5 Comments

Overlawyered typically links to “responsible” sources, but I don’t see that either the Coyote blog or the “Courthouse News Service” (sober, unbiased headline: “Cops Just Love Those Tasers”) got the police side of this story. (In fact, all the “Courthouse News Service” stories seem to be a rehashing of the plaintiff’s version, with nothing from the defense…) The account we have is that a police officer confronted a 17-year-old, out of the blue, and tasered him because he took his speech impediment to be disrespect. I’ll bet there’s more to it.

I’m sure there are abuses. But courts are pretty clear that police have a range of permissible actions, bounded by the Fourth Amendment, to keep order and investigate crime. If you pull someone over and they start screaming “eff you” instead of handing over their driver’s license, police might call it “disrespect” but it’s also known as disorderly conduct, obstruction, resisting arrest, etc. Those are, in fact, crimes.

Police work isn’t easy, especially when you’re dealing with a lawsuit-and-civil rights-empowered population that has no respect for authority. I’m sure a few weeks on the beat would change anyone’s perspective.

It is pathetic that the police would do this to an handicapped 17-year old. It is good however that he doesn’t live in Fullerton CA. http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/29/homeless-man-dies-after-being

I vote with Anonymous Attorney above. There are occasional problems between polish and members of the minority community. Activists stress being unarmed, being young, and being mentally disabled as showing police brutality. The cases that I know of in some detail show that harsh police action evolve from the circumstances of the incident; Mr. Rodney King’s resistance to being cuffed for example. An uncuffed person can steal a policeman’s gun or cause physical damage. It seems to me that the cases I am familiar with come from the minority person failure to appreciate the necessity to follow instructions of a police officer.

We had a particularly tragic case in Westchester a couple of years ago. An off-duty policeman tried to take control of a situation involving an armed man. The responding local cops saw a gun in the officer’s hand and instructed him to drop the weapon. He knew that he was a good guy, and he was. But he may have assumed that the local police also knew he was a good guy. They didn’t, and the officer was killed. You can’t hold the local police culpable as there really was no way of their knowing what the officer knew. The officer’s death was really sad.

William and AA,

You are correct that knowing the total circumstances surrounding incidents can give people a better basis for making a judgment on the actions of all parties.

In the case with the young man, the incident started with a cop wanting to stop the kid and issue a citation for riding the wrong side of the street on a bicycle. Because the cops didn’t stop and listen to people, it escalated to where the kid was tazed, the mother was arrested and the entire police department was called to the scene. The cops have defended their actions but one must wonder what would have happened if the cops had 1) noticed that the kid was not behaving in a normal manner, 2) listened to the neighbors trying to tell the cops the kid had developmental issues and 3) listened to the mother trying to tell the cops the kid had developmental issues. The cops got their man and the mother was arrested as well. But one has to wonder if the cops were “target fixated” on a 17 year old kid they wanted to cite for riding his bicycle improperly.

As for “following instructions,” those instructions have to be legal orders. Cops are not gods that can order the rest of us around with impunity. Lately we have seen a rash of cops destroying evidence of people filming arrests and stops. We have seen cops telling people they cannot film arrests in states that allow it.

As for the idea that abuses occur because of interactions between police and minorities, that doesn’t necessarily hold up.

A friend of mine was stopped by a local policeman after the cop had run a stop sign with my friend sitting there waiting to proceed through the intersection. It was a 4 way stop that the cop blew and ended up stopped in the intersection. My friend just shook his head at the cop in one of those “how sad” type things. The cop pulled him over. The reason he was pulled over? The cop wouldn’t give one. The only thing that anyone could think of was that he was “disrespected” by a citizen for noticing the cop’s driving.

A second friend’s wife was pulled over for “we thought you might be about to break a traffic law.” The wife, who is married to an ex-cop with local, state and federal law enforcement background, made a legal right turn on red to a street with the cop sitting in the left hand lane beside her. After the turn, the cop crossed the lanes and started to follow her. Three miles later, he hit the lights and asked to see her license. There were plenty of places to stop her before that that were much safer for all, but he was running out of jurisdictional area. So he stopped her. And as I said, he stopped her because he “thought she was going to break a traffic law.” When did that happen? When she made the legal turn. Because she made a legal turn, the cop thought she might later make an illegal one.

Finally, in one of my encounters with the cops, in a basketball game, I threw out some guy for yelling and cussing. It was a league rule that everyone knew. He was trash talking and after I advised him to tone it down, he launched into a tirade at me. I threw him out of the game.

After the game, as I was pulling out of the parking lot, I was stopped by a cop. I had seen the cop talking to the guy I had thrown out when I was packing my car up.

When I asked what I had done to be stopped (being that I was on private property where he had no jurisdiction) he told me that he was making a routine check. Finding nothing, he said “make sure you don’t cuss or yell or anything,” and then smiled and went back to his car.

I understand that there are interactions between cops and citizens that go smoothly each and every day. The problem is that when one doesn’t, the average citizen is stuck banging against a blue wall.

I am not a young man by any stretch of the imagination, but in my life I have seen the quality and training of cops decline to the point where the amount of respect they get is a lot less than it used to be.

Lastly, I am sure that you have seen this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kassP7zI0qc&feature=player_embedded

There is another one of the same cop threatening to kill someone as well, but this one is shocking and indefensible.

“As for ‘following instructions,’ those instructions have to be legal orders. Cops are not gods that can order the rest of us around with impunity. Lately we have seen a rash of cops destroying evidence of people filming arrests and stops. We have seen cops telling people they cannot film arrests in states that allow it.”

Gitargiver’s comment is the heart of the matter. Citizens are obliged to give a policeman the benefit of the doubt. The citizen may know that the police action is not legal, but he errors when he presumes the policeman also knows that. The citizen can sue in court later, he does not have to give the policeman a hard time. Think about the arrest of the Harvard professor. He was a black man in a house that a neighbor said was broken into by two black men. The professor was released once the authorities knew that he was in his own house. As I see it, the policeman was correctly protecting the professor and his property. The professor probably was upset because the policeman did not know what he knew and was taking too long to understand the professor’s reasonable explanation for what happened.

My black colleague, Anthony, complained of being stopped about once a month by the police, a rate 120 times mine. But in two prior independent conversations, I was told of the near death experiences experienced by guys accepting rides home from Anthony. Their looks of terror has stayed in my mind.