the situation. One man called repeatedly until he finally became tired of being hung up on. It was that or he finally passed out from whatever he was drinking.

If I heard it once I heard it over and over again about cop brutality, corruption and unfairness of the world in general. I have to agree there is much truth to what we see but in the Gilroy case there is nothing in the video that implicates him if anything it exonerates him. That's why he turned on his camera. He saw the situation spiraling out of his control; he was by himself with an aggressive juvenile. He made sure there was no doubt of what occurred. He did his job and did it well. I have heard statements made by other officers who would not have been so patient or tolerant of the juveniles behavior. The child is very lucky that she was not hurt.

She is also very lucky she is not my child because I would have hurt her when I got her home. It is not against the law in the state of Florida to spank your children and 15 is not to old to get a paddling. We adhere to that philosophy in our home and it works very well. Officer Gilroy did nothing compared to what I would have done to her when I got her behind closed doors. I hope this young lady and the youths of Fort Pierce have learned a lesson. The city of Ft Pierce is not going to tolerate juveniles and gang members running amok in the streets any more. This past summer was one of the most pleasant our small town has experienced in decades. Crime is down and a large part of it is the crack down on juveniles and enforcement of our curfew.

All I can say is keep up the good work and could you guys keep an eye on the juveniles off 17th and Ponce Del Leon. They are starting to get annoying.