Utah Police Officer Saved by Armed Citizen

Corporal Corey Waters Springville Police, UT

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 officers 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

Paul Douglas Anderson

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 police saves by armed citizens as more and more citizens are 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 and link are included.

Gun Watch