Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread

[Bone]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Then the cops commands a bunch of girls to stop running their mouths and leave. Some girls leave and other stay and continue to run their mouths. The cop goes into the crowd of girls and drags one of them out. He wrestles her to the ground and throws her onto the pavement and when other kids approach in what appears to be outrage at her treatment, he pulls his gun and chases them away even as two other cops pull him back and chase the boys (without guns drawn). Then the cop goes back to the girl who is sitting down (like many of the other boys he has detained (except she is now crying for her mother) and orders her onto her face (apparently not because he is afraid of what she might do but because he is just pissed off) and he grabs her by her hair and shoves her face into the ground… repeatedly. Then he sits on her back.

Its odd that all the white kids are walking around and all the black kids are on the ground but that’s probably just coincidence. In what world is it OK for the cop to treat a teenage girl like that for mouthing off and not dispersing?

I don’t think your characterization of the events is accurate. The cop goes into the group of girls that remained in the area. I don’t know why he does this, I can hear him saying something to the effect of, “You know, I already told you…” so he was probably reacting to something. What he does not do is drag her out. He is detaining her. At 3:01 she’s looks like she is trying to pull away from his grip, resisting. At no time is she “thrown onto the pavement”. He attempts to get her to the ground multiple times, each time she attempts to rise. Like I said intitially - he could have tased her I suppose.

Then the two other people approach from the cop’s right side. You can see him turn his head toward their direction as they approach. After drawing his gun, he has it in low-ready, with his finger off the trigger. He steps towards them as they back away and run. He then directs the other officers that arrive to go after the guys that just ran. After he returns to the girl still on the ground, he continues with the detention. The girl is still resisting, raising her head, struggling to move. She attempts to rise after being put on the ground at least 5 times from the 3:02 mark to the 3:42 mark. It appears the officer is on top of her at the end because he used his restraints on the other people first and is waiting for another officer to arrive with restraints.

So you ask in what world is it okay for a cop to treat a teenage girl like that? In any world where the teenage girl is resisting arrest. This is why the question of whether the initial command to disperse was lawful. If it was, and she did not, then everything that followed would be fine - she disobeyed a lawful command, she was detained, she resisted, the police escalated force, she was forced into compliance.

What qualified immunity? What police power gives cops immunity for using unnecessary force in subduing someone who didn’t do anything wrong? I agree he probably won’t go to jail but I don’t see why he can’t be sued. I don’t see why the police department can’t be sued. I don’t see why the city can’t be sued.

Do you know understand qualified immunity? From the wiki:

This grant of immunity is available to state or federal employees performing discretionary functions where their actions, even if later found to be unlawful, did not violate “clearly established law.” The defense of qualified immunity was created by the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing a court’s inquiry into a defendant’s subjective state of mind with an inquiry into the objective reasonableness of the contested action. A government agent’s liability in a federal civil rights lawsuit now no longer turns upon whether the defendant acted with “malice,” but on whether a hypothetical reasonable person in the defendant’s position would have known that his/her actions violated clearly established law.

Again, this is why the question of whether the order to disperse was lawful matters. Even if it was unlawful, I think it’s sufficiently grey that qualified immunity would apply as the order to disperse in that specific instance did not violate clearly established law. I personally am not a fan of this doctrine and have started threads on it in the past, but it’s the law of the land.

Are you fucking kidding me? The cop didn’t even see that and even if he did that is pretty thin rationale for drawing a gun (unless you think that everyone in the vicinity of a cop must keep his hands laced behind their heads). The next cop runs up next to him and grabs his arm (as if to tell him to put the goddam gun away). But I don’t know what happened before that might have put the cops in a heightened state of alert and made it appropriate to draw a gun but it seems like an overreaction.

What part of the facts that I stated do you object to, specifically?

Did you review the video? At the 3:11 mark the cop’s head is oriented in a way that makes it likely he saw the two males approaching from his right. It’s obvious he was drawing on those two people specifically. Your claim that the cop didn’t even see the two people approaching him is not supported by the video. At 3:57 in the video someone is heard saying something to the effect of “he pulled his gun on her” to which the officer immediately responds, “no I didn’t and get your butts outta here!”.

Here’s the situation, a cop is trying to make an arrest and two unknown people approach the cop rapidly from his peripheral and get within 3 feet of him as he is still attempting to make the arrest. You think that’s thin rationale to pull a gun? Should he wait until the two are giving him a hug? To me it looked like the two people were deciding whether or not to intervene.

@Damuri_Ajashi

So why was it OK for the boys (who apparently did something that warranted being detained) to be sitting down but the girl had to be face down in the grass? Why was it so important that she be face down that he grabbed her hair and shoved her face in the dirt AFTER he had her down?

Because they immediately complied with his commands and she resisted, multiple times.

@Damuri_Ajashi

Or your tolerance for police misbehavior is much higher than others. Its a 14 year old girl being thrown to the ground grabbed by the hair and having her face shoved into the ground. WTF?

I have no tolerance for police misbehavior. None at all.

@Richard_Parker

This is incorrect as a matter of law. Detaining someone for a pretextual purpose when your real motivation was to punish their speech is unconstitutional. Of course, most cops know this, so they will certainly testify that they would have arrested the person regardless of the speech. But when that testimony would be false–as it would be in your hypothetical here–then they’ve merely saved themselves through perjury from facing the consequences of their actions.

Yes, exactly.

[Happy_Fun_Ball]

I know this is really MPSIMS, but it is relevant to the thread:

I was poking around the various gun and police violence databases that have become so fashionable this year. Did you know that >9% of all shootings in the US are done by police and ~8% of all gun deaths in the country are people shot by police? I am astounded! YMMV.

[Richard_Parker]

I find that quite surprising, though I suspect both the numerator and the denominator are subject to a great deal of uncertainty because we don’t comprehensively track data on either.

[Steophan]

@Richard_Parker

You evidently don’t know what the word “pretext” means. If, as you said, the officer “find[s] some flimsy, but legal, pretext to detain you when otherwise he wouldn’t have done,” that is the quintessential case of retaliatory conduct. Indeed, it is virtually the language from the proper jury instruction.

Naturally, an officer might testify along the lines you write here. But that would be perjury if the truth was that he merely found “some flimsy, but legal, pretext to detain you when otherwise he wouldn’t have done.”

Replace “pretext” with “reason”, then. They will find some legal reason to detain him. It’s only retaliatory if they invent that reason - and hence not legal - not if there actually is a reason to arrest him.

Are you honestly saying that if any part of the police’s motivation is retaliatory, then they can’t arrest you? Then all any criminal would have to do was piss off the police and they’d be immune from arrest.

[doorhinge]

@ElvisL1ves

Isn’t it just as easy for cops to bite their tongues and walk away, as they often should? Given their power to kill and their legal authority, isn’t it far more *incumbent *upon them to do so in those cases?

Of course it would be easy but that’s not what taxpayers pay LEOs to do. The police received a call(s) of a some kind of public disturbance at a privately owned swimming pool. Police responded to the call. The asshole in the yellow bikini thought it was a good idea to fuck with the police. Her reward was to be arrested. Two other assholes decided to run up to the officer making the arrest. Maybe they thought it would be a fun thing to do? Then again, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The out-numbered officer drew his weapon. Other officers arrived to backup the 1st officer, and they chased down asshole two, and asshole three. The original officer resumed arresting the asshole in the yellow bikini.

It looks to me like the police were just doing their jobs.

The usual social media morons began spinning the story as fast as possible before the actual facts could be determined. :rolleyes:

For some odd reason, you expect cops to walk away from trouble. Maybe you’re confusing cops with hippies, or OWS scum?

[Richard_Parker]

@Steophan

Replace “pretext” with “reason”, then. They will find some legal reason to detain him. It’s only retaliatory if they invent that reason - and hence not legal - not if there actually is a reason to arrest him.

You’re almost there. You also have to excise the part where you said “when otherwise he wouldn’t have done.” That’s the other key element to retaliation: that the officer did it when you mouthed off but he otherwise wouldn’t have arrested you.

Note: it does not matter whether the reason given for the arrest is valid or not. If, faced with a murderer who I would not otherwise have arrested (for whatever reason, maybe I’m sympathetic to his self-defense claim or he killed a cancer patient who asked him), and I choose to arrest him because he was a dick to me, then I have violated the Constitution and can be held liable.

@Steophan

Are you honestly saying that if any part of the police’s motivation is retaliatory, then they can’t arrest you?

No, I’m saying that if the officer would not otherwise have arrested in the absence of the protected speech, then making the arrest in response to the speech is unconstitutional regardless of the validity of the arrest otherwise.

[Steophan]

Unconstitutional for the police to arrest someone they have probable cause to believe is a murderer… That’s actually up there with the most ridiculous things I’ve read here.

[Richard_Parker]

@Steophan

Unconstitutional for the police to arrest someone they have probable cause to believe is a murderer… That’s actually up there with the most ridiculous things I’ve read here.

I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. You opine about the law when you know so little that you’re shocked to be told basic law about retaliatory arrest.

[mhendo]

@Steophan

Replace “pretext” with “reason”, then.

This is comedy gold!

“Replace ‘pretext’ with ‘reason.’” What’s your next trick? “Hey, you know when i said ‘truth’? Just replace ‘truth’ with ‘fabrication’ and everything else will be just fine.”

Hilarious. As if that’s just a minor issue, and if we make this small substitution then everything else you’re saying just happily falls in to place.

You apparently fail to understand that a pretext is precisely a reason that is not genuine; it is a reason that is given in order to hide one’s true intentions; it is, in effect, a lie.

[elucidator]

I think someone should commend friend Parker for unfailing politeness in the face of stubborn and belligerent stupid. It is a quality I enthusiastically admire without the least intention of emulating.

[BobLibDem]

@Bone

a lawful command

I find this phrase to be especially creepy. We aren’t sheep to be led by our most wonderful police masters. They can request that we do things and if reasonable they’ll get cooperation, but they don’t get to bark orders at us.

If the police had just come up and taken a few kids aside and said something like “Look, buddy. We don’t want to arrest anyone but we’ve had some complaints about the noise and the number of people here and if you’d give us a hand and start to break it up we’d appreciate it,” that might have worked and nobody would be upset. Instead, they seemed to have barged into this pool party and (to steal a line from Jon Stewart, started barking “WHEN I SAY MARCO YOU SAY POLO MOTHERFUCKER!” Instead of demanding respect from the people, how about having the cops give some respect to the citizenry?

They’ve been getting away with shit for generations, only now that video cameras are everywhere are we seeing what kind of psychos are in our police forces.

[Steophan]

@mhendo

This is comedy gold!

“Replace ‘pretext’ with ‘reason.’” What’s your next trick? “Hey, you know when i said ‘truth’? Just replace ‘truth’ with ‘fabrication’ and everything else will be just fine.”

Hilarious. As if that’s just a minor issue, and if we make this small substitution then everything else you’re saying just happily falls in to place.

You apparently fail to understand that a pretext is precisely a reason that is not genuine; it is a reason that is given in order to hide one’s true intentions; it is, in effect, a lie.

No, I understand it and that’s why I changed it. A cop may well have reason to arrest you for a minor crime, but choose not to if you are respectful, but choose to do so if you’re an abusive dick to him.

The idea that there’s even something wrong with that, let alone illegal or worse unconstitutional, is absurd. It’s possible that there is an absurd law, somewhere, that could be construed as to make that illegal, but it’s not a major thing.

[Steophan]

@BobLibDem

but they don’t get to bark orders at us.

Yes, actually they do. Are you seriously only just realising that?

Part of the price you pay for a generally free society where you’re protected from wrongdoers is that the protectors are human, and may occasionally shout at you rather than the criminals. They don’t have time to worry about hurting your precious fucking feelings by telling you what they need you to do, rather than asking if you would, pretty please, mind getting out of the way so they can chase the guy who just robbed your neighbour’s house, or whatever.

Seriously, are we now at the point where a cop shouting is a controversial encounter? Grow the fuck up.

[sich_hinaufwinden]

So the McKinney officer has resigned, according to CNN.

[you_with_the_face]

@Steophan

Seriously, are we now at the point where a cop shouting is a controversial encounter?

We’re not taking about merely shouting. We’re talking about physically and verbally assaulting half-naked minors in a manner that exponentially escalates conflict and confusion. But you’re right this problem shouldn’t be controversial. Because it is almost universally understood that cops shouldn’t behave like lunatics. Only lunatics would argue otherwise.

That cop was the epitome of unhinged, and unhinged people can’t be trusted to protect and serve. Sorry if your standards for the police are so low that you see nothing wrong with his actions, but most people expect more from agents of the law.

That he distinguished himself as being the only cop screaming and yelling and putting his hands on people like Rabid Scrappy Doo is a strong indicator that everyone appalled by the video has good reason to be appalled.

[kayaker]

@sich_hinaufwinden

So the McKinney officer has resigned, according to CNN.

NO!!! Quick, Steophan, contact him and tell him his actions were admirable!!

[marshmallow]

That pool party vid has a common theme when cops beat the shit out of women. The guys want to defend the women. This cop was body slamming her into the sidewalk. They rush in to defend her…then realize they can’t because it’s a cop. Any other dude gets his ass kicked, but he’s wearing a special costume that makes it OK. So they just have to stand around and watch her get abused. A little emasculating.

Also, it might be too late to call the cops on black people at the pool. This is why god invented white flight.

[doorhinge]

@you_with_the_face

We’re not taking about merely shouting. We’re talking about physically and verbally assaulting half-naked minors in a manner that exponentially escalates conflict and confusion. But you’re right this problem shouldn’t be controversial. Because it is almost universally understood that cops shouldn’t behave like lunatics. Only lunatics would argue otherwise.

Hahahaha. The half-naked minors were told to leave the area, and were then told to get their ass outta there. They chose not to obey repeated lawful orders, and they ended up sitting, or lying, on the grass with brand new silver bracelets. I guess the half-naked minors didn’t listen to the polite requests. Oh, well.

The public called the police because there were fights, arguments, and unwelcome guests invading the private pool. How dare police respond to 9-1-1 calls.

The officer didn’t draw his weapon until after two male assholes charged at him while he was trying to handcuff yellow bikini. Other officers handled the two morons, the officer replaced his weapon, and returned to handcuffing yellow bikini.

[Steophan]

@doorhinge

Hahahaha. The half-naked minors were told to leave the area, and were then told to get their ass outta there. They chose not to obey repeated lawful orders, and they ended up sitting, or lying, on the grass with brand new silver bracelets. I guess the half-naked minors didn’t listen to the polite requests. Oh, well.

The public called the police because there were fights, arguments, and unwelcome guests invading the private pool. How dare police respond to 9-1-1 calls.

The officer didn’t draw his weapon until after two male assholes charged at him while he was trying to handcuff yellow bikini. Other officers handled the two morons, the officer replaced his weapon, and returned to handcuffing yellow bikini.

This, exactly. Fuck knows what video anyone else was watching where racist cops stormed in guns waving and ordering everyone about.

[raventhief]

And the police chief called his actions “indefensible.”

I wonder what video he was watching?

ETA:

Conley called his actions “indefensible” and said, “He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident. I had 12 officers on the scene, and 11 of them performed according to their training.”

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/mckinney-police-chief-officer-was-clearly-out-of-control/