Yeah, this is uncontroversially true, in my (nonexpert secondhand) view, I don’t see how use of a Taser was justified in effecting this arrest. That’s what Mims’ attorney is arguing in public statements. If he prevails in court, I’ll be glad to see the cops face a brutality/excessive force sentence for it.
I would point out though, that (as you said) he was in fact being placed under arrest. People being arrested get handcuffed. From my viewing of the video, Mims obviously wasn’t attacking anyone, but he also wasn’t letting them put handcuffs on. When an arrestee doesn’t let themselves be cuffed, then the cuffing can only be done with physical force. I don’t think it needed to be a Taser. But it was going to be something, and whatever it was, we’d probably still be arguing about it.
My view from Europe, where I have lived for many years after relocating from the States, is that American society is deeply, deeply broken if there is even grounds for a debate on this.
In my country of residence, this kind of aggressive police belligerence is literally unthinkable. There was no problem in this situation until the police decided to manufacture one.
This is not a matter of policing generally. This is an issue of American policing specifically, and Americans’ relationship to the way they are policed.
Luckily for us, the nice people in the Alabama Government gave us a definition of “traffic”.
Section 32- 1.1
(79) TRAFFIC. Pedestrians, ridden or herded animals, vehicles, streetcars, and other conveyances, either singly or together, while using any highway for purposes of travel.
Then they were nice enough to also give us an definition of “highway.”
(25) HIGHWAY. The entire width between the boundary lines of every way publicly maintained when any part thereof is open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel.
Are you seriously arguing that this can be applied to a stadium?
Of course he wasn’t charged with violating this statute. No one with any legal understanding would ever argue that this statute applies. He was charged with disorderly conduct, harassment and resisting arrest. It matters not a bit what his lawyer says on TV. It is my opinion that his lawyer will be filing a Motion to Dismiss. I don’t know enough about Alabama’s resisting arrest statute to know whether it will be successful. I would be shocked if the D.C. and harassment charges aren’t dropped by the prosecutor.
Cuffing can also be done with time. If they’d been a little more patient, they wouldn’t have started the altercation at all. They would have politely asked the band director to wrap up at the end of the song and he would have complied. And if they’d been a little more patient, there’s an excellent change that Mims would have cooled down, realized he was going to have to deal with being arrested, and gone peaceably to the station.
(I read somewhere that he was also the bus driver, so if they’d taken a bit more time they might also have let him find a substitute to take the kids home. If that part is true.)
I have to agree with Jasmine in that our society has become way too belligerent towards law enforcement.
The Conservatives think that black people should obey any order, legal or not, given by a LEO, and sort it out later. They also believe that white (conservatives) have a right not to be investigated, harassed, or searched by police since it’s all just political. The liberals, OTOH, as to be expected, believe just the opposite.
The net result is in any confrontation with the police, one side is going to feel justified in disregarding the police directives with no consequences while the other feel the police should be obeyed and suffer no consequences for their actions, no matter how oppressive.
In this instance, I believe the band director should have done as the police directed. He should have stopped the band from playing, discussed with security the situation and if unable to convince the authorities that they should be allowed to finish, address the situation with the home school administration the next day.
Yeah, maybe the visiting team band gets the short stick in this situation, but nobody gets hurt and everyone goes home. The cops aren’t put in a situation where they risk losing control of a bunch of teenagers and forced to make decisions that not everyone is going to agree with.
Yes, the cops over-reacted and could have handled the situation differently. They should be trained how to deescalate a situation like this (and many others). They also need management that can correct individuals behavior before it becomes a group attitude and the entire police force becomes a para-military unit, with an ‘us v. them’ attitude. We are all us.
Liberals believe that police shouldn’t abuse their authority against anyone, and that no one should be shot, tased, or roughed up just because they don’t immediately comply with weird, confusing, inaudible, or contradictory demands issues by police.
And it’s literally situations like this one that LEAD people to become belligerent towards the police. Honestly, my personal interactions with police have been pretty good. But I’m a white woman living in a wealthy neighborhood. Police don’t bark weird orders at us. They come when someone calls 911 and a door needs to be opened. But then i read shit like this, and think, “hell, there really is a problem, it just hasn’t affected ME (yet)”
But the police would have had $75 in overtime. Or more likely they would have had to work 15 minutes of the overtime they’d be paid for anyway. Rather than getting paid for overtime while they were sitting home watching TV as is their divine right.
One, you do not know this is the case. Perhaps it is, but perhaps there was something going on that you are not aware of. The security was in a better position to know (at the time) than you were. They were the ones put in a position where they had to make a decision that could not possibly please everyone.
Something that no one has bothered to mention since, despite quite a lot of press.
Something that I do know is that there are two reasonable ways to tell the band director to stop:
“Hey, it’s time to go, wrap it up soon.” (and then wait for him to pick a reasonable stopping point, which in this case would have been the end of the song.)
“OMG, [imminent danger] is heading our way. Wrap it up ASAP and get everyone out of here”
In this case, all the evidence we can see (and the lack of other evidence) suggests that (1) was the correct option. The police fucked up and created a dangerous and frightening situation.
My son works in a prison. Before they use a taser or tear gas on an uncooperative prisoner, he has to approve the use of force (he is a Sargent). Kind of weird that the guards working under him have more oversight than some yahoo keeping the peace at a high school football game.
The cops had minor difficulty cuffing him. So they resorted beyond physical violence straight into using a dangerous weapon on him.
Police are all too often of a military mindset. Everyone around them is “the enemy”. All too often, they are bullies. They joined the force so they could order people around. And if their idiot orders are not followed they get to beat people up or shoot them. Dream job for pathetic bullies.
Not all liberals think the same. You and I are both wrong for acting as if they do.
As a general rule, though, many liberals feel the shooting of Ashley Babbitt (the person shot by Capitol Police during the the Jan 6 riot) was justified. Many conservatives believe the opposite.
Many liberals feel LEOs forcing compliance with mask-wearing mandates is acceptable and perfectly acceptable use of their authority. Of course, many conservatives disagree.
Now, I don’t consider myself a conservative (I vote Democratic for the most part), and I am not trying to say, “Well, both sides do it.” But, Jasmine’s point, as I understood it, was that we, as a society (not just liberals or conservatives, but all of us) question and/or rebel against law enforcement. Individually, we may not, but collectively we do. And this is not to the benefit of society.
The ‘Law Abiding’ way to behave is to obey the law officer. If they are abusing their authority, address that after the altercation is over. I know, particularly for a specific sector of our society it has historically been difficult to get the system that abuses authority to address these issues, but things are changing.
We just need to keep working on it. There are plenty of examples of people complying with police and being abused anyway (Tyre Nichols in Memphis, for example). This is not a case like that. Tyre was not given an opportunity to comply. Mr. Mims was given that opportunity and refused.
I agree the cops overreacted in this situation and they probably did not have the justification to issue the orders they issued. But, they did have the authority, and it should have been respected.
Self defense is an affirmative defense. If they use potentially lethal force, they need to be able to justify it. The burden of proof is on them to show that they were truly in fear for their lives or the lives of others.
I’m not familiar with details around the shooting of Ashley Babbitt, so I will not comment. But whether “it’s okay for police to enforce mask compliance” is unrelated to what I claimed:
I didn’t speak at all to what sorts of rules the police ought to enforce. I spoke to HOW they should do that. They shouldn’t abuse their position. they shouldn’t leap to violence. I’m sure you get better (and more peaceful) compliance to a mask mandate if you say, “excuse me sir, masks are required here. Could you please put this on before you enter” than to “STOP!! You aren’t wearing a mask. YOU NEED TO STOP RIGHT NOW AND PUT THIS ON IMMEDIATELY”. And letting the guy curse at you a bit before he ultimately complies is far better than throwing him to the ground for refusing to wear a mask.
I believe in masks and supported a lot of the mask mandates. But if someone ended up tased because he refused the wear a mask, because he didn’t immediately put one on when a police officer stood in his face yelling at him, and then he resisted arrest while standing still arguing, without offering any violence, you know what, I’d be objecting to police brutality in that case, too. No brainer.
Nice of you to edit my quote to make it mean something I obviously did not intend.
I was responding to Babale’s comment:
You understand that if the cops had done absolutely nothing then nobody would have been hurt and everyone would have went home?
With the comment that we do not know that if the cops had done absolutely nothing, nobody would have been hurt. It was certainly not known at the time. You are correct that there has been nothing reported in the press, but, as they say, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or something like that.
What is known is that if Mr. Mims had complied with the orders he was given by the cops, there would not have been an altercation.
I’m not saying that the police didn’t fuck the situation up. It certainly appears they did and if our system for training LEOs was working, it would use this situation as a training point to illustrate how a dangerous and frightening situation can be avoided. But, it was Mr. Mims who caused the situation to become dangerous and frightening.