Onboard I was just about to post the same view
As experienced CC myself I don't condone the use of emergency equiptment for anything else than the purpose it as designed for. That said I think Mr Slater, having deployed the slide, should have perhaps used it to perhaps evacuate the offending pax as well...she did after all want to deplane quickly
Vid1977 makes some really valid points re a company's approach to dealing with unruly and abusive pax. I have no idea how Jetblue operate but can certainly comment on what is going on at my own.
At present we have a flight to a certain balearic island on which the cabin crew are abused verbally and physically on a regular basis just for asking passengers to observe very basic safety regs and behave in a civilised manner. There have also been cases of female crew being groped inappropriatly and sexual innuendo's and assumptions are made towards our young male crews.
The only support we get in dealing with this is from our flight crew on the day who will call the police and file ASR's on a monotonously regular basis. This is always
after we have had to put up with this behaviour during flight. They cannot help us then as they are behind a locked door. We just have to deal with these "valued customers" until then.
The pace of response to dealing with this issue from our Cabin Crew Manager is glacial at best. In fact in the interests of company profit we operate on minimum crew on a flight in which the enviroment has been deemed unsafe at times. He does not seem to want to adress any of these issues so now our union have taken this up
Maybe Mr Slater had just had to deal with one too many abusive pax without the support of his managers and snapped. Whilst his reaction was OTT this is understandable IMHO.