Don’t bring stupid. We are not organisms that simply react to a electrical stimulus in a predictable manner. it is a reflection of our differences . Some people get pissed off when the cops electrocute them. Others take it easily and can walk away unoffended. Why did he react that way, because he is a human being.
I don’t like cops fucking with me. If they leave me alone, we will get along fine.
The guy got a bunch of electricity shot through his body. the cop says don’t resist. I don’t know what I would do. Neither do you.
I know exactly what I would do. I’ve been there, I’ve been arrested when i knew I didn’t deserver to be. I put my hands behind my back, said yes sir, no sir, and let the lawyer sort it out. I didn’t like it. I wanted to slam the door in the officers face, and go back to bed. But I knew that wouldn’t end well.
Did you get tased? If not you miss the point.
No, thats the point exactly. I didn’t get tased. You know why I didn’t get tased? Because I did what the cops ordered me to do.
There, you see: it’s simple. We just have to respect their authoritah! at all times, even (well, especially) when the police are wrong.
Sort of. When they are wrong, there are appropriate ways to handle that. You can file all kinds of complaints, go to the media, make that cop regret he was ever born. But you aren’t going to win if you flat out disobey them. The time to argue your case is not when the cop is trying to cuff you.
This.
At common law, persons had the right to resist an illegal arrest. But that was a rule for a long-ago time, when the result of an illegal arrest could be weeks or months before the county judge riding the circuit got to your town.
Today, many if not most states have explicitly revoked the right to resist an illegal arrest. Good discussion of that for California in People v. Curtis, 70 Cal.2d 347, 450 P.2d 33 (1969):
That “prevailing in most states” language may have been true in 1969, but I’m pretty certain today that the majority of states do not permit a person to resist an unlawful arrest.
The Trend Away From the Common Law Rule. In 1966, the right to resist an unlawful arrest was recognized in 45 out of 50 states. At that time the five states that had abrogated the right were Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Delaware, California, and New Jersey. Max Hochanadel & Harry W. Stege, Note, Criminal Law: The Right to Resist an Unlawful Arrest: An Out-Dated Concept?, 3 TULSA L.J. 40, 46 (1966). By 1983, however, 25 of those 45 states had revoked the common law rule either by statute[11] or decision,[12] and today, only 20 states have it in place, while resisting even an unlawful arrest is prohibited by law in 30 states. “[T]his common law principle has suffered a devastating deluge of criticism.” State v. Thomas, 262 N.W.2d 607, 610 (Iowa 1978) (rule is “an anachronistic and dangerous concept”). Thus, the hold of the common law rule has weakened substantially in the last 30 years as jurisdiction after jurisdiction has modernized its jurisprudence to reflect the differences in criminal procedure in late twentieth century America as compared to early eighteenth century England. “[T]he trend in this country has been away from the old rule and toward the resolution of disputes in court.” Moreira, 447 N.E.2d at 1226.
From State v. Valentine, 132 Wash.2d 1, 935 P.2d 1294 (1997).
Thank you for putting “Respect ma authoritah!” into legal terms.
Actually, I do agree with bdgr for the most part. It really does not matter if you are right or not in these cases - the usual sensible thing to do is to go along with it, and sort it out through the regular process. In fact, most of the fun on a show like “Cops” occurs when a dumbass thinks that fighting or running from the cops would be a fine idea.
What worries me is cases (and they do occur) where a person who “went along” with a wrongful arrest ends up screwed by a dysfunctional system, and stuck in a cell with some genuine bad guys who do some damage. Or, where a person ends up being hog-tied and left in a cell for 6 hours as punishment for being rude to a cop.
Yes. And the remedy for those cases, as bdgr suggests, is a 42 USC § 1983 suit for loss of civil rights performed under color of law.
Because, realistically, the outcome will never be, “I was trying to arrest him for being rude, but then he fought back, so I stopped.” It will always be, “…so I called for backup and he was taken into custody anyway, after being tasered/bruised/etc.”
This will pain you to hear: But yes, we are.
And sadly, in rare cases, your heirs will be able to file that suit.
Again: so what?
By that I don’t mean to belittle a death at the hands of lawless cops, but to suggest that death is even more likely at the hands of lawless cops when you have chosen to physically resist. Yes, that death is a tragedy; no, that death isn’t made less likely by resisting: it’s made MORE likely by resisting.
No, you misunderstand. I’m still talking about cases where you do not resist, go to jail where you are beaten senseless with a bar of soap by a brutal inmate, after which you are left on the floor of your cell because everyone assumes you are a drunk, followed by your untimely demise.
Way way back in Post 112 I said
and I’ll repeat it here.
And having been there, done that, I’ll also agree with **bdgr **that resistance is foolish and counter-productive. I even <grin> agree with **Bricker **that effective recourse is available, and is a feature of the courts. But I must maintain once again that this isn’t the heart of the matter.
Our laws are a reflection of (in part) our history, and some of the tradeoffs that have been made vis-a-vis freedom versus order. But our laws also to some degree reflect our vision of the way a society should be governed. We all have a desire for intangibles like fairness and reasonableness. We all desire a society that is righteous and honorable rather than the opposite. That after all is one reason our Legislatures still meet instead of permanently adjourning; so they can modify and improve our codified laws, as circumstances demonstrate the necessity.
And so to an extent it is perfectly reasonable for this thread to discuss the ramifications and permutations of the incident under current legal standards. Knowing what the law actually holds is valuable and important to us citizens.
But we (us, here, on the SDMB) have precious little direct influence on the laws of even our own state, and those laws and the administrative guidelines that derive from them clearly vary from state to state. So it also seems reasonable for us to expand the discussion beyond what is (arguably or not) actually legal. It seems appropriate to discuss the fairness and reasonableness of those laws and guidelines, based not upon their status as compliant with the letter of the law, but upon their effect in application.
That’s why so many here, myself among them, find this incident so offensive. Not because it violates the letter of the law. Not even because it violates some undefined ‘spirit’ of the law. But because the actuality, the effect on real people in a real life situation, was lousy.
I watched the long version and all I see is a pissed off guy, in pain, who made a silly statement. The kind of statement any one of us might make when some unfortunate accident befalls us. A variant of an old “I already have one broken leg, might as well double down” statement of fatalistic irony. Thereupon, due to (i) an excess of zeal and/or (ii) a hyper-inflated need to cover-my-ass and/or (iii) an inability to substitute a reasonable interpretation of the situation for a superficial pro-forma requirement for actions, the poor guy is subjected to further pain and indignity including multiple electrical shocks, handcuffing, being forced to lie back on his handcuffed arms, and additional restraints. Everybody is lucky he didn’t actually have a heart attack. I don’t think that anyone can reasonably maintain that this whole dog and pony show was any benefit to him.
So my question remains: given the situation, and given the laws and the guidelines in place, and given these exact circumstances as they presented; How could our laws be modified so that the outcome for this guy would be better? And could that modification be made while ensuring that outcomes for other people who have been well served by the present laws and guidelines will not be negatively affected?
The only person who could have made the outcome for this guy better, is this guy. I don’t want a system where the police have to guess if someone is serious about killing themselves before they take action. Cops aren’t shrinks, they aren’t qualified to make that decision, so they need to take him to someone who is.
Just got through watching the video. The guys says “fuck you” and gets up and heads towards the officer. Of course the officer is going to taser him. If he hadn’thad a taser, he would slammed him to the ground at that point…and probably injured him him in doing so.
He wasn’t resisting.That is where your explanations fail. He did not threaten the cops, (like he could possibly been able to) , Cooperation required him getting up to allow the police to commence manhandling him. He stood up and got repeatedly zapped.
Watch the video again. The cops tell him put your hands behind your back. he says fuck you and you moves straight towards the cop as he gets up. The cop tasered him.
Then when he is lying on the ground, he keeps resisting. They tried to pull his hands behind his back, he resists them, they shock him, he keeps resisting. They gave him more chances to comply than a lot of people would.
Get it straight, folks. It’s a fundamentalist proposition. Just like abortion.
*Pro-life: *Life begins at conception.
*Pro-cop: ***Guilt begins at pull-over. **
Understand this and you understand all there is to understand.
Guilt doesn’t enter into it. Guilt is not decided on the side of the road or in someones living room.