A lot of people don’t have a logical understanding of due process. When a law enforcement officer comes to your house to arrest you, you have no choice but to comply. Sure, it’s okay to proclaim your innocence, but otherwise putting up a fight is senseless.
You’re going to jail, hopefully without a string of additional charges tacked on to the ones that got you cuffed in the first place. You’ll be able to plead your case. Well, it seems one Vermont dad didn’t like the idea that Vermont State Police came to arrest his son.
Troopers had a warrant for 24-year-old Brandon Tallman. Tallman was wanted for assault and burglary charges. Certainly, police officers are trained to dodge a number of things. Unwilling suspects may throw punches.
Some people enjoy throwing things like rocks, smoke bombs, and frozen water bottles at law enforcement. God forbid, an officer of the law has to dodge bullets. However, as one trooper put it, nowhere in the training manual is there a procedure for dodging heavy machinery.
When Vermont State Police tried to arrest Brandon Tallman, that’s exactly what they had to do. Brandon’s father, Wayne Tallman, climbed inside a massive excavator. The bucket on this excavator was every bit as big as or bigger than any of the officers.
The father must have been highly skilled at operating such a huge piece of heavy equipment. He was targeting the officers with the gigantic bucket. As they tried to subdue the younger Tallman, a videotape of the arrest shows them jumping to avoid getting smacked in the head.
This bucket could have caused serious bodily injury if Tallman had connected with what he was aiming for. Wayne Tallman was charged with aggravated assault on a protected official, resisting arrest, impeding, and reckless endangerment.
We’re uncertain where the “with a deadly weapon” part of the charge went. It seems that Mrs. Tallman got into the act as well. Amy Tallman tried to yank officers off her son as they tried to arrest him. She was issued a citation.
Officers were certainly relieved to finally have this arrest under wraps. It’s got to be one for the law enforcement storybooks. Officers deal with violence regularly. However, being attacked by an excavator-wielding wacko probably isn’t in the policeman’s handbook.