While avoiding traffic is a valid safety concern, I think the reason Mimms reason for drivers exiting is because they have less access to weapons and less of the bodies is shielded from view. This increased intrusion is de minimis with respect to the stip itself and the increased safety benefits are considered reasonable in that context. Not saying that’s what the officer was doing.
Avoiding traffic can be accomplished by approaching from the passenger side.
No! Stop saying this fascistic bullshit. The cop might be happy, although it would mean he didn’t get what he wanted, an excuse to arrest her. She would be unhappy because her rights would have been trampled upon. And because the idea of getting a police officer convicted for petty misconduct is a joke, he would never get in trouble for it, and would do it again, making more people less happy by depriving them of their rights.
The thing that makes me so upset is that, no matter how wrong something is, we can always count on people to defend it. Ultimately, it’s not the cops that are the problem. They only do what the populace will let them get away with doing.
Sandra Blend, like many other people before her, are heroes for getting more and more people to stop allowing these cops to abuse the law. It took a lot of deaths, but we’ve gotten the momentum to have cops constantly filming their actions.
If going to the courts worked, we wouldn’t have to be doing this. I may be a moral coward, but I’m tired of those like XT who try to turn that into a virtue. I’d love to see him argue that soldiers who go AWOL because of a dangerous assignment are the real heroes.
Those who run away and let the bad guys get away are also the bad guys. You are the reason the world is as fucked up as it is. Evil is powerful because good people do nothing.
The “carefully took his victim out of range” is conjecture. I showed you another, quite plausible, reason that he would take her there.
Again, it is normal/acceptable for officers to conduct police business without particular regard on whether they are in camera range or not.
What “right” is trampled upon when she is ordered to step out of the car? US Supreme Court says that it’s constitutional.
You were OK up until this point, BigT. No amount of outrage is justification for insulting another poster like that.
Does anyone have an address for the incident? I’d like to look at this intersection on Google street view, because I cannot imagine a cop seeing someone blow through a stop sign, pulling the driver over, and then just never mentioning the stop sign again, not even after being assaulted. Maybe he is just not a very observant cop? Or he has an extremely short memory?
This is at least the second time you’ve said this. Why do you think that a “Retired lawyer” (who may be nothing of the sort) is some sort of expert?
After all, I am the Dowager queen of Rumania.
That’s incorrect. You provided no plausible reason.
Here is that odd claim of yours, again.
Why is it, do you believe, that ‘cameras in policing’ have been called for, and instituted? Are you aware of the many incidents that have brought about the call for cameras in policing? If so, why would you see it as normal and/or acceptable for “officers to conduct police business without particular regard on [sic] whether they are in camera range or not”… ?
Well, in this particular incident, he technically had cause to arrest her for the original violation under the law (though it would violate any sane department policy).
And if we imagine a world where she had been non-combative throughout the stop, she would have been non-combative up to the point of being put in cuffs to be in compliance with the law. In Texas, they can put you in cuffs while they decide what to do with you, even for most moving violations. That makes for a pretty strange standard.
Now, the place where this particular stop went south was when the officer opened the door, tried to drag her out of the car, and threatened her with the taser. He could have calmly addressed that for a long time before going ballistic. It’s not uncommon that the police can order you out of the car during a stop (e.g., it seems to be legal in Florida, it’s also pretty common on Cops), but I don’t know if it’s universal.
Asking leading questions is SOP for all 50 states, in my experience. It’s dumb, it’s often insulting, but I doubt it can be found unconstitutional.
[sidetrack] You just know that Dottie Parker would have refused to put out her cigarette and would have mouthed off to the bully, too. Bless her mordant little heart.[/end sidetrack]
…
By the way, having now read the first 300 or so posts, I see that poster drad_dog had also mentioned the issue of the officer taking Bland out of camera range before getting physical with her. When I started posting, in the 900s, I hadn’t yet read that far (and wasn’t sure if the issue had yet been raised).
True, but that’s a hypothetical situation. Since he had the warning (or maybe a ticket) in his hand already, it’s a hypothetical situation that is not plausible in this case.
They have been called for, yes. But no one (at least no one rational) that I have seen yet suggested that there should be a regulation that prohibits policemen to conduct police business anywhere but within the range of a static camera.
AFAIU (I am not a policeman) it’s not just Texas but pretty much anywhere that the police can “put you in cuffs while they decide what to do with you” (if they have any reason to detain you - note the “detain”, not “arrest”). The cuffs would be for the safety of the officer, at his discretion.
That’s a straw man, of course. This is about existing cameras on vehicles, not about the conduct of all police business.
If a law-enforcement department has vehicles equipped with dashboard cameras, then either they will have a policy that says 'do not drag citizens out of camera range before you get physical with them’ OR members of the community will be asking why there is no such policy.
It makes no sense that the cameras would be installed and then everyone–the press, the legal profession, and the public–would say (in effect) ‘sure, drag people out of range of the cameras before you start in on them…no problem!’
I’m amazed that you continue to suggest that this dragging-out-of-range is acceptable.
I’ve read (virtually) this entire thread. The more I read, the more I am floored how some people can’t let go of the ‘technical’ or ‘formal’ aspect, i.e. that Bland got what she had coming because she failed to follow the cop’s command(s); that no matter how it came about, she was resisting arrest. They forget that, or choose to de-emphasize, that there’s another aspect to policing which the officer in question totally and absolutely neglected.
For God sake’s (and as has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread), the cop was the professional here. When safe and feasible, it’s his job to de-escalate and to defuse, and it’s incumbent upon him to try to take a ‘meta-view’ of things. This was not a situation where he needed to be hyperfocused in the here and now, vigilant and parrying each move of the ‘suspect’. Obviously not! If he was doing his job he would have calmed things down, primarily by calming himself down.
I can express my feelings a lot better by comparing what the cop did (or didn’t) do to me in my role as a physician taking care of acutely ill patients (my practice is 100% acute care Internal Medicine).
If a demented patient swears at me, I don’t swear back at him. I don’t storm out of the room. If he yells at me, I don’t raise my voice at him. Obviously not. I have been trained and have years of experience at recognizing the symptoms of dementia. Same for someone who’s delirious or just totally freaked-out or upset. I don’t take their vitriol personally. And I never add fuel to the fire by ramping things up, or responding in kind. God no! I apply my training and experience.
I redirect. Or I simply sit quietly, maybe with a quizzical look on my face to signal, “hey, let’s calm down and get down to the business of helping you”. And at such times I make sure my body language is not just non-threatening but that it’s reassuring. In other words, I apply my professional training and experience to settle things down.
In short, I defuse. It’s just as much a part of my job as is treating someone with a heart attack.
The cop’s behaviour in this incident is analogous to me, as a doc, getting into a shouting match with the demented patient or with the frightened patient.When I see such behaviour in the medical trainees (which is, thankfully, very uncommon), I make a point of reminding them to take the ‘meta-view’; it’s nothing personal. The patient isn’t swearing at you. He’s swearing and he’s yelling because he’s sick and he’s frightened. Are police not taught the same?
(Obviously, all this applies only in what are self-evidently safe situations for the police. And that was clearly the case here.)
Terr, Smapti, Steophan, et al., let me ask you this. Do you think the officer in the Bland arrest acted admirably?
The officer’s statement that he is planning to “light up” Sandra Bland is deeply terrifying. Only a truly sick individual would defend that kind of thing.
See, here you told me what I did wrong, rather than just saying I should know better, leaving me with no clue what the issue is.
For the record, that statement was not referring back to Terr. But I know from experience that, if the mods take your post one way, they are unlikely to change the Warning later.
I did not intend to call Terr evil. “You” was probably not the best word I could have used. In my anger, I didn’t proofread to make sure that no one could possibly see my statement as an insult.
Consider the amount of education and training needed for someone to practice medicine, compared to what is required to be a LEO. And yet they both have to deal with the general public, and make decisions in stressful, life or death situations.
This is certainly one of the problems.
Great post, KarlGauss.