Push ups or jail?

[Maddog]

An Arlington police officer who spotted a teen he believed was smoking marijuana outside a movie theater gave the youth a choice: push-ups or a permanent record.

The officer, identified by KDFW-TV (Channel 4) as Eric Ball, was working an off-duty security job at the Cinemark Tinseltown when he was tipped off to the teen's behavior.

He asked the teen to come to him and saw the youth drop something that was in his hand.

"You out here in front of the door smoking weed. What are you thinking? That was dumb," Ball told KDFW. "So you're going to go to jail for something dumb today."

Ball wanted to turn the incident into a teaching moment, so he asked the teen to choose between 200 push-ups or a possible misdemeanor citation and fines.

The teen chose the former and was doing the push-ups when Raiza Paredez started recording. She posted the video to Facebook, where it has more than 100,000 views. Most of the comments are positive reactions to the officer's actions.



http://www.dallasnews.com/news/arlingto ... e-push-ups