Another filmed police encounter (Hammond, IN)

[Fallen]

“The order to exit the vehicle was not a request, it was a lawful command.”

The crux of the problem is what people perceive as “lawful”. When you pull someone over for a seatbelt violation, there is no reason to ask the passenger for identification or to tell them to get out of the car if they don’t offer it.

As for the notion that noncompliance and resisting is allowed by law to be met with X reaction, someone needs to assess whether the order/command was lawful in the first place. A person is even entitled to resist an unlawful arrest and to refuse to comply with an unlawful command. To be sure, establishing that the police officer’s actions were unlawful is a bear and a challenge most will not undertake, but the acquiescence to nonsense and unlawful behavior only adds to the problem … and the misperceptions that lead to a skewed idea of how the law is designed to and should work.

It’s also true that unless and until someone has a misguided, idiotic, or unethical or cranky or vengeful person accuse them of criminal wrongdoing (because these situations by and large tend not to be kicked off by law enforcement’s personal observations) and the accused comes smack up against the reality that is the criminal justice system, they may never ever truly understand let alone accept how it works (more often than not).

Certain folks need to, should they care to, really truly spend time drilling down and not simply accept as accurate what they think they know about the law (in most states), or more often believe and miscategorize it as “know[ledge]”.

[magellan01]

@ElvisL1ves

Levar Jones got out of his car and the officer shot him anyway. Maybe this guy thought his chances would be better if he stayed inside?

That’s misleading. Jones was already out of the car when the cop pulled up and asked for his license. It was reaching into the car that got him shot. I’m not blaming Jones one iota. He did nothing wrong. The cop was a nervous Nellie and shouldn’t be carrying a gun. Fortunately he has been fired. But the two situations are too dissimilar for one to inform the other.

[Bone]

@Fallen

“The order to exit the vehicle was not a request, it was a lawful command.”

The crux of the problem is what people perceive as “lawful”. When you pull someone over for a seatbelt violation, there is no reason to ask the passenger for identification or to tell them to get out of the car if they don’t offer it.

Are you contesting that the order to exit the vehicle was a lawful command?

[ElvisL1ves]

@MaxTheVool

Do you think they were better? Do you think the reasonable belief given the information available to him at the time is that they were better?

Actually, yes. Given that the police had no good reason to ask him out of the car, and knowing his chances of getting beaten up were much higher if he did, his decision to stay put and stay nonthreatening to the extent he could does seem like the wiser course of action. Who would really have expected the officer to bust the window and tase him anyway?

[Captain_Amazing]

@ElvisL1ves

Who would really have expected the officer to bust the window and tase him anyway?

Who wouldn’t? You’ve got a non-compliant individual locked in a car with kids. How else is it going to go down? What would you have done if you were the officer?

[monstro]

@iiandyiiii

Rather than start a new thread, I’ll post it to this one. An NYPD officer is on video blatantly taking money out of a “suspect’s” pocket.

You know, the more videos like this that keep coming out, the more it starts feeling like we’re living in that movie Strange Days.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Captain_Amazing

Who wouldn’t? You’ve got a non-compliant individual locked in a car with kids. How else is it going to go down? What would you have done if you were the officer?

Stop, take a breath, and reconsider the reason for your demand. Which would be what? Him being a nigra with a smart mouth isn’t quite enough excuse. Remember that this is a fucking seat belt stop.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of self control to be able to avoid escalating, does it? Yes, I do understand that biting your tongue and walking away may be the hardest thing a cop ever does, but it often does need to be done, and if you can’t do it, you shouldn’t be a cop.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@MikeF

Holy shit. It took me a long time to finish and post my last comments and in, the meantime, other posts have lead me to spout some more.

Yes, I teach officers how to write reports justifying the use force. Is there something wrong with that? Is the implication that I am telling them to lie? The fact of the matter is most officers write less than ideal reports most of the time. Most of the time the reports are good enough. But good enough isn’t good enough when it comes to documenting the use of force, particularly deadly force. These reports must be detailed, factual and as accurate as possible. That is what I teach. I tell them to use objective terminology and to paint a picture for a potential jury. I tell them to be to address the things that the courts say matter. A poorly written report opens the officer to cross examination in criminal and civil court.

I have been to Calibre Press’ training. Officers are NOT encouraged to use excessive force. That is simply ridiculous. What they are trained to do is not hesitate if deadly force is warranted. There are plenty of videos out there with cops repeatedly telling suspects to drop their guns (in one famous case 33 times!) before the suspect shot and killed the cop. A cop can’t be thinking “What if I get sued?” when facing a deadly threat.

No one that I know of is teaching anything other than “Fire until the threat is stopped”. Not one shot, not double tap. Keep shooting until the threat is stopped. This is what leads to suspects being shot (or shot at) ten or more times. It ain’t TV boys and girls. One round will rarely instantly stop someone trying to kill you. I can get off at least three rounds a second. In two seconds I can shoot you six times and you then begin to fall it takes another second or more before I perceive that you are no longer a threat and stop pulling the trigger. That’s three or more shots. Is nine shots overkill? Not necessarily.

The officer needs to place his safety above that of the suspect. Better he goes to the morgue than me. Officers are not trained to put their safety above all others. When it comes to suspects, its not even close.

Officers are encouraged to engage in mental “What if?” thinking. What if that lady were to start shooting at me when I approach her?" “What if I walk in on an armed hold up at the local coffee shop?” “What if I get called to a shooter at the school?”. These mental rehearsals encourage tactical thinking and speed reaction time when the “what if?” actually happens.

Again, learning to write a correct report isn’t something sinister and I resent Katie Rucke or anyone else implying that it is.

Wow.

Thanks for this post and your previous one. I appreciate all the detail you went into and the information you gave us.

And yeah, if you’re teaching cops how to write reports and use the law to limit or eliminate liability, what you’re doing is wrong.

I know that what you wrote sounds reasonable to you, but it comes across as “i tell the police what code words & Phrases to use that sound innocuous and are legal but obscure what really happened so that the officer doesn’t face repercussions”.

Also, if you’re really encouraging police officers to view every single one of us as a potential or likely threat and enemy, what you’re doing is wrong.

You are deliberately creating a culture of persecution and fear amongst people who can fight and kill us, but that we cannot fight back against, and that’s fucked up.

Mind you, I’m not trying to lay too much of this at your feet. You’re one guy and you’re a cog in the system. But you did choose to be there, and you continue to choose to contribute to this fucked up aspect of society, and for that I can’t offer any praise or condolence.

However, lemme ask you: is this the society you want to live in? If not, what steps could we take to get to where we lived in the type of society you’d like to live in?

[Captain_Amazing]

@Fallen

As for the notion that noncompliance and resisting is allowed by law to be met with X reaction, someone needs to assess whether the order/command was lawful in the first place. A person is even entitled to resist an unlawful arrest and to refuse to comply with an unlawful command.

That’s not necessarily true. It’s only true in some states under some circumstances. As Slate explains:

Is Resisting Arrest Ever Legal?

Some states expressly grant the right to resist an unlawful arrest, and a few others expressly prohibit it.

That said, I would never advise someone to resist arrest, even if he or she knows the arrest was improper or unlawful. The cop’s trained reaction to resistance is to increase the level of force to overcome the resistance. Since he has the immediate capacity to take that level all the way to deadly force, you’re rolling the dice in a very dangerous game.

In court, resistance to arrest will nearly always be interpreted as a consciousness of guilt, not the recognition that the arrest is unlawful and the arrestee’s resistance is a reasonable response. If the officer’s testimony could be impeached (showing he was not being truthful) or the court was made aware that the officer had a reputation for untruthfulness or fabrication of probable cause for an arrest, the defendant might prevail. These officers and instances do exist, but they tend to be rare. Most officers are well-intentioned and truthful, and the courts know this.

Keep in mind that an arrest made in error is not necessarily unlawful if the officer’s belief that the arrest was lawful was reasonable.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@MaxTheVool

Let’s suppose that after, say, the second time the cops asked the passenger to get out of the car (which, as far as I can tell from the discussions in this thread, they had the LEGAL RIGHT to do), he had in fact gotten out of the car. Do you think the whole situation would have ended up better or worse for the family than what actually happened?

My contention is that:
(a) it almost certainly would have ended up better
and
(b) the way that it ended was the predictable result once he made the choice to continue to stay in the car.

Therefore I think his choice was foolish. Arguably some other word would be a better choice than “foolish”, one that more properly recognizes the stressful nature of the situation, the understandable distrust of cops due to the history of racial incidents, yada yada yada. But I definitely think it was a BAD decision.

You should preface nearly every sentence there with “in hindsight” then. Because that’s all you’ve got here is hindsight, and from your point of view. These folks didn’t have your POV or your hindsight while the events were happening. They were doing the best they could with the information they had to try and stay alive and healthy while facing an immediate threat.

It seems to me that Mr. Jones felt, and had articulable reasons to feel, that he was being physically threatened by these officers and he wished to not be harmed. AFAIK, the phone call asking for a supervisor contained a statement from Miss Mahone that the reason she was calling was because she was afraid that these two officers were going to harm them. From the available evidence she had, that seems to have been a reasonable fear.

At what point are we allowed to tell an officer “no”?

@MaxTheVool

??? Seriously? I have nothing against this family, who as I said ended up in a very shitty situation that they didn’t really deserve. But I don’t see any evidence at all that they made their choices based on a principled stand for civil rights, as opposed to just freezing and panicking while under stress, having a “ok I’m safe if I stay in here oh my goodness I will just not leave my safe zone” reaction.

I don’t think you have anything against this family, and I don’t think I implied or stated that you did. But why didn’t you answer the question I asked? Why do you only repeat yourself?

Perhaps I was unclear. Please let me try and rephrase my question: Would you agree that this family has, since the traffic stop and tasting, including specifically their filing of a federal lawsuit alleging excessive use of force, been acting out of concern for their (and our) civil rights?

[Captain_Amazing]

@ElvisL1ves

Stop, take a breath, and reconsider the reason for your demand. Which would be what? Him being a nigra with a smart mouth isn’t quite enough excuse. Remember that this is a fucking seat belt stop.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of self control to be able to avoid escalating, does it? Yes, I do understand that biting your tongue and walking away may be the hardest thing a cop ever does, but it often does need to be done, and if you can’t do it, you shouldn’t be a cop.

Well, originally, it would have been for whatever reason I asked him to get out of the car in the first place, because maybe I wanted to talk to him away from his wife and kids, or maybe he looks like somebody who’s suspected of something, and I want to check it out, or who knows. Now, it’s because I asked him to get out of the car and he said no, which leads me to think that he’s got some specific reason to not want to get out of the car or cooperate with me, which means he’s probably doing something or has something he doesn’t want me to know about, because that’s not the way somebody who doesn’t have something to hide reacts at a routine seat belt stop.

So I could turn around and walk away, and then maybe the guy dumps his drugs, or he shoots me in the back or he finishes kidnapping those kids or he does whatever bad thing has caused him to not want to get out of the car in the first place.

[boytyperanma]

@Captain_Amazing

So I could turn around and walk away, and then maybe the guy dumps his drugs, or he shoots me in the back or he finishes kidnapping those kids or he does whatever bad thing has caused him to not want to get out of the car in the first place.

Or as the suspect taken no violent action you could wait to see if he attempts any of those things. There was no reason for the officer to act as he did in the time frame he did. If he was truly concerned for his own safety he should have waited for another officer to arrive.

[MaxTheVool]

@Snowboarder_Bo

You should preface nearly every sentence there with “in hindsight” then. Because that’s all you’ve got here is hindsight, and from your point of view. These folks didn’t have your POV or your hindsight while the events were happening. They were doing the best they could with the information they had to try and stay alive and healthy while facing an immediate threat.

Sure. And at the time they knew that there was a cop who wanted them to get out of the car. And they were worried (reasonably, due to the history of racial cop issues) that that cop might be abusive in various ways. What doesn’t make any sense to me is the idea that somehow staying in their car kept them safe. A car is not a fortress or a bank vault. If the situation was that they were inside their house, and they lived in a bad neighborhood so they had some heavy duty deadbolts and so forth, and a cop was demanding that they come outside without much of a pretext or whatever, and they were afraid of surrendering the protection of their deadbolted door, and had called 911 so thought that the cop’s supervisor (honestly, is that even a thing?) might show up at some point… then the position you are proposing would make a lot more sense. But cars are VERY easy to break into for a determined cop, as was demonstrated in this incident. At which point the cop would be free to give the darkie a beatin’ for being so uppity. Or… NOT give the darkie a beatin’ for being so uppity as is what turned out to be the case.

As I’ve tried to point out several times, I feel like that kind of passive resistance won’t matter at all if the cop is truly good or determinedly evil (and will likely make it worse if they’re determinedly evil), will make things worse if the cop was a kind of normal guy but with a temper, will make things worse if the cop is just a stubborn person who wants his legal commands to be obeyed (he’s still not going to beat you, but now you will be forcibly removed from your car), and will only make things BETTER if he’s evil-but-VERY-lazy, or what you seem to be proposing, which is the very narrow case where he wants to be casually abusive, but the extra time that passes while he hasn’t yet gotten around to getting the window-breaking tool gives him time to cool down and he will reconsider his casual-abusiveness plan.

At what point are we allowed to tell an officer “no”?

An interesting question. But it seems that legally, it’s some point AFTER he asks us to get out of our vehicle at a traffic stop. If it were a well-established and well-known law that you do NOT have to get out of your vehicle at traffic stops, and the cop were STILL demanding it, then you would clearly have the right to refuse… whether the benefit you get from exercising and standing up for your right outweighs the potential damages that come from defying a police officer who has guns and window breaking devices and the weight of a difficult-to-defy system on his side is a question that each individual person can make for him or herself (and I won’t say either choice is wrong). But that was not the situation here, unless the legal analyses presented in this thread have been WAY off base.

Perhaps I was unclear. Please let me try and rephrase my question: Would you agree that this family has, since the traffic stop and tasting, including specifically their filing of a federal lawsuit alleging excessive use of force, been acting out of concern for their (and our) civil rights?

I have not been following their actions since the incident, I have no opinion on it. Filing a lawsuit could well be a noble attempt to bring mistreatment out into the public, it could also be an attempt to cash in by overemphasizing their indignities, and it could easily be anywhere in between.

[Claude_Remains]

Been a while since I’ve checked in here.

Nice to see the Mods sucking shit and squirting it out their asses only to wallow in the resulting pool of residual shit.

Cecil help us!

[Claude_Remains]

@Marley23

I think if I ever get pulled over - I don’t drive much - the police will be less likely to treat my actions as suspicious or hostile and I’ll get every benefit of the doubt. Science backs me up on that. I also think they’ll be less likely to hassle me and probably less likely to pull me over in the first place. (I’ll add I’m a reasonably well-put-together-looking white guy, which would probably also help.)

Your “I am the one who bans” Speaks Volumes.

White boy.

You are a Rasicist. Piss me off!

You’re the kind of guy who says " some of my best friends are black"

[Clothahump]

@iiandyiiii

And the kids earned being showered with glass, I guess.

Sigh. Thanks for playing, but don’t bother trying again.

[Kimstu]

@Claude_Remains

You are a Rasicist.

Hey, everybody’s entitled to their own particular style of sports fandom. And I think even you would have to admit that Milan Rašić is one heck of a volleyball player.

[QUOTE=Claude Remains]

Piss me off!

[/quote]

Mission accomplished, ISTM.

[Measure_for_Measure]

@iiandyiiii

Rather than start a new thread, I’ll post it to this one. An NYPD officer is on video blatantly taking money out of a “suspect’s” pocket.

No, no, no that definitely deserves its own thread.

OBTW: I don’t see these threads as RO, because they have public policy implications.

[ElvisL1ves]

@MaxTheVool

What doesn’t make any sense to me is the idea that somehow staying in their car kept them safe.

It was their best option to protect themselves from an armed crazy guy right outside, wasn’t it? Keep calm, try to de-escalate the situation, at least prevent him from having an excuse to do, well, what he soon did anyway. Should they instead get out, allow the armed crazy guy to claim he felt threatened by their actions, and take their beatings instead? No option existed that would have de-crazified the armed guy, did it?

Or… NOT give the darkie a beatin’ for being so uppity as is what turned out to be the case.

Not? Of course it was.

what you seem to be proposing, which is the very narrow case where he wants to be casually abusive, but the extra time that passes while he hasn’t yet gotten around to getting the window-breaking tool gives him time to cool down and he will reconsider his casual-abusiveness plan.

Not necessarily casual abusiveness, no, and it’s hardly a very narrow case anyway. There is a fear-based cop mindset that holds all non-cops to be threats, and that they’re justified in pre-empting such threats on any pretext.

You offer no acceptable option for the occupants of the car. When you can think of one, and can back it up with some reasoning, do let us know.

@MikeF

.Yes, I teach officers how to write reports justifying the use force. Is there something wrong with that? Is the implication that I am telling them to lie?

In a way you do not seem to see, yes. If an officer’s telling the simple truth is enough to get them into trouble, and invalidate an arrest, what’s the real problem? And isn’t what you do helping reinforce the problem?

I tell them to …paint a picture for a potential jury.

What they are trained to do is not hesitate if deadly force is warranted.

It might be more helpful to have them be able to identify when it is and *is not *warranted, not assume that it is.

The officer needs to place his safety above that of the suspect. Better he goes to the morgue than me.

And that leads to a shoot-first mentality, doesn’t it?

Officers are encouraged to engage in mental “What if?” thinking. What if that lady were to start shooting at me when I approach her?" “What if I walk in on an armed hold up at the local coffee shop?” “What if I get called to a shooter at the school?”. These mental rehearsals encourage tactical thinking and speed reaction time when the “what if?” actually happens.

And “what if” I fire first out of fear and it turns out I was wrong? Then I need to spend some time with the report-writing coach.

@Captain_Amazing

Well, originally, it would have been for whatever reason I asked him to get out of the car in the first place, because maybe I wanted to talk to him away from his wife and kids, or maybe he looks like somebody who’s suspected of something, and I want to check it out, or who knows.

No weaseling, dude. If you don’t have an answer, it’s okay to admit it, it really is.

Now, it’s because I asked him to get out of the car and he said no, which leads me to think that he’s got some specific reason to not want to get out of the car or cooperate with me, which means he’s probably doing something or has something he doesn’t want me to know about, because that’s not the way somebody who doesn’t have something to hide reacts at a routine seat belt stop.

How about if he’s scared of an armed guy going crazy and is in fear of getting a beating? Consider that possibility too. Perhaps sitting quietly next to his kid, not giving the crazy guy an excuse, and hoping he’ll calm down is the most reasonable response, and perhaps you ought to think it over.

@Claude_Remains

Been a while since I’ve checked in here.

It won’t be long before you check out, I expect.

[Captain_Amazing]

@ElvisL1ves

How about if he’s scared of an armed guy going crazy and is in fear of getting a beating? Consider that possibility too. Perhaps sitting quietly next to his kid, not giving the crazy guy an excuse, and hoping he’ll calm down is the most reasonable response, and perhaps you ought to think it over.

I’m I’m the cop pulling him over, thats probably not going through my mind, because I’m not an armed crazy guy, I’m a police officer, and innocent people shouldn’t be afraid of me. They should obey my instructions and trust me to do my job and keep them safe.