It depends. If a police officer, acting in good faith decides to place you under arrest most States if you disagree with the validity of the arrest and decide to try and beat up the officer to prevent the arrest you will end up in legal trouble and the officer will not face any legal sanctions for using reasonable force to subdue you. Essentially, it is not desired that citizens use violence to resist an arrest they believe to be unjust but instead utilize the court system. So for that reason, if an officer acting in good faith is forced to use physical force to place someone under arrest it is highly unlikely for that force to be considered assault and battery regardless of whether the arrest itself is later shown to be invalid.
However if an officer beats someone who is not resisting, even if the arrest is lawful that action is going to be viewed as excessive force and criminal charges are likely. So really whether or not it was assault has much more to do with the arrestees actions and the officer’s actions more than the legality of the arrest itself. If this guy had tried to use force to resist the officer a certain amount of force could be legally used to subdue him. Not that I am saying this individual had used force to resist the officer.
Should we now follow any post you make that responds to Snowboarder with the comment that you have an ax to grind and that your comments are “tainted”?
Had the OP gone off on a rant or drawn conclusions from facts not in evidence, I might see your point, but there is no reason to wander into a thread just to drop some well-poisoning on the topic. Address the facts and logic, (as the OP did), and leave the personal comments for The BBQ Pit.
All true and well summarized, but in this particular case, given that the officer’s actions have been found to violate department policies, it seems likely to me that he knew or should have known that what he was doing was wrong, and thus he was not acting in good faith. He was simply being a bully and assaulting an innocent bystander for the “criminal” act of having a camera on.
When it comes to allowing someone to resist an illegal arrest, the problem is not the policeman*, it’s the citizen. For every person who knows the full extent of an officer’s legal powers, and when they are being exceeded, there are 10 who have partial knowledge, and probably 10 more who would be operating from completely false information.
The police have to deal with all these people, and for the one guy who resists an arrest that is actually illegal, you’ll have 100 resisting a perfectly appropriate arrest.
Without a doubt, the officer violated the law. There is no law against filming police. The police officer asked him to stop filming and he refused to stop filming. There is no law that states that if a police officer asks you to stop filming that you must comply.
Beating him was assault. The police officer had no right to beat him. He was not a threat; he was just filming. The cop is also making terroristic threats and actually going through with the threats.
Factually unknown, my interpretation is he did not resist. I imagine the officer or his lawyer in the civil suit or disciplinary hearing will claim Crooks resisted and Crooks will claim he didn’t.
I just wanted to add that this is only my opinion. I’m not a police officer or a lawyer and my opinion could be wrong.
As a journalism student, I just know that it’s not against the law to film police officers. I also believe that no officer is above the law and an officer should follow the laws.
Technically if you’re being asked to put down your camera because you are being placed under arrest it is definitely legal for them to ask you to do so.
Also in most places I do not believe standing in a driveway constitutes criminal trespass unless the property owner has asked you to leave the property. Otherwise door to door salesmen would be guilty of criminal trespass the moment their feet touched the driveway…or someone using your driveway to turn around would be trespassing. That to me suggests that even if the officer believed Crooks was standing on someone else’s driveway that in and of itself wouldn’t be a crime unless the property owner had asked Crooks to leave.
What did the officer accomplish? The crime of filming on your own property did not deserve such aggressive treatment. The cop should be fired. He hurts all cops. He hurts the relationship of police and civilians. He smears all cops. He offends many .
I agree. The cop should not have lost his temper. It could have and should have been handled better. It did not deserve such aggressive treatment. Police are supposed to serve and protect rather than just being bullies.
It varies. I believe several states and localities are trying to make it illegal to videotape or audiotape the police. They are using wiretapping laws, illegal surveillance laws, etc to do it. But meh, intimidation and threatening a witness of a crime are also illegal. cough. Even if it isn’t illegal, all a cop has to do it intimidate the witness and 90% of the time they will stop filming. http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/03/do-police-have-a-legitimate-expectation-of-privacy-in-public-performance-of-duty/
Thank you for providing that article. It was very interesting to read and a bit alarming at the same time. I remember seeing many videos on YouTube depicting police officers abusing their power. There was actually a guy on YouTube who would film police officers breaking the law. He would film them while informing them that they were in fact breaking the law. Police officers need to obey the laws too and are not above the law, which is was he was trying to tell his audience via his YouTube videos.
Yes, threatening and intimidating a witness of a crime is illegal. I think that all the videos that depict abuse from police officers encourage people to know their rights and be educated enough to know when police abuse happens. People should not hand over their rights to police officers just because of intimidation.
In Commonwealth v. Hyde, 434 Mass. 594 (2001), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the conviction of Michael Hyde for violating the Massachusetts electronic surveillance statute, G. L. c. 272, § 99, for recording statements made by police officers during a traffic stop.
And since the officer knew or should have known that in fact there was no cause to even suspect criminal trespass, he had to have known (or should have known) that there was no cause to arrest Mr. Crooks. Thus, his actions are culpable, IMO.
First off, if police are acting illegally, as in the Black guy who was beaten up in L.A. for speeding, then its totally the right thing to film the police and spread the film as far and wide as is possible so that they pay for their crimes.
But in day to day business unfortunately cops get targeted by the bad guys purely for doing their job, you get some nut job who doesn’t like the fact that he’s been pulled for a traffic violation or beating up his wife and he’s out to get payback.
Or he’s a gang banger, maybe wants to make a name for himself, films a cop on duty and then gets him off duty while out at the park or whatever.
I watched the link, its pretty obvious that the tosser, sorry victim set the thing up, he acted like a total twat, and then played the drama queen when he got cuffed.
Whats the bet that he’s going to get a nice little financial settlement out of this ?
And guess who’s going to pay for that settlement ?
Especially when there are other cops across the street. It strikes me as completely rational that if one cop’s beating on me, getting a half-dozen others over will net at least one who says, “Come on, Colling, he’s had enough.”
Frankly, I’m surprised that the recording survived and wasn’t “accidentally” damaged beyond repair during the fracas.
Which is ridiculous, because if the officer does nothing wrong, the guy has recorded nothing that will give him “payback”.
What? This makes no sense. Did you leave out a sentence or two?
That’s funny you say that. What was “obvious” to you that indicated Mr. Crooks “set the thing up”? Are you arguing that he wanted to get beaten by the officer?
Again, are you arguing that Mr. Crooks wanted and intended to get beaten by Officer Collings? What’s your evidence to back that up?