When I was a kid, I loved “Dragnet.” I remember one episode in which Sgt. Friday and Officer Gannon were assigned to Community Relations, and hosted a neighborhood meeting to calm interracial tensions. They invite any aggrieved person to come ask them about any police incident instead of spreading discontented rumor. The next day, a middle-aged black couple tell Friday that they are furious over how they were treated during a traffic stop on the way home from the neighborhood meeting. The man admits having a broken tailight but is angry at how the officers asked about a TV they had in the back seat. Friday and Gannon review the officer’s log book and learn that the couple was stopped because there had been a rash of burglaries and a green sedan seen near the burglarized sites. The couple was driving a green sedan and had a television in the back seat that they had just picked up from the repair shop. Friday shows them a map with dots depicting all the burglaries and they’re astounded to discover that they were right in the middle of the location. They leave, mollified.
Then Friday finds the two uniform cops and gets their version. One says he’s not surprised to learn the couple complained, because they had a bad attitude from the beginning.
Friday points out to the uniformed officer that he never explained to the couple the rash of burglaries with a green sedan, and how the TV in the back seat made it worth checking them out in the first place.
The clear message in 1968 was exactly what you’re saying now: the refusal to advise the citizen of the rationale for the encounter fuels distrust and suspicion.
Absolutely. Although that type of situation (someone driving along, doesn’t realize that they randomly resemble someone who committed a nearby crime) is totally unlike the two real life situations being discussed in this thread, in which the civilian presumably knows what they did, with the question being how serious the police response should have been.
And because that’s a lame rationale–you don’t take names as a “force of habit”; the names need to serve a purpose above and beyond making people feel intimidated–I’m betting that this is why he didn’t state this as his reason when she asked. His inability to find a good reason to articulate should have been his own clue to slow down.
I’m betting also that he cuffed her, not because he believed he absolutely needed to get her ID, but so that 1) he could further intimidate and punish her and 2) so he could give himself more time to think of a rationale for getting her ID. When he realized he didn’t have one that would hold up to legal scrutiny, he had to let her go.
And if we could find a way to address this very issue then we wouldn’t fall into so many circular discussions about whether X or Y was “deserving” of Z treatment.
Bricker, any update to the legal analysis discussion you were having with that law prof? I’m genuinely curious to know what the law really is. Or at least what it seems to be interpreted to mean, subject to further court rulings.
Essentially, the article claims that there is still some dispute as to what the relevent law is about IDing self (maybe they’re just behind us), and some thought that Watt’s less-than-clearly supported claims of racism might be harmful to the cause.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of that… but “LAPD cops need clarification of law concerning when it’s legal to require an ID, and so apparently does everyone trying to cover the story” is a very different debate than the one we started out having in this thread.
It doesn’t differ from my point, though. Even if the officer technically did not break the law, his actions were unnecessary and aggressive and counterproductive to maintaining the peace.
I don’t think you’d hold up the officer’s actions as a perfect exemplar of restraint and correctness. At the same time, I think trying to draw a connection between this incident and larger societal patterns of racism in interactions between cops and civilians is tenuous at best. I don’t scoff at the existence of such patterns in general, but in this particular case, I think it very likely that it would have played out pretty much identically with any or all of the participants’ races swapped.
SO in your pure-ass speculation, here’s what I see: you use the word “apparently” when the only word that can be properly applied is “allegedly”; the two words have VERY different meanings and your use of “apparently” assumes the guilt of the couple.
THEN you endorse the police keeping an extra-legal list of “apparent bad people” so they can subject them to extra scrutiny, oppression, etc. without any basis in legality.
FINALLY you imagine a cop deliberately escalating the situation…
AND YET you write it all as if you seem to think that Miss Watts was the one who did something wrong. WTF???
Most of the arguments in this thread haven’t been arguments about racism, but rather the law and our rights and police powers. These apply regardless of race.
That said, I don’t think it would’ve played out identically because I don’t think white people, as a group, feel picked on by police like minorities do. Black people are more likely to be treated like potential criminals. If all your experiences and your relative’s experiences with cops have been dehumanizing, then what seems like a simple request to turn over your ID feels like a request to put your hand in a shark tank. Maybe you won’t get bitten, but maybe you will. To trust you won’t get bitten means trusting people who don’t trust you and have shown time and time again they actually like hurting you and people like you.
I haven’t had many encounters with cops, but I’ve had bad ones. One of them was fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, and yet it has made me sympathetic to people who complain about jerk cops. Longish story ahead.
One afternoon, I was driving in a strip mall parking lot and slowly went around the car in front of me because I thought it was parked. Didn’t even notice it was a cop car until she pulled me over. The cop then tore out of her vehicle and came up to my window, and then proceeded to chew me out like I’d been doing 100 in a 45 while smoking a crack pipe. She accused me of being so reckless that I could’ve killed a child. I sat there for 5 minutes listening to her rant and all the while I was apologetic. Didn’t argue against her ridiculous claim about me almost killing children. Didn’t try to defend myself at all. And yet she kept costing me my time and talking to me like I was a misbehaving juvenile. Eventually, she asked me have I ever been pulled over before. I answered yes, just recently I was pulled over for a missing tail light.
Finally, she asked for my ID and registration. She went back and looked me up and then, instead of issuing me a ticket or warning or whatever was indicated, she prolonged the interaction by bringing up my record again. “I saw you’ve also been pulled over for speeding before but you didn’t mention that, did ya!” WTF? What does that happen to do with anything? Suddenly instead of talking about the incident at hand, now she’s hassling me because I failed to volunteer the fact that years ago I was pulled over speeding. What response did she want from me after implying that I was disingenuous?
At that point, my feelings started to show (oh no!). I’d been nothing but respectful to this broad and yet instead of showing me respect, she kept upping the hostility and prolonging my detainment beyond what was necessary. I’d already been feeling hypoglycemic because I’d just worked out and hadn’t eaten anything, and my patience was close to breaking. Have you ever got the distinct impression that someone was purposely picking a fight with you? That was the impression I got at that moment. She wanted me to do something that would justify her getting violent with me. Either that, or she wanted to bully me so she’d get off on feeling powerful.
When she implied that I was lying, I forcefully told her that she’d asked me whether I’d been pulled over before and my answer was truthful. I didn’t yell but my face was clearly not the face of nice ywtf. It was my “keep fucking with me and see what happens” face. I don’t remember what she said then, but she handed me my warning and let me drive away.
I don’t know if this would’ve happened to me if I were a white, and like I said, this was a very minor incident. All I know is that it happened to me and now I’m less inclined to assume the best intentions are work when cops do their jobs. There are lot of cops that either go into the profession because they are bullies, or they become bullies while being in the profession. I believe blacks are more likely to see this side of cops. They are more likely to be treated with hostility, so they react with hostility.
That sounds like an incredibly frustrating experience, and one that, as a white guy, it’s pretty hard for me to really sympathize with. I agree that unequal treatment of that sort is a serious and important issue. And I support things like mandatory lapel cameras for cops which will make it at least possible for encounters like yours to be reviewed later on, so that there’s something other than just he-said she-said.
However… suppose that after your encounter, a week later, you had ANOTHER similar situation. You have committed what’s at worst a very questionable ticky tacky moving violation, a cop pulls you over, and starts being more confrontational and accusatory than you think is merited. I can see how it would be UNDERSTANDABLE for you to start yelling and screaming and calling racism and (if you were a movie actor) saying “do you know who I am???”. But would it be WISE to do so? Would it be productive? Is that what you SHOULD do?
This question keeps coming up, but my only response is to beg you to stop trying to divert actual issues of societal problems and policy decisions with this diversionary petty nonsense.
That’s a trivial, personal question you’re asking and not in the least one I’m interested in wasting time on. Really, all it serves to do is shift the focus from society/politics/policy and the exercise and abuse of authority to an entirely irrelevant one of judging an individual’s personal character and choices.
It’s just like diverting a question of rape by miring the discussion in an examination of the victim’s character. I refuse to engage in that tangent.
(a) I said none of the things you said I did. (For instance, a cop who looks at someone’s identification is OF COURSE going to write their name down in a little book, because not doing so would be RIDICULOUSLY NEGLIGENT. What if he needs that information later? Is he supposed to just remember it? Reading into that some big brother enemies list is just ludicrous.)
(b) it’s ridiculous to read something into “allegedly” vs “apparently”, in that we’re not in a court of law here, and there are no legal standards of proof that are relevant. My guess, based on everything I’ve read, is that Watts and her husband (boyfriend?) were in fact sitting in a car, in public, engaging either in actual intercourse, or EXTREMELY heavy petting, so heavy that many people mistook it for actual intercourse. This led to them calling the cops, and the rest is history. There seem to be several different sources confirming that, and no one who was there seems to be disputing the broad strokes. In all my discussion of this issue, I’ve been assuming that that’s what really happened. Did something else happen? Well, maybe. In which case my remarks are irrelevant. Do I have PROOF of anything? Of course not, I’m just some guy on the internet expressing his opinion. So… what’s your point exactly?
I realize that there are some parallels, but I don’t honestly think it’s irrelevant. We’re discussing an interaction between two human beings (well, three, counting the husband/boyfriend), and why it ended up playing out the way it did. Why would we not discuss the actions and choices of both of those people?
I think there are two main areas of discussion concerning the actions of the cop in this incident:
(1) Did he act within the legal bounds of his authority (answer appears to be “no”, pending the resolution of the email discussion Bricker is having with the UCLA guy). Either he knew he was violating the law, or he failed to understand the bounds of his authority. In the first case (which I find unlikely) he should face severe consequences. In the second case, the LAPD should review their training and education processes, so that he and other cops understand these things better, and he should face less severe consequences. In either case, if there was a violation of the law, then it should be considered and processed by the established legal system.
(2) What about the general level of escalation? Could he have just given them a stern talking-to and walked away? That is, assuming that he thought his actions were legal, how did he determine which of his various options to choose? Cops being human beings, here’s where there’s absolutely zero chance that the level of hostility and confrontationality of the civilian is not going to factor into this.
It should never, NEVER, result in violating the law, and if it did (as appears to be true here) there should be consequences. But imagine this hypothetical: a guy is speeding, gets pulled over, cop comes around to talk to him, and the guy is just maximally abusive, yelling all sorts of dirty words, insulting the cop’s gender and race and marital status and questioning the legitimacy of his birth and talking about the cop’s mother, etc, and also screaming about how important he his and how important the meeting he’s going to. And the cop, being understandably upset, goes out of his way to take as long as possible to do all of the paperwork necessary for the speeding stop, but clearly stays within the limits of the law. Who’s fault is it that the guy had to wait 25 minutes by the side of the road and ended up late to an important meeting?
Now, same hypothetical, but the pissed of cop also calls up a buddy at the station and says “hey, I know it’s against regs, but can you run this guy’s ID through the computer to see if anything pops up” (pretending that that’s illegal, not sure if it is), and learns that the guy has an outstanding warrant in another state, and tips off that state’s PD, and the guy gets arrested. Now, if that phone call was illegal, the cop clearly 100% should not have made it, no matter the provocation, and should face the consequences for doing so. But if in the first hypothetical we are judging the guy negatively for his attitude, and saying that he faces a large amount of responsibility for the delay he faces, does that just vanish the moment the cop breaks the law by making that phone call?
It was a friendly discussion, but he remains of the opinion that, notwithstanding the language in Grigg, the detention for ID was appropriate. He focuses on the commentary in Grigg about considering what other methods the police had for investigation; I pointed out they had the boyfriend’s ID and the license plate of the passion pit Mercedes. He readily admitted he could be mistaken, but didn’t change his mind.
I certainly admit I could be wrong, but I don’t see the specifics of how. So we agreed to disagree.
This line of questioning strikes me as bizarre because no one in this thread is promoting yelling and name-calling as an be effective strategy for anything. In fact, you and others are the ones who keep boiling things down to pragmatism, as if 1) that somehow has anything to do with whether a cop has crossed the line and 2) pragmatism has anything to do with the demoralizing situation many minorities finds themselves with bullying cops.
One might ask is it effective for you to keep USING caps to emphasize your WORDS. No, it’s not effective because it makes you seem ANGRY and OBSESSIVE. But it doesn’t give anyone the right to slap handcuffs on you or taser you.
I guess a key piece of information that we’re missing is what LAPD officers are taught about these types of situations. Did the cop, acting within the training he was given, reasonably think that his actions were lawful?
