Just because he laid down like a submissive dog and showed his belly doesn’t mean she was wrong not to follow behind him. I’m really curious as to why you think knowing her name is such a game changing variable. What information does a name provide that would allow a cop to be able to ascertain whether a crime took place? Because that is all that matters.
Like I keep saying, it’s possible she had something on her record she was worried the cops would use against her. Even something as minor as an unpaid parking ticket could’ve been seized upon as an excuse for persecution.
Or maybe she just knew the cops had no business bothering her, and therefore, wasn’t going to give them tacit permission to do so by giving into their demands. If a stranger on the street demanded I show them my ID, I wouldn’t do so. Just because a stranger is a cop doesn’t change anything.
Once you refuse to identify yourself to a police officer, the question that officer has to answer changes from “What’s going on here?” to “What is this person hiding?”
No it doesn’t. The officer has to ask himself if there’s any legitimate reason to take any further action since you haven’t done anything illegal. The answer would be that no further action is warranted.
Yes, your point is that the only citizens who are allowed to object to unwarranted searches and seizures are those with pristine pasts. We get that. We just don’t understand your inability to why this idea is antithetical to our country’s founding principles.
Perhaps they borrowed them from Fox? [Muffin ducks and runs] They omit the important part concerning when detention for failing to produce ID is or is not legal.
Since she wasn’t legally required to identify herself, the cops did not have to answer anything. The take-home message here is that the cops shouldn’t be asking anyone anything unless they can legally enforce compliance.
But we have laws that limit what he can do about it.
This is something seen a great deal with Second Amendment activists. People strap on a gun and walk down the street. Someone sees them, gets alarmed, and calls the police.
Now, the police arrive and face a situation in which no laws are being violated. A person (in the states I’m discussing for this example) has every legal right to openly carry a gun. But the police quite often will demand ID anyway. Youtube is full of citizen-filmed encounters with police where the police are quite obviously detaining people because they want to run an ID check, and the people are saying, You don’t have the legal right to check my ID; there’s no reasonable suspicion of a crime here."
The question isn’t what the officer wants. He obviously wants to know what she’s hiding.
The question is: does the law permit him to seize her in order to investigate what she’s hiding?
Because he doesn’t care about them. In this cynical and ironic age, it’s sort of refreshing to see a Smapti hang a sign around his neck that says “I am a sheep and I demand that someone use me.” He’s downright offended by the existence of non-sheep because their actions imply that people can make a choice to be thoughtful and critical of authority. And yes, I know the sheep thing is a giant Internet cliche. But how else can you describe this guy? Other people call him a fascist, but the fascists conquered a bunch of Europe. Smapti isn’t conquering anything. He just sits there and bleats.
This is how smart people deal with the police, because smart people don’t want problems with the police. Smart people know that arguing with a cop is a waste of time, because they’re not going to lose the argument, they will do what they think is the correct thing to do, even if it’s wrong.
The time to fight back is when YOU choose, not when a uniformed officer is getting in your face about something.
Want to assert your rights? Say “Am I free to go?” Do that. When the cop says “No.” you have the information you need to make a complaint, because he overstepped his authority. Yelling, crying, calling them racists, threatening them with your publicist, demanding that they talk to your dad on speaker, that’s just making a fool of yourself.
When the Gestapo shows up on his doorstep demanding he prove his loyalties, we can predict that not only will he kneel and tongue kiss their rings, he will pay them for the pleasure. I’m just glad we know this now as opposed to later, so that when the Resistance makes its move, we know to leave his name off the distribution list.
Because the Fourth Amendment – one of our country’s earliest, if not precisely “founding” principles – clearly says that the right of the people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable search and seizure is protected.
This young lady was unreasonably seized, going by the meaning of the word “reasonble” as has been applied to these questions via case law.
