Still, I’d be for trying to make a rule against changes of mind for reasons like that. If the only thing that made the officer decide to make an arrest after all was that he got his feelings hurt, then yes if possible the rules should disallow such an action on his part.
Surely there are engineering difficulties in trying to actually hash out how such a rule could be written and enforced, but ideal world? Yes, there is a rule against police officers deciding to arrest someone because that person called them a bad name.
Mimms is about US Constitution, and it does not prevent TX from having additional laws that confer additional rights. The cite I gave above is a TX lawyer who specializes in the area, who says that he has to state the reason.
Yet the TX lawyer I cited, who is directly involved with TX civil liberties, says otherwise. Your unawareness is not convincing. However, you might be right: my cite doesn’t give enough info for us to judge its merits, unfortunately.
No it doesn’t. Here’s the text from post 528:
Note the bolded part. If she kicked him, then she’s culpable, under that law. If she refuses to exit her car, she doesn’t.
This law prevents the use of force. It doesn’t prevent staying put.
Thanks! From that:
Really? Um … just what kind of investigation were you planning, officer? This is a blatant lie. He had her get out of the vehicle because he was pissed off at her attitude.
I disagree based on the text of the law, up until the point where she used force (if she in fact, did use force, which isn’t clear from the evidence but I wouldn’t be surprised.)
Oh really?
No he wasn’t. He prevented Bland from signing the warning by removing it and placing it on the hood of her car. At that point, he’s extending the stop without ANY valid reason relating to the initial stop. Even in his warrant he states that it was to investigate the traffic incident, which is clearly BS.
How can she sign it when it’s on the hood of her car? She was apparently about to sign it when he asked her to put out her cigarette, and everything went pear-shaped.
Your cite is an interview of a civil rights lawyer. Based on the other answers provided, I do not find his responses credible. Certainly TX can have additional laws that prevent ordering people from their vehicles for no reason, like Vermont, Massachusettes, and Hawaii does. Do you have any actual evidence? My cite is from SCOTUS. It wasn’t just Mimms either. The person you quoted made multiple claims. Mimms refers to the order to exit the vehicle. But the person you quoted also stated that the officer was required to state the reason for the arrest. DEVENPECK V. ALFORD is from SCOTUS too. That says the reason for arrest is not constitutionally required. I can find nothing in TX that requires this. In NY, there is such a requirement, with certain exceptions.
Ah, brevity and certainty! Always a reliable indicator of comprehensive information. So, then, outside of her signature, which she could not have provided without the officer’s cooperation, what remained to be done? Was he going to offer her an incomplete form, maybe fill in the blanks later? I would be reluctant to sign such a thing, how about you?
Anyway, since you have all the fact right at your fingertips, what remained to be done?
I can’t watch that thing again right now. It’s painful. Even if she was not dead it would be painful. Can someone who watched closely describe the exact timeline regarding the warning?
He tells her its a warning, He fills out something, he gives it to her, she doesnt sign it, he asks how are you feeling?, he places warning on hood, he asks her to extinguish, she says no, she wants to sign it. What is the exact order of these things?
Did she have the ability to answer his request to extinguish with “May I just sign that please?” Was the warning in hand or was he holding it back?
From memory I think you have the order wrong. He asks if she is upset, she says yes and explains why, he asks if she is through, he then writes some stuff down, he asks if she will put out her cigarette, she declines, he asks her to exit the vehicle and she says no then he opens the door, asks again (she refuses again and says she is calling her lawyer) and then he attempts to remove her bodily from the vehicle. If you can’t stand to watch the video someone linked early in the thread to the transcript, in case my own memory is faulty. I agree with you that watching it is painful and I don’t want to do it again either.
Why does this matter? According to Rodriguez, “…a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures.”
Where in this language does it imply the clock for “excessive” starts ticking only when the traffic stop has officially come to an end? For something written by lawyers, the conclusion reads pretty simple: cops can’t detain anyone longer than it takes to resolve the issue at hand. Assuming (of course) reasonable suspicion for another violation hasn’t surfaced, the police are not allowed to just waste people’s time with capricious questioning and requests. It’s obvious on its face that this would violate the 4th amendment.
If a judge determines that Encinia did in fact violate Rodriguez with his unnecessary actions, will you continue to insist his order to exit the car was lawful? It’s seems safe to assume its lawfulness completely hinges upon whether it was a justified action, and since that is in dispute, you can’t be so confident that he was within his rights.
He had filled out the warning and presumably, was about to hand it to her to sign before he asked her to snub her smoke. When she declined, he never gave her the chance to sign the thing, because he decided the better course of action would be to yank her out of the car.
To me, it doesn’t matter what she knew or didn’t know. Wel now that he had filled out a warning slip and didn’t have any reason to detain her any longer.
None of this is well-settled law. Rodriguez was just decided three months ago. We don’t know how various state rules about the duration of stops will fare under Rodriguez.
The legal argument advanced by you with the face is entirely reasonable. Texas may have whatever rule it has about a stop ending with the signing of a ticket, but that does not trump the constitutional rule about the permissible duration of a traffic stop. And that rule is about objective reasonableness. An officer may not extend the duration of the stop simply by not signing the ticket when he normally would have.
The question here would be, presumably, whether the officer (a) had new reasonable suspicion of some crime; or (b) could use a Mimms-style justification even though the encounter could have been ended by handing over the ticket.
I doubt whether (a) or (b) are true, but (b) is certainly not a matter of settled law.
That is exactly what I’m arguing should happen. If you see a cop on the street and call him an asshole, he cannot legally arrest you. He might manufacture a reason and do so anyway, but legally, insulting a cop is not grounds for arrest.
So he should also not be able to use an unrelated offense as a pretext to arrest you for calling him an asshole just because you happen to do so shortly after he decided not to arrest you for that offense.
I would claim that the decision is clear at the point where he says “I’m going to give you a warning”. But maybe it’s not.
So, if you get the warning, you sign for it, he says you’re free to go, and as he’s walking back to his car, you yell back at him “You’re an asshole”, is he justified in arresting you for the driving infraction?
If you see him the next day on the street and you call him an asshole, is he justified in arresting you for the driving infraction?
I’m under no illusions that I could call a cop an asshole and not get arrested. But I would argue that that arrest should not be legal.
If I want to be pissy at the DMV, they can’t refuse to license my car. If I write nasty letters to the IRS, they don’t get to refuse to refund my money. Why do we accept that police officers get to arrest people un unrelated charges just because those people have a bad attitude?
Wait, are you asking this sincerely? Or are you just kidding around? Of course the cop should only issue a warning, regardless if you call him mean names. I don’t see how you could rationalize the opposite and still claim to support the 1st amendment (perhaps you don’t).
For the same reason I don’t think murderers should be sentenced according to how posh and polite they are, I don’t think traffic offenders should be ticketed according to how effectively they mask their negative emotions. We have no business saying we live in a free society if merely having a “bad attitude” subjects you to prosecution.
And you would be correct. Vulgar language directed at an officer, especially in a way that is criticizing his official conduct toward you, is not on its own a valid basis for arrest.
Anti-big government types would scream bloody murder if other government executive agencies were granted such liberties. Everyone would be screaming “GOVERNMENT OVERREACH!!”
But give such power to a police officer–someone who walks around with a gun and can kill with impunity 99% of the time–and suddenly folks don’t seem all that bothered. Folks who are normally full of conspiracies about the government don’t seem to have a problem with surrendering all their rights to any random guy in a blue uniform.
The Fourth Amendment allows an officer to issue the ticket if there is PC regardless of his subjective views. But the First Amendment forbids him from issuing it as a subjective result of your cursing at him.
Obviously, in the real world of America in 2015, such disrespect might well get you killed. It will almost certainly get you arrested. It’s a terrible idea. But on the narrow question of the law, it is definitely constitutionally protected conduct.
If the officer reasonably believes his purpose and identity are already known by or cannot reasonably be made known to the person, then there is no requirement to announce the reason for arrest. I think it’s a wobbler whether or not the person you cited was correct. He certainly didn’t present his statement with the nuance it deserves.
Obviously I didn’t do an exhaustive search of all 50 states, but it is not a federal constitutional requirement as laid out in Devenpeck. States may erect their own statutory or constitutional protections.
