Edit: Original site is paywalled and seeming to not always load, here is another article about the incident: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/united-airlines-flight-masturbating-incident/6551525/
Edit: Original site is paywalled and seeming to not always load, here is another article about the incident: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/united-airlines-flight-masturbating-incident/6551525/
Pretty sure it was that. They could still have thrown some blankets on him and binded his wrists to the seat.
Flight attendants have duct taped people to seats in the past.
Yes, they duct tape people who pose a threat of death or serious injury to passengers and/or crew.
Someone with deficient stealth-jacking skills disgusts and offends passengers and crew, but doesn’t threaten injury. Restraints are not justified.
There is a rather large community of people recording and storing radio communication between pilots and ATC. Chance are pretty good we’ll hear whether the pilots requested law enforcement at the gate. If they failed to request law enforcement, that would be on the pilots and airline. If law enforcement failed to respond, that would be on the cops.
If you’re hit with someone’s spunk nonconsensually, I think that counts as injury or some approximate of that, legally.
It’s certainly harm, and justified law enforcement intervention. But it’s not a “open the emergency exit door in flight” level of harm. Nobody is threatened with death or grievous bodily harm here. Forceful intervention would increase that risk, rather than reducing it.
Harm and injury seem to be good enough reason to restrain. Dude could have gone into the bathroom and jacked it. Didn’t have to do that in front of others, potentially including kids. Probably going to end up on a list and get sued.
I do think she would have been, if not “justified”, then “excused” if she had tried to strike him, as his behavior would likely be considered inciting. And anything he did in response to having been struck would have justified restraining him.
But there would have to be some kind of physical altercation involving him before they could pull out the duct tape.
They definitely should have asked for a volunteer to swap seats with her. An air marshall could have arrested and handcuffed him.
Initiating a physical altercation to restrain him is more likely to result in injuries. I can’t fault the crew for their decision not to restrain him.
I can fault them for not calling the cops.