In it a lone protestor of some stripe seems to be on the UC Berkeley Campus. He is alone, standing right in front of a bunch of cops. A woman, who happens to be an activist and a professor at the school, wants the person to leave. She starts pushing him, then actually punching hi, At about this time, some of her fellow activists tackle the guy and punch and kick him when he’s on the ground. The cops finally come in and rescue the guy, and then just make him leave.
Okay, my questions are:
Are cops allowed to stand by and simply watch one person being assaulted?
When witnessing the assault in action, are they obligated in any way to arrest the assailants?
What is your take on the the behavior of the cops here?
Could the guy who got attacked sue the police based on this video?
Could this victim, again based on this video, insist that the assailants be arrested and prosecuted.
I’m looking for straight legal answers here. Not interested in the righteousness of stupidity of either side’s beliefs.
I’m no lawyer but that was simply assault which is a crime. Why the police did not arrest them is open to interpretations. Did they have orders not to intervene yet maintain order?
The police had to step in when they started ganging up on the guy. This was apparently a peaceful protest which is allowed but this lady got physical which is a nono.
She should have been arrested for assault and inciting a riot.
Police generally aren’t obligated to make arrests, and when they are required to it’s usually only for felony cases. It’s quite routine for police to not cite or arrest anyone for cases of simple assault (or battery, depending on what your local laws call it), if you hang around college bars on a Saturday it’s not unheard of to see two people get in a fight or a bouncer roughly eject someone and no one get a ticket or arrest.
In the video it looks to me like the cops saw that the woman punching him wasn’t really hurting him so they waited to see what would happen, and when several people jumped the guy they immediately stepped in to break up the fight and keep any serious injury from happening. It looks like they tried to let things play out, and stopped it as soon as it escalated to serious violence.
I don’t know where people get the idea that you can sue the police for not doing exactly what you want, or that you can ‘insist’ that they arrest someone in any meaningful sense. (I can insist that you wear a Burger King crown, but it’s clearly not effective or meaningful).
Also, the fact that the video starts where it did, showing none of what the guy did leading up to the altercation, makes me suspect that he was a lot less of an innocent victim than the person posting the video wants us to think. I’m not willing to call the guy a ‘victim’ from just the video provided, as it’s quite possible that he instigated the fight, and I’m even more skeptical than usual when the ‘victim’ is an unrepentant neo-nazi according to the person posting the video. Any question of whether the guy is a victim or instigator, or of how justified the cops are in their response, would require seeing the actions leading up to the video.
Thanks for the info. I did see another video that was really mayhem, with lots of people. One guy who has a bat for big stick takes a full windup and hits a guy in the back. I would think that guy could be prosecuted. I’m just amazed that this group is no brazen. Can’t have much sympathy for KKK types or white supremacists, but the principle that the BAMN group can so easily get away with assaulting people is disturbing in the extreme. And for a group who claims to hate fascism to think they can assault and beat people who voice different opinions breaks any irony meter.
I agree that it makes sense to not intervene when it was just that woman trying to push and punch him. But I would have thought that as soon as he was attacked and being hit on the ground, someone should have been arrested.
Theoretically, if this guy was stabbed while being beaten on the ground, I wold think he could sue the cops for standing by and allowing it to escalate. As far as I can tell, they didn’t even verbally direct the early assault. Now, he wasn’t stabbed, but is being pushed and kicked permissible and stabbing verboten?
I’m not trying to foist responsibility on to the cops here, I’m really exploring what level of protection should people reasonably expect from cops when they are being assaulted.
They don’t assault and beat people “who voice different opinions”. They beat on nazis, specifically. Because *their *specific opinion in itself is or leads to structural violence.
If you want to discuss the strength or weakness of neo-nazi types. Feel free to start your own thread about it. I’m looking for factual answers here about assault being witnessed by cops.
[ol]
[li]Yes.[/li][li]No.[/li][li]Opinion[/li][li]Sue - yes. Win - probably no.[/li][li]Insist - yes. Force police or prosecutors - no.[/li][/ol]
The first example that comes to mind is aNY Subway incident where police were a few feet away from a man getting stabbed and only intervened after the stabbing victim subdued the attacker on his own.
In Virginia, the criminal code limits when a police officer may make an arrest, i.e., an officer may only make an arrest when they witness a misdemeanor, or have probable cause to believe a felony has been committed.
The only situation in which a law enforcement officer must make an arrest for a misdemeanor they did not witness, is for suspected domestic violence (although that is local policy where I practice).
There is nothing which mandates arrest, for very very good public policy reasons.