Come to think of it, Dave Chappelle did a joke about this years ago. Apparently he was onto something. And yes, it makes no sense for the police to pepper spray a teenager as the result of an argument.
I respond to ideas, not specific posters. Your sentence seemed a convenient clip to lead into my point. There was no motive for me to scrutinize your prior posts.
But what was your fucking purpose? “I’m so smart this wouldn’t have happened to ME!”
Would you tell the 92-year old with broken bones “I’m so young my bones aren’t brittle so that wouldn’t have happened to ME!” ?
Get the point? Your comment isn’t wrong. It’s just totally irrelevant to the thread and hence a distraction.
No doubt while speaking calmly and in a soothing tone of voice, much as you would to a violent drunk, crazy person, angry toddler, or mad dog.
I would do the same thing, but it occurs to me that there is something very wrong with having to do that to avoid being assaulted.
Actually it was “This doesn’t happen when at least one side of a confrontation is able to use simple logic”.
No I wouldn’t. But congratulations on your continued attempt to put me on one side of the line using an example of a totally different situation.
Your right. When two groups of people act stupidly toward each other and that results in a bad outcome shame on me for trying to drag that into the conversation.
Whatever you do, don’t stop foaming at the mouth. Examining the WHOLE scenario just gets in the way of a good hatefest.
The two situaltions are NOT totally different – they’re totally comparable. It’s your failure to grasp that has led to confusion.
Grasp the point if you wish … or just keep foaming at the mouth if it turns you on.
I think a few people have pointed out that Jones could’ve acted differently. The problem with putting him on the same level as the police is that he’s a regular citizen, and they’re police who are supposed to be trained in handling all manner of difficult situations. They’re also given the power to arrest people, hurt people, and even kill them. While everyone is responsible for his or her own behavior, the police are supposed to be held to a different standard. If they’re not, bad things like this happen.
They were stopped for not wearing their seat belts, presumably in the interest of protecting their lives in the event of the crash. So while pretending to care about their well-being, they fill the passenger compartment with shards of glass where two children were present. All for a seat belt stop?
We as a nation simply must end this subservience to military and the police. Sometimes police need to ask themselves why they need this bit of information or why they need someone to get out of a car before they do it, and when challenged come up with something besides I’ve got a badge.
Were both the driver and the passenger not wearing seatbelts? That is, BOTH were violating the seatbelt law? If so, I don’t see why it’s remotely surprising that both would be asked for IDs. You can’t very well write someone (the passenger) a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt if you don’t know who they are…
I also think that the argument of “well, if they HAD gotten out of the car they still would have gotten shot/tackled/tased” is a pretty specious and ridiculous one. There was that really terrible incident recently where the guy got out of the car and then got shot while reaching back into it. But it’s nonsensical to look at that particular incident and conclude that that is the inevitable result of getting out of cars.
Let’s imagine we get two groups of people, and we tell the first group “OK, any time you have an encounter with the police, you just immediately do whatever they say (within reason), even if you’re not entirely sure that they have the right to, say, ask for your ID or ask you to get out of the car. Also be polite and respectful at all times.”, and we tell the second group “OK, any time you have an encounter with the police, just refuse all requests and commands and sit stock still inside your car”. Does anyone serious believe that the rate of encounter of police violence or abuse or violation-of-rights would be equal between those two groups? In an ideal world it would be zero for both groups, and in a slightly less ideal world it would at least be zero for the first group, and we don’t live in an ideal world, so in real life it wouldn’t be zero for either group. But it’s silly to act as if there would be no difference between the treatment those two groups would receive.
Good luck on that. Your first step should be revamping the hiring process to select against, rather than for, people who want to exercise power over others.
Upthread, Shayna said the man was not charged with seatbelt violation. *But he did offer (some form of ) ID when asked. The “problem” had nothing to do with the ID; it was that he reached into a bag to get the ID; this was interpreted as hostile, so he was asked to exit the vehicle.
Being concerned about recent news stories of innocent blacks being assaulted by cops, the couple asked that a supervisor come to the scene. The cops felt it more expedient to break a window and tase the guy.
The cops say yes, Jones says no.
Has anyone actually said that? I think the issue here is that they were afraid something like that would happen, and I think we can trust them based on what we see in the video.
Nobody said it was an inevitable result. They said it’s what these people were afraid of.
It’s not an “inevitable result”, but it’s a reasonable fear. It was reasonable, in this case, for the man to think he was in less danger if he remained in the car then if he left.
The police should have the training and judgment to, basically, factor in “how does this ‘protect and serve the public’” to every decision they make when dealing with people in an official capacity. Not smashing the window and not tasing the man “protects and serves” the community better than smashing the window and tasing, in this instance.
The driver is required to have a driver’s license. The passenger is required to have what, exactly? Papers?
You have the calculus wrong. The decision should be whether or not they should have ordered the passenger out of the vehicle. Once the order was given, there was no turning back - the guy was going to exit the vehicle one way or another. Do you agree with that?
From a link upthread I see the discussion lasted over 13 minutes. That’s (IMO) a long time to negotiate an exit from the vehicle. I agree these particular people may have been afraid of negative consequences (tase/shot/tackled/etc.) if they exited, but I don’t think that’s a reasonable fear. I don’t think any jury would hold that to be a reasonable fear.
He did provide them information as to his identity. He just didn’t have his DL.
You’re correct that both the driver and passenger allegedly were at fault for the same problem. Why did they want to make the passenger get out of the car? They didn’t need to make the driver do so.
I understand that they are allowed to compel him to do so. My point is that to accomplish the task at hand, they didn’t need to. They needlessly escalated the situation. My guess is that they have some pathological need for people to respect their authoritah!
I can’t put myself in the guy’s head. Sitting there and refusing to get out isn’t the choice I would have made. It makes a little more sense if they were hoping to have a supervisor on scene. Nevertheless, Officer Authoritah did use way over the top excessive force to conclude a situation he himself generated.
Oh, I agree, there is something very wrong with having to be so cautious. But, remember - I’m a small, middle-aged white woman living in that area and that’s my reaction to the cops - handle carefully, potentially explosive - given the local history regarding intolerance it is MUCH worse for blacks in Northwest Indiana.
Yet another resemblance between these cops and bad, frustrated parents: they gave an order for no particular reason, then had to go to unreasonable lengths to enforce it because they were afraid of losing face.
Yes – he was not going to stay in the car forever. That still doesn’t justify breaking the window and tasing him.
You don’t think that’s a reasonable fear, but I do. Obviously they do, or he would have left the car when ordered.
Right. It seems like cops, or at least these cops, have been taught that at no time may anyone disobey your orders without harsh consequences under any circumstance!
That’s an excellent question, and I’m hoping that one of our resident lawyers will chime in. To me the key question is whether or not the passenger was not wearing a seatbelt. If so, the passenger has committed a crime (albeit a minor one), and it is a correct and necessary part of our criminal justice system that the passenger be correctly identified so that the punishment (minor though it is) can be levied. You clearly can’t just say “ok, you’re going to be receiving a fine in the mail for $25… now, please tell me your name and address, and I will believe you”.
Which I think leads unavoidably to some very awkward situations where every choice seems wrong. You’re a cop and you see someone violating the seatbelt law, and they refuse to give you an ID. What can you do? Just walk away? Well, that incentivizes everyone who is ever detained for any minor crime to just refuse to provide ID and be stubborn until you leave. Detain them pending identification? Well, now you’re wasting your time detaining people for minor offenses. And how do you detain them? If you can’t detain someone without the implicit thread of violence, then suddenly VIOLENCE has been brought into the mix, all for what started out as a minor offense. On the other hand, there’s no point in having laws about things like seatbelts if there is no framework for enforcing that law, and there’s no point in having an enforcement framework that falls apart the moment someone does something as simple as refusing to provide an ID.
Furthermore, people keep bringing up that the family was going to the hospital to visit their dying mother. Does that matter? Should cops start asking people what business they are on, and if it seems important, they should just not enforce laws they would otherwise enforce?
Is it really? I think there’s an INCREDIBLY narrow and probably imaginary scenario in which staying in the car actually results in a better outcome… you have to have a cop whose corrupt or at least mean enough to beat/tase/be violent to the guy once he gets out of the car, but not resourceful enough to use any means, legal or not, to do anything to the guy if he stays IN the car; plus you have to have “police supervisors” of some sort who are going to show up in response to this 911 call and put a stop to the situation. It seems like the guy had a “hey, my car is a safe zone, as long as I’m in here nothing bad can happen to me” mindset. Which, as was clearly demonstrated by what actually happened, was in actuality totally incorrect.
The main thing I get out of this and many similar incidents is that cops should have lapel and dashboard cams at all times. It’s inevitable that when cops are people, and civilians are people, and people are imperfect, there will be times when things go wrong and rights are violated and, to be crude, shit happens. But it’s imperative to a just and lawful society that as much information is available as possible so that a fair and impartial justice system can come to a truthful determination as to what happened and what the correct consequences should be. I frankly don’t care to try to pass judgment as to which side was “right” in this incident… but I’m very very glad that the actions of everyone involved were accurately recorded. I think that makes it VASTLY more likely that justice will end up being done.