Which order? To stop playing, or to put his hands behind his back?
The whole episode began (IMO) based on an unlawful order. Directing a band after a football game when your JOB is directing a band after a football game is not a crime.
I agree. I think the way the police handled this is entirely the reason this whole situation went south. I’m just trying to go through the individual charges, step by step, as the prosecutor, judge and jury will all have to do.
Predictions:
- None of the charges against Mims will ever see a day in court.
- There will be an out of court settlement, paid for by the taxpayers.
- The officers involved will suffer no penalties or career setbacks.
Which is why any bullshit order from a cop is de facto “lawful” because under some kind of bullshit chain of logic, subsequent orders become lawful.
So in my hyperbolic example, the officer asking you to suck him off is not lawful, but him subsequently arresting you for it is. At least if you “resist” you are fair game for both judicial and extra-judicial punishment.
Just checking the laws in my jurisdiction…
I am glad to know that the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that police officers are civilly liable if they interfere with Canadians’ rights and freedoms based on a non-existent offence.
Justice Suzanne Côté, writing for the SCC, stressed that in a free and democratic country like Canada, while police officers are granted important coercive powers to carry out their mission of maintaining peace, order and public security, they may only interfere with citizens’ rights and freedoms to the extent provided by law. The risk of abuse by police officers being undeniable, in the absence of a legal basis justifying it, a police officer’s interference with citizens’ rights and freedoms, including by detaining, arresting or conducting searches for seizures, is unlawful.
The SCC also ruled that police officers cannot avoid civil liability by simply arguing that they thought they were acting lawfully or that their conduct was consistent with their training. Their conduct must be demonstrably reasonable in light of the law in force at the time of the events.
Sure there is. If i were a betting person, I’d bet the officer made that up out of whole cloth because he was pissed at Mims and wanted grounds to assault him.
God, i hope you are wrong. Those cops should be dismissed. I’m hoping the police department at least loses some funding over this, and makes a payment to the band.
And if Mims can show that, he should be found not guilty. But if you watch the video, the officer who claims that Mims hit another officer (Officer 1) was a different officer than the officer that tased him (Officer 2).
And also, I think, different from the officer wearing the body cam (Officer 0?).
The time during which he supposedly “took a swing” is unfortunately not in the video we have. It really seems unlikely he did, but can’t be ruled out entirely.
And for the resisting arrest charge, it doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t. Only that the arresting officer reasonably believed he did.
What about the other body cams? I presume that the only reason they haven’t been released is that they show that the cops were committing senseless assault.
That is entirely possible. I couldn’t confirm from the video that any of the other officers were for sure wearing a camera.