Ever since I saw this scene back in 2017, it motivated me to run and run while tuned to the song playing in the background (Focus – Hocus Pocus). The feeling of being chased is just perfect for running.
This may sound idiotic, but I always had the urge deep within me to run like this in a public place (I live in California). Obviously, minus the crime (stealing, etc.)… just pure running and acting like I’m being chased. Would I be arrested?
Wouldn’t the only answer to this be “depends”? I have been pulled over by police for questioning once when jogging, not because I did a mad dash like shown above, but simply because I was out jogging at 1AM (late shift at work). So I guess it would depend on whether any law enforcement who happend to see you would have reason to suspect something - had there been a crime reported recently near-by, or what time of day is it, or any other factors.
But I doubt you’d be arrested, more like stopped and questioned - unless you could be charged with “aggravated running disturbing the peace” or something
Depends. Illinois v. Wardlow might kick in if you were running away from police in a bad neighborhood or from a major crime scene even if there weren’t any other factors tying you to it.
Or maybe it wouldn’t kick in. Wardlow is not the last word on the subject.
Some of the things he does while running in that scene may be DC or DTP.
Is the answer really “it depends”? I mean, sure, you might get stopped and questioned if you’re running like that. But arrested? Doesn’t there have to be some reasonable suspicion that you committed a crime?
If you got spotted by a cop, you might be detained, i.e. briefly stopped while the cop asks you a few questions on the spot:
You would likely not be arrested (e.g. handcuffed, stuffed in a squad car, and hauled down to the station) unless the officer could confirm that you were probably involved in some sort of crime (e.g. you matched the description of someone fleeing a robbery).
There’s a scene in a John McDonald novel where the protagonist (Travis McGee?) speculates about what would occur if a person started running in a panicked fashion in a public place for no apparent reason.
A few uneasy pedestrians might break into a trot, looking around nervously…then a few more, and more…and pretty soon there’s a big crowd, wide-eyed with terror, stampeding frantically down the sidewalks and streets, crushing anything in their path. :eek::eek::eek:
Which part? The Parkour, the shoplifting, the running from police?
I suspect you’re talking about the parkour. As far as I know it’s not illegal, especially if you’re not putting anyone (or yourself) in danger and you’re not climbing up on things you’re not supposed to be climbing up on.
If you’re running around you might get arrested since it’s pretty suspicious looking, obviously going to depend a lot on where and what your skin color is, and if you run from the cops if they show up the odds of getting arrested or shot go way up. Running around in a mall will probably get you kicked out of the mall, and arrested if you just keep doing it. Climbing on stuff might get you some kind of trespassing charges, but you could check up on parkour to see what’s generally legal there.
John D.MacDonald, and it is a Travis novel, but it doesn’t happen…it is the explanation Travis’s pal Meyer gives for why he doesn’t run or jog: given his appearance (bear-like, not athletic) if people saw him running, they would conclude there must be something to run from, and would follow him…
In the '80s I worked with this nutcase girl, somebody’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl. One day we were walking back from lunch and just as we headed over a bridge, we saw two cop cars, nose to tail, like they were having a lunch break of something. She took off running. In the middle of the bridge she pitched her purse over the side–I think that might have been the thing that really got the cops going. They went after her.
I kind of followed at a distance. I was clueless, as I usually am. She did stop when ordered to do so. (I pretended I didn’t know her and went on back to the office which was right there on the other side of the bridge.)
So, they did not arrest her. She did get to sit in the back of a cop car for about 30 minutes while they ran all her info, and one of the cops went down the bank to see if he could recover her handbag, but he didn’t.
I have no idea if she actually had anything in that handbag–I think not. I asked her and said “nothing much,” and as to why she did it she said it was just a whim, she just felt like running.
If she really had something, the most sensible thing would have been to just keep walking. (Although that was also true of Baby Driver in many cases, like when he changed his jacket and his hat–but that wouldn’t have made a great chase scene.)
If they couldn’t find her purse, how could they prove it? I’ve been led to understand that a littering conviction requires evidence (preferably 8"x10" color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one).
*Hilarity N. Suze indicated that the tossing of the purse may have been the thing that convinced the cops to give chase. IOW, the cops were eyewitnesses to the act of littering and would have been able to provide written accounts of what they witnessed as evidence.
