Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Officer Discretion
I was asked in a comment how I would have handled a situation that has gone viral on YouTube. A woman attending her son’s football game was confronted for not wearing a mask. She refused to leave the game and was tased, handcuffed, and then removed from the game. You can find the video on the internet so I’m not going to include it in the post.
My personal belief is that police officers assigned as school resource officers can be misused by school administrators. They end up enforcing administrative rules rather than state statutes concerning criminal law that has been legislated by elected officials.
Do you see all those empty seats in the background? Even if the officer was approached by a school official to remove this woman the officer has some options. He could have told the official let’s ask here to move a bit further away. If the school official is a bit dim the officer could say let’s solve this without creating a bigger problem.
Talk to the woman and simply say: Would you do me a favor and sit at the end of this row if you won’t wear a mask. Would that have worked? We’ll never know, but it would be worth a try.
Published in General
A local sheriff announced publicly that his officers would not enforce states or county mandates because his deputies had more important duties. He is not up for re-election but that would have clinched it for him.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/news4sanantonio.com/amp/news/local/hill-country-sheriff-says-he-wont-enforce-masks-let-gov-order-his-officers-to-do-it
If water is wet …
Let’s face it. Zero-tolerance policies exist because modus ponens is beyond some people.
I don’t know.
I’ve had experience with school officials who weren’t idiots, and of those who were. School resource officers can be tone-deaf and idiotic, like members of any other group, but I’ve got much more experience of those who made things better for children, administrators and and the community. Guys who could’ve handled this thing so nicely that you could be there in the stands and not even notice it had happened.
I don’t know the whole history of this incident—if someone else does, they can correct me. But since there was no threat of violence to anyone involved, a plain, ordinary school official could’ve walked up to this woman and said “could you do me a favor and move further down if you’d rather not wear a mask? We have a school policy—set well above my pay-grade!—and we want to make sure no one makes a fuss and prevents parents from being here to cheer on the team.”
If the officer was the only one available, he could’ve done the same thing.
What if she’d said no?
What if her whole purpose in life that day was not to see her son’s game (she’d driven over an hour, I’ve read, to be there) but to take a political stand against mask wearing? Well, okay.
I’d ask her, at that point, whether she’d like to be arrested for the cause (assuming not wearing a mask is an arrest-able offense?) or whether she felt like she’d made her point? “Writing a letter to the school board about this rule would be a really good follow-up!”
At least as far as the video shows it, this looks like a situation in which time is on the side of the officer. What’s the hurry? Presumably he’s got all the time in the world to talk about this problem, while the longer the discussion goes on, the more of the game this mother misses.
Dumb.
The vast majority of people in this country can behave themselves without the supervision of a police officer. The thousands upon thousands of interactions between a police officer and citizens on a daily basis that do not involve violence affirms this.
I used the phrase “would you do me a favor” many times, and it worked unless there was an underlying problem that came to light during the conversation.
I read she’d driven over an hour, and was sitting with her other kids, to watch her son’s middle school football game. I did not see in the video anyone else seated near her.
To me, I thought perhaps this particular resource officer exemplified a small person wielding too much authority, who could not back down once he began the confrontation.
Sad, especially for her other kids who witnessed this first hand. One hopes they can regain some respect for authority.
Authority does not deserve respect, peole do.
No argument there.
More than enough dumb to go around.
If the lady had a medical condition, then that should have been it. If whatever protocol you are following doesn’t make allowances for that, then your protocol has a big problem.
If after describing her condition, she had continued “Are you prepared to accept liability …” I wonder if he would have found it in him to make an accommodation.
Empty bleachers. Outside. This isn’t about health.
Yes. And this presents a teachable moment, if anyone is inclined to seize it. First of all, the police officer is black and the woman is white, so that takes the usual stupid out of the equation. Next time someone says something about how “there oughta be a law” (about masks or anything else) ask how that law is going to be enforced? And show ’em the video.
Are you willing to see police officers tasing a citizen (and—since the seats were metal—giving the kids a zap as well) and dragging her, kicking and screaming, to the hoosegow for not having a piece of probably-germ-soaked cloth over her face?
Huge argument there, for me.
I may be misunderstanding this sentiment. This looks like the sort of radical nutjob nonsense that I’d expect from Antifa.
Please think this through. Do you really think that the duly constituted authorities — Presidents, governors, legislators, judges, cops — do not deserve respect? Is this what you teach your kids?
I think that the woman was clearly in the wrong here. Put on the darned mask, for crying out loud. Or leave.
I think that she set a very bad example for her children.
No they were in the wrong.
She was near no one and no threat to anyone. This was an abuse of power that lead to a needless escalated situation because the dsmn cop was on a power trip over a stupid mask. Had she died one would hope he would have been prosecuted. We know he would have if he was whote and she was black. Heck, just on this video alone, if those were the races, he’d be fired.
Police desreve no respect at all. Individual officers do. I have no respect for the jerk cop pulling me over because I “swerved” in response to a semi roaring past me. It was an excuse to pull me over and ask if I was drinking. That was wrong. I was otherwise driving fine. It was clear what had happened.
As long as the police exist to shakedown and harass citizens instead of going after real crimes, they don’t deserve respect. Oh, they may command my obedience because they have the might and power. That just makes them petty tyrants.
This man in his actions is another brick in the wall between “civillians” as the police derisively call citizens, and the forces themselves.
I will not back down no matter what names you want to call me. Wrong us wrong and this is wrong.
A car financing the street was broken into. The police took a report but said they were not going to investigate. See, that is hard. So much easier to harras me driving home.
Petty tyrants always on the lookout for the easy stop, the easy quota, and not bothering to go after real thieves. And I pay for this service.
Are you arguing that those who hold those positions deserve unquestioning respect? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what Fritz and Bryan were arguing against. Those who abuse their position do not deserve our respect.
I think this rent-a-cop is setting a bad example by letting power go to his head.
Ahhh here we go. The police are getting paid tax dollars but won’t tow an abandoned car. For months.
I am not going to respect that and we know for a fact this would not happen to a rich person.
The police do not serve and protect everyone, just the rich.
Don’t tell me to respect them. Don’t give me just following orders. This is how the police let us down all the time. All the time. What good are they if they dont enforce the law?
Any police with their hands tied need to resign.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I really struggle to understand what any of you mean. You all are coming across as incoherent to me. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think so.
Umbra, the rule you seem to suggest is that people in positions of authority deserve our respect, until they do something that we don’t like, in which case they do not deserve our respect, and we can blatantly disregard their instructions. Oh, and insult them, and call them bad names (like your “rent-a-cop” line).
I am having trouble seeing any difference between the course of action that the three of you (Brian, Fritz, and Umbra) seem to be suggesting, and the attitude of the Antifa and BLM folks. Again, maybe I’m not understanding you properly, or maybe you’re just venting some frustration about mask requirements.
What I thought one was supposed to do was to defer to legal authority, comply with instructions, and then peacefully and properly raise objections later, including complaints up the chain of command.
That is not the same as respecting someone, that is obeying them
I am amazed you don’t see the difference
Ah, another fine officer being an jerk. Guy does the right thing and gets a ticket.
Officer should lose job.
Brian, your responses make me wonder whether you have personally had a bad experience with a cop, or more than one. I have not, nor have I personally witnessed such an event, as far as I can recall.
Interesting, isn’t this the crux of the entire legit Black Lives program (not the Marxist BLM organization) That Black people routinely have, or expect to have, bad experiences with cops. This rent-a-cop proved that race doesn’t matter; petty and petulant cops can and will act badly when given unchecked power. That it is likely to happen more often against POC (especially in locales with significantly higher crime frequency) just adds to the systemic charge. With all that, this video would appear to show evidence that police, because of their elevated status in society, must adhere to a higher standard of ethics, honor and legality, or be accused of abuse of that power.
The police have a tougher time than they did half a century ago. They didn’t have to wear ballistic armor. There were fewer laws. And the laws we had made more sense. And back then there was more civility in society.
But mostly, there are just too many laws. I’ve read that no one can go a day without inadvertently breaking a dozen laws, or somesuch. I believe it. This places two things on the shoulders of the police: one, they have to use discretion in what laws they accuse people of breaking; and two, once they choose if and what law to enforce, police can default into a rigid algorithm of command and obedience. Instead of talking to the lady and the administrator, this officer ratcheted his commands up to placing handcuffs on the mother in front of her children. And tasing her. What’s wrong with a civilian winning an argument with a cop?! But arguing is obstructing a police officer in the performance of his duty or something.
It’s funny. There’s something wrong with jurisprudence in the US. And it starts with too many laws. Come on, you know that there are more lawyers in the US than in the whole rest of the world combined, or somesuch. And the saddest part is that all the laws have made us need them.
I like to think that I would have handled the situation by administering enough percussive therapy on that jerk cop’s testicles until he’s unable to spawn descendents with some added cosmetic boot surgery on his face. Then when dragged before the local bench I would deliver a lewd and profane retelling about my liberties with the magistrate’s wife followed by a well-aimed lugie to his eye. Then I would willingly serve my jail time raising hell and draining their resources every minute I was in custody. To hell with them.
Mr. Giordano,
You total inability to spell my name right even though it is right there at the top of my posts makes me wonder if you are really taking me seriously at all. I rather think you are just being dismissive.
Bryan
Because it is disrespectful of his authority!
“The woman, identified as Alicia Kitts, was ultimately arrested and charged with criminal trespassing, resisting arrest, and obstructing official business for refusing to comply with the district’s mask policy.”
Got it right.
This is from https://www.dailydot.com/irl/maskless-football-mom-cop-death-threats/
COMPLY or else.
That is not respect, that is rule by fear.
Mr. Giordano, do you see the difference?
Let me put it in small words for you then: Those who abuse their authority do not deserve respect.
It looks like proper enforcement of the law, to me. If a person intransigently refuses to follow the law, the authorities must either use force, or allow the wrongdoer to get away with it.
Of course I think that fear of punishment plays a part in the law enforcement of the law. Without this, it seems to me that we end up with anarchy.
Your argument seems to imply that the law can never be enforced.
Here, by the way, the relevant law appears to be trespass. The school district has the right to set rules of behavior on its property. If a person refuses to comply, and then refuses to leave, that is trespass.
Bryan, sorry about the typo. It was an error, not meant as an insult.