They call it something like interfering with an officer in the course of his duties, a vague standard that easily stretches to cover “Respect my AUTHORITAH!”
I do respect their authority. I’m gonna do what they tell me. We pay them to keep the peace.
I can be outraged at home.
But they don’t.
I likely would too. But I wouldn’t be expecting a Taser if I was slow to comply. Because I know
The lay of the land is that I am white and upper SES and not a constant subject of abuse from those who are supposed to be keeping the peace.
The police also know the lay of the land. And the land they know is that escalation to using a Taser against a Black man is SOP for failure to respond quickly or respectfully enough and generally won’t be a problem. Escalation to a Taser against an upper SES white man may be more likely to get them grief. Even if I had argued about it with them.
When the police give you a lawful order, there is no “going to comply”, you comply. Especially after indicating awareness. And this after the police were in his line of sight to the band, signaling him to stop, with him waving them away?
It seems true that the cops could have given this whole thing 2 minutes to play out. It wasn’t a home invasion in progress, I don’t like their judgment here. But we also don’t know the situation here - postgame events can quickly get out of control when people are milling around with no spectacle to watch.
Yet likewise the director wasn’t engaging in protecting life and limb, wasn’t fleeing a threat, wasn’t preventing damage to property, wasn’t demonstrating for civil rights. He was trying to finish a show that nobody’s livelihood depended on, it was just a postgame jam, not the high-effort halftime show. The away school’s band had already complied, so obviously this was not an unachievable thing.
He could have easily prevented the situation by complying with the lawful and reasonable order, but he knowingly and purposefully refused. I don’t think I’m going to bat for the director here.
We do. But in this case it looks very much like the police created the problem. They broke the peace. It’s entirely possible that everyone would have left peacefully if there had been no police at all. Certainly, when the band director said, “this is the last song”, if the police had just said, “okay, wrap up quickly when it’s done” this particular altercation wouldn’t have happened.
A bit of a hijack but what are the bounds of “a lawful order”? Anything they feel like in any venue as long as they are not giving a command to break the law? If a policeman comes to my place of business and tells me to do something for no apparent reason that causes me or my performance of my job some harm, say doc cut your stethoscope in two, or stop giving a certain vaccine, must I immediately comply? Or risk getting a Taser used on me for lack of proper respect?
Pretty much, yes. If what they’re ordering doesn’t cause you to break a law, or violate someone’s rights, then it’s lawful. Police need to be able to tell people to do things without having them litigate it in realtime. Yes it can be subject to abuse, but that’s to bet settled in the courts, not to haggle it out with someone who controls several levels of force when other peoples’ safety is involved.
It’s not actually reasonable to make a band stop in the middle of a short song. Obviously, there are times when you need to do that. But I’d expect it to cause some discombobulation even when it’s urgent that they stop.
In this case, it wasn’t urgent. The police invented a problem. Yeah, the band director could have told the band to stop. Yeah, he’s not 100% in the right. But the police are 100% in the wrong, as best as i can tell.
And if they abuse that privilege they should be punished. I really hope they have to pay a large fine for their poor judgement here, poor judgement which resulted in harming another human being.
Nobody knew whether it was a 1 minute or 10 minute song. And “reasonable” doesn’t depend on what a performer finds reasonable. Anyway, a director can control a performance. That’s what directors are there for. They can halt a song, I’ve seen it and done it myself multiple times.
As I said before, none of us knows whether the overall situation was a public safety issue, whether they saw conflict brewing in the stands, whether there was a history of violence between these schools. This kind of thing happens all the time, it happened at my kids’ school this past weekend. The game ended and people decided to cop attitudes with one another. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes people get hurt or killed. There’s no good reason for anyone to hang out after a high school football game.
If none of this was the case, then yes, maybe some punishment is in order, but nobody knows anything right now except a man unnecessarily, repeatedly, and flagrantly refused to comply with police orders.
Not to question the answer when I asked the question but that doesn’t seem right. Found this discussion.
One can imagine that the officer felt that having the band stop immediately was reasonably designed to achieve the goal of getting the stadium emptied out as quickly as possible, so perhaps was a lawful order. Telling me arbitrarily to not give a vaccine would not be.
Escalating to force for compliance with that picayune silly poor judgement lawful order was improper. The emptying the stands occurs just about as quickly with or without the band playing on. That action deserves no respect or apologists.
It does not however seem that any order is a lawful one merely by not being a command to do something illegal.
And yet.
I’m speaking to the topic of this thread.
That’s not what happened. He was given a lawful order that very plausibly was in the interest of public safety. He flagrantly ignored that order. He was then advised multiple times that he could be arrested for doing so, and disregarded those warnings. Even at that late point when the police told him he was being arrested, force was still avoidable, except he decided to resist being handcuffed, which is documented on video.
We should always be skeptical toward police, their motives, and their accounts, but after a certain point of documented misbehavior on the detainee’s part, it becomes absurdly untenable. This is one such case.
Standing up for them (there was an agreement that each side get to play three songs post game according to someone upthread, at a risk of bodily harm is the opposite of being a bad example.
Not everyone makes a beeline to their car the second the final whistle blows. People are saying goodbyes or figuring out where to go afterwards. Friends & family are waiting for the (home) players to have their post-game meeting, get changed & come back out. The various people there working the event have to pack up equipment. Giving the bum’s rush to one of the invited participants seems excessive.
He did not RESPECT THE AUTHORITAH!!!
Blind obedience to assholes issuing idiotic orders is IMO a shitty way to run a society. Others obviously feel that this is the way they want things to run.
This is why (again, IMO) we are going to hell in a handcart, and why authoritarian governments are popular.
Purposeful selective quoting noted, as is the oblique personal shot. It’s not how I’d run a response, but obviously others feel differently.
It’s interesting how people seem so motivated to engage with this issue in every possible way except for considering the documented facts.
No personal shot implied or intended.
Selective quoting? sure, whatever - I typically don’t quote someone’s whole post, but there you go.
And I stand by the statement that blind obedience to authority is a very shitty way to run a society.
Oh. I thought you were responding to my question which gave that as the hypothetical, acknowledging that as a small hijack. My mistake of reading your responding to my question as a response to my question.
I can see that a stupid officer might think that it was. So a lawful order. But there is no stretch of circumstance imaginable that it would be the case. The stands are not emptied appreciably faster because the band stops playing. And the Taser use was after the order was complied with.
Indeed the band director failed to immediately comply with a lawful order. A stupid picayune lawful order but a lawful order. That is a mistake. Escalation to Taser use when no threat is imminent is orders of magnitude a bigger mistake.
What lawful and reasonable order? The police do not have the authority to order someone to respect them. And he was also not capable of obeying the “lawful” order to stop resisting, given that his mere existence apparently counted as resisting.
Police are not absolute monarchs.
…Are you seriously claiming that the band director didn’t know how long his songs were?