Utah Police Officer Saved by Armed Citizen

Corporal Corey Waters, Springville PD

Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- On February 2nd, 2018, just before 2 p.m., a man knocked down a Springville, Utah police officer and was viciously punching him. The suspect had fractured the officer’s eye socket when an armed good Samaritan, Derek Myer, saw the situation, did a quick U-turn, pulled his gun and stopped the attack. From fox2now.com:

SPRINGVILLE, Utah — A man with a concealed handgun is credited with stopping a brutal attack on a Utah police officer on Friday, according to KSTU.

A Utah police officer approached the suspect, Paul Douglas Anderson, after he saw him stealing items from a charity’s donation bin. When the officer approached Anderson, the suspect refused to take his hands out of his pockets. Moments later, Anderson attacked the officer and repeatedly punched him in the face.

Derek Meyer was driving on Main Street in Springville when he saw Anderson attacking the officer. Meyer, armed with a pistol and his concealed-carry permit, made a U-turn and stopped his vehicle behind the police car.

“I carry a gun to protect me and those around me, but primarily I carry a gun to protect my family first and foremost,” Meyer said. “Outside of that, if I were to use my gun to protect anyone it would be law enforcement or military personnel.”

Meyer got out of the car, pointed his pistol at Anderson and yelled at him to stop assaulting the officer.

When Anderson saw the gun, he stopped and ran off. After a brief lockdown at an area school, Anderson was arrested.

The video has some detail that is not in the text of the story. Corporal Corey Waters of the Springville Police Department credits Derek Meyer with preventing even worse injury. He says Meyers may have saved lives. Transcript from the video,  Corporal Corey Waters:

“He definitely stopped the attack from continuing and becoming much worse. He might have even saved either one of their lives. It could have gone very bad, even for the suspect.”

Link to video

Derek Meyers armed intervention and protection of the police officer being attacked in Utah is the latest of numerous cases where good Samaritans who are legally armed have saved police lives.

There have been several cases in the last couple of years. In 2017, an armed woman in Georgia saved a sheriff’s deputy and an Arizona armed citizen saved a State Trooper who was wounded and under assault.

In 2016, armed citizens saved police in Florida, Ohio, and in Pennsylvania. There has been an accelerating number of law enforcement officers saved by armed citizens as more and more people are legally carrying defensive firearms on a daily basis.

Dozens of instances of armed citizens saving police officers before 1996 are recounted in the nraila.org article published in 1999.

An armed people and local police are natural allies. When locally controlled police and a population who trust them work together, crime rates plummet to very low levels.

Officers on the street have generally had a positive attitude toward armed citizens.  As the number of people legally carrying weapons increased across the United States, most police administrators have become fans of legal concealed carry.

There are exceptions, of course. Police Chiefs are generally hired by politicians. When the politicians are against an armed population, the police administrators are as well, or they do not keep their job.

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.

Link to Gun Watch


About Dean Weingarten:Dean Weingarten

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

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Tionico

How many reposts have been made in the lame stream media rags and feeds on this one? Not many, I’m betting. Can’t have Good Guys with Guns going about doing GOOD things now, can we? Since all guns are evil, all who have them (excepting the “Only Ones”) are by definitioin evil as well. One minor quibble, Dean: he was NOT “armed with a concealed handgun and his carry permit”. Nope, He was armed. It happened to have been concealed upon his person, but would have been equally effective had it been in the monkey box in his car or… Read more »

Vanns40

@MAH: He’s a troll and a lot of them that have infested Ammoland recently are paid. Don’t feed them.

MAH

After a career in law enforcement, I can tell, that no one comes out unscathed. I’m a big guy (6’4″ and 230 lbs) and know how to fight, but life isn’t a TV program and we are not all Bruce Lee. The hardest I was ever hit was from an “undocumented/Illegal” alien that weighed a buck-twenty-five. He had also been a professional boxer in Mexico City. I’ve been assisted by citizens on more than one occasion and thank God for them. Guys like Mr. Buckmicheal live in a make believe world. He’s probably the guy you see going the other… Read more »

Andy Buckmichael

Cop needs to receive some professional training. If he received training from his department, it was garbage.

Mike the Limey

And you know this how?
Just another after the fact, armchair expert.

Wild Bill

@Mike, No one likes him very much. He has only one mode of linear expression. He hates cops. One Dimensional Andy

kestnert1

Apparently, you were an eyewitness to how things went down. So how about giving us the step by step details and how he should have responded differently.

Vanns40

Andy Buckmichael is just one more person who has let his rear end write a check his brain will never be able to cash. Pay no attention to those whose training comes from the tips of their fingers on keyboards.

So many trolls, so few hammers…..

tom claycomb iii

Great article and good news in a time when concealed carry is portrayed in a negative light.

durabo

Right, Tom. I bet you too are not holding your breath waiting for the Soros-owned comrades of the LameStream EneMedia to give this much coverage, eh? I’m not.