Another example of why you shouldn't jump to conclusions when you see an out of context video clip.

So you probably already saw this video of a Native American man screaming while being tazed by a park ranger.

The story was that Darrell House and his sister were hiking off-trail at the Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico when they were accosted by this aggressive park ranger, who ends up ruthlessly tazing House.

The video that circulated was taken by House who posted it on his Instagram and it quickly went viral.

The clip looks like another clear-cut example of an insane use of force by a law enforcement officer in response to a simple violation.

Typical! Right?

Well, the bodycam footage came out, and it shows a whole different side of the story.

You see the full context leading up to the confrontation. You see House resisting and being obnoxious for a full seven minutes, repeatedly ignoring the officer and trying to walk away, and being warned over and over again that he'd be tazed if he didn't comply.

And you see the park ranger, who has been dragged through the mud on social media over this, being almost absurdly polite and kind from the start.

He's literally begging the guy to just please comply before he escalates to using the tazer.

(sorry, I just needed to use that gif somewhere in this article)

What do you think?

Should he have tazed him in the end?

I dunno! 🤷‍♂️

But it's clear now that there's more to the story once you have the context. And that's almost ALWAYS the case with stuff like this. And honestly, it should be a lesson to all of us about withholding judgment until we have all the details.

There are two sides to every story.

"The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." – Proverbs 18:17

We are living in a time where it's way too easy to take a sound bite or a video clip and place it squarely within a narrative, draw your conclusion, then publicly hang the offender online.

In this case, the narrative was "all law enforcement officers are bad." And when you mix that in with the fact that this guy was Native American and visiting a historical Native American site, it just looked horrible.

But when you consider how much unrest and idiocy has been spawned by narratives propped up by incomplete stories and out of context video clips, you'd think we'd have learned by now to be a little slower to speak until we have the full story.

Maybe it's time to start taking a beat before jumping to judgment.