Originally Posted By ecdc <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-oversaw-postal-worker-arrest-loses-badge-gun-article-1.2584376">http://www.nydailynews.com/new....2584376</a> Most of you have probably heard of the mailman who yelled at NYPD officers when they almost hit his car. He got arrested and was later charged with precisely one thing: resisting arrest. Which of course raises the question, what was he originally being arrested for that then caused him to "resist the arrest?" As video footage of police arrests have skyrocketed, one incredibly disturbing trend stands out: suspects lying prone on the ground, not so much as moving a muscle, and cops screaming at them to "stop resisting!" Over and over we've seen stories of people arrested who report the same thing: I wasn't doing anything and they kept yelling at me to "stop resisting." The idea of course being that when all else fails, they can charge the person with resisting arrest and they can accurately report that they told the person to stop. I also found this statement by the NYPD to be extremely disturbing: "“No one ever has the right to resist arrest,” Lynch continued. “Compliance is not optional.” Holy crap, police state much? "Compliance is not optional?" What a terrifying prospect. In other words, anytime a cop decides he's going to detain you, you have no option but to comply. And apparently we're supposed to leave it to our justice system to just sort it all out in the end. What could possibly go wrong? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Avery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Williamson
Originally Posted By SuperDry << I also found this statement by the NYPD to be extremely disturbing: "“No one ever has the right to resist arrest,” Lynch continued. “Compliance is not optional.” Holy crap, police state much? "Compliance is not optional?" What a terrifying prospect. In other words, anytime a cop decides he's going to detain you, you have no option but to comply. And apparently we're supposed to leave it to our justice system to just sort it all out in the end. >> Propose an alternative.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Propose an alternative.<< Don't criminalize resisting arrest since it's abused and overused? If someone is guilty of a crime and they resist arrest, charge them with the crime they've committed. If someone isn't guilty of a crime, then why are they being arrested? In other words, place the overwhelming burden on police and the governments they represent, where it should go, instead of on individuals and citizens. Forget about our instilled-since-youth romanticized idea of police officers and think about it in these terms: these are uniformed, armed agents of the state. Shouldn't agents of the state have a massive burden to show cause instead of just being able to say "stop resisting" and that's it? Aren't significant constraints on the government's ability to detain or use physical and even deadly force a pretty conservative idea?
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Ecdc, are you 100% convinced that Stephen Avery is innocent? My husband and I watched the series, I'm 95% sure, I can't quite get all the way to 100% though.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Ecdc, are you 100% convinced that Stephen Avery is innocent? My husband and I watched the series, I'm 95% sure, I can't quite get all the way to 100% though.
Originally Posted By SuperDry << Don't criminalize resisting arrest since it's abused and overused? If someone is guilty of a crime and they resist arrest, charge them with the crime they've committed. >> In that scenario, there's no penalty for resisting arrest. It would be in every criminal's best interest to resist arrest at every opportunity. Many do that anyway, but a lot of people cooperate because they know that if they don't, they're likely to get caught anyway, and the penalty goes up because they resisted. << If someone isn't guilty of a crime, then why are they being arrested? >> There's a presumption of innocence. One is not guilty of a crime unless and until they've been found guilty in a court of law. How are police, at the time of a crime or shortly thereafter, supposed to know who they may run into is "guilty" or not?
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Sorry, SD, but you are mistaken. The "resisting arrest" BS has to go. Here's why: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article/20140912/GZ01/140919689/">http://www.wvgazettemail.com/a...0919689/</a> <> Friday, September 12, 2014 Monongalia County police accused of assaulting man with Huntington’s disease By Erin Beck Staff writer The family of a Granville man who has Huntington’s disease is alleging officers from two Monongalia County police departments assaulted him. A ten-minute YouTube video appears to show Jeffrey Brian Bane, 39, bleeding from the face while being held down by police officers in Westover Saturday. On the Facebook page “Justice for Jeffery Bane,” Bane’s nephew Josh writes that Bane was maced and beaten before officers held him down while his children watched. Bane can be heard saying “help me,” “I can’t breathe,” and “I’m not trying to fight you guys” during the video. His nephew said on the Facebook page that officers mistook his uncle’s flailing movements, symptoms of Huntington’s disease, for resisting arrest. Huntington’s disease is a hereditary, degenerative, and incurable brain disorder that slowly diminishes the sufferer’s ability to walk, talk and reason. “For those unfamiliar it is very similar to Parkinson’s,” Bane’s nephew wrote. “So as he lay there uncontrollably moving due to his terminal condition, he is forcefully detained to the point of screaming for help. He is spitting blood and drowning in it and the officer holding his head only applies more pressure and instructs him to “quit spitting.” The Dominion Post reported that Westover Police Officer Colin Sheridan initially responded to the scene outside Frank’s Place after a report of someone abusing children. Bane had two infant children with him, which he said were his. Police said “he appeared to be under the influence of narcotics, handled the children roughly and became agitated as officers spoke with him about the children,” according to the Dominion Post. “The children appeared to be overheated, and when asked about provisions that he had with him for the children, Bane struck the stroller violently with his hand, pushing it forward abruptly while his infant son was still seated inside,” the criminal complaint said. The Dominion Post reported that Bane was charged with disorderly conduct, obstructing an officer and battery on an officer. In a Facebook post, Josh Bane said his uncle was actually trying to keep his children safe. “As my uncle and his two children headed towards the store before heading to the park together they crossed an intersection to the other side when the stroller became hung up on the curb,” he wrote. “As the light changed, to keep his children out of harm’s way he hurriedly put his two year old on the curb, told her to stay put and pulled the stroller up on the curb. In this moment someone mistook my uncle’s actions to keep his kids safe as child abuse. The police were then called and approached him down the street and began to question him. Assuming because of his appearance he was high on narcotics without reason they began to subdue him, macing and beating him in the head as he fell to his face [where] he was then held with a great amount of force by two officers double his size as a third one landed on his torso.” Sara Bostonia, who posted the YouTube video, is heard screaming at the officers during the video and telling them to stop. One officer who is not visible asks her if the children are hers. She says she is not related to them but that she was driving by when she saw officers pinning the man down while he choked on his own blood. “If you want to continue filming, that’s okay,” the officer said. “But if you continue to be loud and boisterous I will arrest you for obstructing justice.” Josh Bane said on Facebook that he wants to see the officers suspended without pay. “Do you feel safe knowing these are the type of men protecting you?” he said. “Do they deserve to continue on unharmed as my Uncle suffers in pain even more so than his illness already puts him through on a daily basis? Should my two year old cousin have to have nightmares and cry because she witnessed her daddy be mugged by strangers who, mind you, could care less about them the entire reason they were supposedly called in there in the first place. The answer is NO people. Absolutely, unequivocally NO.” The YouTube video is labeled “Granville Police,” but Granville Chief of Police Craig Corkrean said only one officer present is from Granville. He said that officer can be seen in the video standing by for assistance. A Granville police cruiser is also visible. “Someone had followed the male in the video for half an hour saying he was being rough with children, so Westover police responded,” Corkrean said. “We responded about ten minutes later. We were not even involved in the initial encounter with the man.” He said he doesn’t think the video shows any inappropriate behavior. “I don’t, but that’s not for me to decide,” he said. “Those aren’t my officers.” Westover police had not returned calls from the Gazette by press time. The video has been viewed nearly 45,000 times since Bostonia posted it on Sunday. More than 1,500 people have liked the “Justice for Jeffery Bane” Facebook page since it was created on Wednesday. Photos section shows injuries to Bane’s shoulder, face, ear, legs, and feet, The city of Morgantown posted “We regret to hear about the incident involving Granville and Westover Police, but we assure you Morgantown City Police were not involved” on Twitter on Friday morning. The tweet was deleted by Friday afternoon. Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5163 or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter. <> People with physical and mental disabilities are not puppets. They often CANNOT DO EXACTLY and PRECISELY what LEOs tell them to do. And the training that LEOs receive in order to identify disabled individuals they might encounter is staggeringly absent. Everywhere. It just doesn't exist. My DH suffers from both IDDM and a neurodegenerative disease that alters his balance. When he walks, he looks as though he's drunk. Ataxia will do that to a body. It also makes it difficult for him to fully enunciate his words, so he always sounds as though he's had a drink or two. He keeps medical information on him at all times, including his insulin pump. But I fear for him should he ever be arrested and put in jail, even for just a few hours. People with disabilities do not fair well in jail. And as the above story clearly demonstrates, they often don't do well on the street, trying to have some semblance of a normal life. "Resisting arrest" is a BS charge designed for one reason and one reason only: to give LEOs the legal wiggle-room to be excessively aggressive towards citizens. They don't need to be anything but "reasonably certain" the perp is a flight risk and needs to be detained at all costs. Even if it means that detention ends up accidentally permanently maiming or killing the perp. It's a stupid excuse invented to give cover to cops behaving badly, according to my BIL who's been an active cop and academy instructor for over 30 years. Unless there is unedited video of the entire encounter and arrest, it's your word against the LEOs who abused you. Gee... guess which side is going to win?
Originally Posted By SuperDry You refer to situations involving abuse of power, and/or cops on power trips. Those are indeed huge problems, but that's not what I'm talking about. There needs to be a penalty for not following the lawful instructions of a police officer.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>It would be in every criminal's best interest to resist arrest at every opportunity.<< That's simply not true. We have assault and battery laws, we have laws against fleeing police custody, etc. The idea that every suspect would resist w/o that possibility seems incredibly unpersuasive to me. I'm genuinely open to being convinced otherwise, but the charge seems to be one part of a decades-long push, under "get tough on crime" initiatives, to shift responsibility from the state to the individual. I get the extraordinarily challenging circumstances police often find themselves in, but I am amazed that anyone can read the NYPD spokesperson's words and not find them chilling.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I agree with SD that there is a problem with abuse of power, but that there also needs to be a way to guarantee that they will have some power. If everybody effectively resists arrest every single time, then there will be no way to ensure that justice will be served; at some point there needs to be cooperation between both sides, but obviously compromise is an unpopular solution at the moment (on so many issues across the spectrum) I also agree with ecdc that resisting arrest as a stand-alone charge is BS. If there's no reason to arrest somebody, then why are they resisting it? In those vague cases it would probably wind up being paired with something vague like disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, but it shouldn't be used on its own As skinner said, there should also be accommodations for those with disabilities, but if we've learned anything from Disney's park policies, there will always be non-disabled people who abuse is. I honestly don't know what the best way to deal with this would be, since obviously each person requires a different approach, but when you're walking up to a stranger on the street (which is essentially what police do), it's hard to immediately know the full story of what's going on with them As with most things, I think some compromise and compassion from both sides would go a long way. There's room for everybody in this world, if everyone makes some room. Kumbaya and all that...
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Ecdc, are you 100% convinced that Stephen Avery is innocent? My husband and I watched the series, I'm 95% sure, I can't quite get all the way to 100% though.<< I think Avery is probably guilty, actually. But regardless of whether he is or not, I think the series is a damning indictment of the American criminal justice system. For those of us interested in this, "Making a Murderer" isn't all that shocking; this stuff has gone on for decades in police departments across the country.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Really? You think he's guilty? I hope he is. I hate thinking of him in jail if he's not. And that poor kid!
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Really? You think he's guilty?<< Well I certainly don't know. I just wonder how else this poor woman ended up dead. There's plenty of articles you can read about stuff left out of the series--like how Avery always asked Auto Trader to send Teresa Haibach out, how he called her cell phone multiple times--then counter articles on why that stuff isn't as impactful as it's portrayed. I have a love/hate relationship with this kind of thing. I find it all very fascinating. I loved Serial too. But then there's this part of me that's really disturbed that we all sit around and speculate about this stuff. Ether Steve Avery is guilty or he isn't. So when we sit around and talk about it and try and reason it all out, it's neither here nor there. Our opinions and reasons are meaningless--he either did it or he didn't. So statistics about the likelihood or unlikelihood of his guilt, stuff about what's most likely or stuff that's happened in other cases and precedent...none of it matters. And sometimes it feels terribly unfair that this stuff gets speculated about and becomes our hobby and pastime. And I say that as someone who's as guilty of it as anyone.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Speculation is better than presumption though, don't you think? I don't like how no one will likely never know for sure, and I don't like how messed up the court systems are. The whole series just really made me uncomfortable.
