See, I think there was already an altercation. The police assaulted Mr. Mims verbally. Yeah, he could have de-escalated it. But there was already an altercation that needed de-escalating. Because the police created one.
I totally agree. Given what we know, it certainly appears there was no reason for Mr. Mims to have been tazed (twice!). But, that does not excuse Mr. Mims for refusing to follow the instructions he was given.
The cops in this situation (and in general, IMHO) need at least as much training in de-escalation methods as they receive in the use of lethal (and potentially lethal) force. If it is true that the majority of LEOs never have to use their firearm or tazer (as we are led to believe), then de-escalation methods should actually be more beneficial to the average officer.
This narrative has been repeated throughout thread. Many (not all) states have laws on the books which punish people for not obeying lawful orders of police officers. It is important to recognize the difference between lawful orders and simple police requests. As a very simple example, if an officer said “you can’t wear a Yankees tee shirt to a Red Sox game”, most people would understand that this is not a lawful order, and you are free to ignore it. Similarly, and much more commonly and importantly, an officer’s demand to see your license (when not driving) is often not a valid lawful order, if not in a stop and ID state (and plenty of exceptions apply even then). Whether the officer’s demand to stop playing was a lawful order will be a highly contested issue in Mr. Mims’ case. It’s not enough that the officers asked him to do it. Pretending that we owe immediate compliance to every single request that comes out of an officer’s mouth is just not supported by the law.
Here’s the thing. I don’t give a crap about Mr. Mims’ failure to follow police instructions. Maybe if I had kids in his music class I’d want him fired for setting a bad example, but as is, I couldn’t give less of a crap.
What I do care about is how the people that our society endows with the responsibility of using potentially lethal force to maintain a peaceful society use that power. And in this case, as you yourself said, they clearly abused that power by tasing a man who posed no threat to anyone, twice.
I missed this. I have no idea what you think i misstated. Are you implying that the police were needed for something entirely unrelated to that incident? Sometime else?
The way you quoted it, and responded, makes it appear as if I believed that there were other contributing factors that were hidden from the public. That was not my intent, at all. My intent was whether or not there were other factors, Mr. Mims would not have known.
We do not need to set a precedent that individuals have the right to question an officer’s command, particularly when the officer is working crowd control. For the safety of all the attendees of the event, I believe there should be an understood responsibility for everyone to obey the instructions of the security detail. If the individual has a right to question those instructions, the job of the security detail becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.
If only I could think of a recent time when folks decided that lawful orders did not need to be complied with . . . thankfully a certain day in a certain January does not come to mind.
Ah since you were responding to
I assumed you meant that there might, actually, have been other factors in the real situation. Because otherwise, Babale is right that if the cops had done nothing, nobody would have been hurt and everyone would have gone home.
I’m probably an outlier, but i believe that you should always consider whether authority is legitimate. I mean, when the traffic cop tells you to stop moving forward, you need to do that, of course, because you are operating a potentially deadly vehicle. The band conductor was not putting people or equipment on a public road.
So i disagree with:
Yeah, i think in a just society, we need to always question that. And i don’t think that makes it impossible for police to work crowd control, it just means they need to do it respectfully. “Sir, you aren’t allowed in there”, not “STOP RIGHT NOW”.
There’s a Directing a band while impaired statute in the state?
Not to mention the possibility that an officer, in the heat of the moment, might draw and fire her/his gun instead of the taser and kill someone.
ETA: Not the first time such a mixup has happened.
Again: There is no evidence of an imminent threat. The Cheer squad was still cheering, people were walking around the field, the opposing band was still occupying the bleachers across the field. So tell me what evidence is there, from news reports, comments by authorities, what can be seen in the videos? Where is the evidence for this possible threat?
Sorry @Mighty_Mouse not aimed at you.
If there had been an imminent threat, how would that have changed things?
Who gets to decide if there is an imminent threat?
The police can certainly decide there’s an imminent threat. And it changes things because instead of asking the director to wrap up after this song, they should say, “hey, [immanent threat] is immanent, you need to wrap up ASAP.”
Or they trigger the tornado alarm and everyone figures it out on their own.
See what happens when your first two songs are Mountain Jam and Inna-Godda-da-Vida
This post cannot be highlighted enough.
Should the police have communicated their direction in a less militant and aggressive manner? Yes. But being an asshole is not too big a deal. Still the whole thing starts with that.
Was the order “a lawful order”? Unclear. To be such it had to be given in service of a goal reasonable to be a law enforcement goal. Some here, with no facts in evidence, speculate that there may have been. But there is NO evidence that there was. We do know this music was a scheduled part of the game experience, that the crowds were dispersing, and that there are no reports of any threat that stopping the music earlier than scheduled would have impacted. So probably not.
Should the director have followed the order? Yes. Needlessly rude or not and even if it turned out to not be a lawful order. He was not in position to evaluate. Complain later.
Was arresting him reasonable? Well what purpose was being served? Better judgment would have been to de escalate here. One suspects the motivation was to make an example of this uppity person but they had the discretion to decide such and did.
Once he was being arrested should he have simply and quietly complied? Yes. Including for sad reality that doing otherwise is dangerous for a Black man in particular. But not only. But in any case. Even arguing at that point was poor judgment. Shouldn’t be that way but is.
Given a lack of cooperation in getting cuffed was escalation to Taser use justified? No way. Only if the subject is a likely imminent threat of causing harm to the police, others, or self. Not one band director surrounded by multiple police officers with no strong reason to suspect a weapon is at hand.
Was a second Taser use justified? That is beyond no way. It is police brutality. Completely disproportionate to the circumstances. Major discipline is justified.
So, the only mistake the police made was they didn’t say the magic words, “Imminent Threat.” That is, they didn’t say what they should have said?
I’m not sure that is the way it works.
If the ultimate decision as to whether or not people have to leave is in the hands of the police (who else should make that decision?), then if Mr. Mims thought there was not a good reason to stop playing is not relevant. It isn’t his decision.
What Mr. Mims is on tape saying to the officer who asked him to stop was not, “What is the threat?”
It was, “Get outta my face.”
He wasn’t interested in why the police wanted him to stop. He really didn’t need to know why, the fact that the police wanted him to stop should have been enough.
If the police improperly decided that people needed to leave immediately, then that is a bad decision, and, presumably they have a procedure to address bad decisions made by the police to prevent recurrence. If not, they should.
It certainly appears to me that the police made several wrong decisions that night. Unfortunately, that is a side effect of being placed in a position of authority, as any administrator can tell you. But, Mr. Mims also made a wrong decision not to follow the instructions given him. That is entirely on him. He needs to own it.
No. That’s not what she said.
The mistake was that they created an imminent threat out of whole cloth.
Masters!
Of course it is a accurate assessment of what she said. At least, as much as, if not more than saying that I said there was “something going on that you are not aware of”.
How was someone, at the moment, supposed to know? Shouldn’t the default be trust law enforcement rather than trust those law enforcement is arguing with? If not that, how is the rule of law supposed to work?
If your idea of the Rule of Law is My Side Always Wins, it isn’t going to work very well. The Republicans are trying to make that work. Not very well, but they’re trying.
…I would suggest to you that “the right to question an officer’s command” is a very basic right that should be in the bedrock of a free and open society. Especially if that officer is working crowd control for a high-school football game.
Because why on earth are you having the police doing crowd control at a high-school football game? What kind of authoritarian practice is this? How did this become so normalised to the point that people are actually arguing that the tasing in this case was even justified?
We have major sports events here in NZ (and practically every other place in the world) where the crowd control is done by security. And at the high-school level, that just doesn’t happen at all. We don’t need it. Nobody needs this. We have occasional incidents, typically parents on the sidelines yelling abuse. But those get handled when they happen. We don’t have armed police forces at the ready, primed and amped and maybe bored and maybe wanting to cause trouble.
But this entire situation would be simply unimaginable here. For the police to get involved, there would have to be reports of assault. They wouldn’t be there at the end of the game making sure everybody leaves on time. What a complete waste of police time and resources.
How many millions of dollars are wasted on this every year? America locks up more people per capita than anywhere else in the world. You spend more money on policing than many countries spend on their armies. How did any of this become normal?
How is it that people in the so-called “land of the free, home of the brave”, be seriously arguing “we do not need to set a precedent that individuals have the right to question an officer’s command?”
America has a problem with an over-funded militarised de-centralised police force that has way too much political power and an efficient propaganda machine. You should not be bowing down in the face of fascists. And that, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t hyperbole.