How in the fuck do you slam a door on someone’s hand, break the glass pane of the door, and cut the hand? Is he contending that he held his hand in midair, inside the doorway, and failed to move the hand out of the way as the door closed, and instead of pushing his hand back, the glass of the door actually broke? Maybe if you braced your arm and held it in place with enough force, you could get that to happen, but accidentally? That ranks right up there with, “He hit my fist with his nose”. :rolleyes:
The thread title is bullshit – even assuming the deputy did assault the Kuhns, he did it because they would not provide ID and slammed the door, not because they were flying the flag upside down.
The state of North Carolina has taken no action regarding this case. The deputy is not an agent of the state of NC, even if he may be, as **Dio **claims, in some dissemblingly vague political sense “an agent of the state.”
There were no corroborating witnesses for either side, despite **Dio’**s claim. It is the word of the Kuhns against the word of the deputy.
:rolleyes: Richard, I deal in the ACTUAL thing here, ok? I’ve arrested people. I’ve had to subdue a few of 'em, y’know, with force and everything. Fact is that excess violence and rape as techniques of arrest are so far beyond the pale that it serves to discredit the original argument.
Actually, most LEO’s are per se “agents of the state”. Illinois, for instance, holds that all peace officers have powers that exist state-wide, and I think NC is similar, though I don’t know for sure.
I don’t care what the laws are regarding ID and citations. The cop was wrong to try to enter their home or write them up; both are wrong since the action(s) were taken in pursuit of a ridiculous and invalid law. The neighbors who called the police deserve a hearty “get fucked” as well.
I’m kind of surprised by what is being omitted here. The officer who was giving the citation was not the first cop to go to the house and ask about the flag. Scarborough was the second officer to bother them about that topic, and considering the fact that they weren’t doing anything wrong, I can understand the Kuhns being pissed about it. Especially if the second officer said “I’m giving you a citation” after another officer has already looked at it, said “no problem,” and left them alone. That reeks of selective enforcement of the law and, yeah, harrassment.
He may well have arrest powers state wide. He is not employed by the state of North Carolina. His each and every action while at work is neither de facto endorsed nor required by the state of North Carolina. He does not represent the will of the state of North Carolina. To lay all this at the feet of the state of North Carolina is specious bullshit.
Yes, you’ve described it very well here. Unless you’re in a Buster Keaton movie, it seems to me that your hand is going to get pushed back unless you’re intentionally exerting resistance to the glass. I just don’t buy your WAG, Miller, so it comes down to whether it is more likely that an unusual event occurred regarding the physics of glass and the human hand, or a cop lost his shit when encountering mild non-compliant behavior.
Gee, never saw anything like the latter ever happen.
One of the officers that visited the Kuhn’s recognized the upside down flag (which is not what they were being cited for, if I recall the article correctly) as a distress signal and inquired about that.
That said, ‘friendly’ neighbor probably knew the statute better than the deputies, which is why the earlier visits did not get a response. It was when someone complained about the Kuhn’s breaking a NC law (and I’m not going to debate the constitutionality, nor should the deputy) that the deputy looked up the law and brought it to the Kuhn’s attention.
People jaywalk all the time, including in front of police officers, despite it being a ticketable offense. People are surprised and upset on the very rare occassion they are ticketed; just because one officer didn’t ticket does not mean all officers are obliged not to ticket.
According to the woman, the officer referred to a law against desecrating the flag. Flying the flag upside down is not desecrating the flag.
Something also occurred to me about the whole door/glass thing. If they managed to get the door closed and locked (but in so doing hit his hand), how did the door get unlocked? They just happened to break the glass on his hand, so he took the opportunity to reach in to their home and unlock the door?
It’s my contention that the offcer WAS committing a crime by breaking into the house and assaulting the husband. The wife had a right to defend her husband from being battered.
They also had notes pinned to the flag, which I understand to be against that particular statute. From the OP’s article:
As much as I think **Dio **is over-reacting to a pending case, I would probably bet on the couple’s version of the story as being closer to the truth if I had to bet. But I wouldn’t be giving any odds on that.
I might have been wrong about the ID thing. I assumed the right to remain silent included a right not to indentify one’s self. It appears I could have been wrong.
Still, the cop was only writing the ticket to be an asshole pain in the balls and harrass a couple of liberals. Plus, they weren’t even in violation of the statute in the first place, as far as I can tell.
Right. I agree. Which is why I feel it is OK to speed. Really. What if the Mazda behind me is filled with evil snowmen planning to catch me and cram a giant snowball up my ass? You can’t be too careful in that situation.
