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.
Everyone Has the Floyd Arrest Wrong
I think the police and district attorney have the wrong problem and the wrong solution.
Based on the say-so of a store clerk, they arrested Floyd. That’s the real problem. They had no evidence that Floyd committed a crime except for the say-so of a store clerk. That’s weak sauce to arrest someone.
There was no threat of violence. There was no danger to society. The police should have taken the statement of the clerk and then gone off to the magistrate to issue a summons for Floyd to appear in court. They should have submitted evidence of the bad $20 bill to the magistrate. Then they should have sought out Floyd and issued him a summons to come to court for a hearing. There should have been no reason to arrest him at all.
The “terry stop” has been a disaster for law enforcement. Police only need a slight pretense in order to detain someone for an investigation, and that gives them the power to search anyone at any time. Terry stops turn our right to be secure in our persons upside down.
We need to overturn “Terry” and force police to have a more substantial reason to search someone. We need to outlaw civil asset forfeitures which gives police a powerful incentive to steal money and property from people.
And we need to stop granting life and death power to the police at any time they wish to issue commands to someone.
George Floyd was not an immediate threat to anyone that day. It is a perversion of the law to put anyone in a life-threatening situation when there was no immediate apparent danger and the police didn’t even have first-hand knowledge of a crime.
About twenty years ago I was accused of passing a bad twenty-dollar bill by a new waitress at my favorite restaurant. Thankfully she didn’t call the police, she chased me down in the parking lot. So we went back inside, I called the manager. She showed the “bad” $20 and the end result was she forfeited her tip and I never saw her working there again. Turns out the $20 was a silver certificate bill. I still have it in my collection. I suppose there might be a chance that it’s a counterfeit bill, I doubt it, but the point is that no one arrested me and society didn’t collapse.
The police have too much power. They have the power of life and death over us at any moment they wish, and it is rare that anyone questions how they wield that power. It’s a recipe for tyranny and it needs to end. We need police reform, not because of racism, which is laughable, but because the police have gotten too dangerously powerful and are a threat to our civilization as they operate now.
Published in Policing
If he was a danger and the police observe that, then there is a reason to detain him. I don’t recall reading that they started with a field sobriety test. If so, then my point may not apply to that specific case, but I still think the reform on terry stops, unwarranted arrests, etc., are needed.
I dunno, aren’t you advocating that they should need a warrant before stopping him from driving?
Nope. Never said that. I said if there is no danger or emergency then a warrant should be required.
So then it’s a question of who gets to define “danger” or “emergency,” and how. And you just disagree that letting someone walk off after trying to pass counterfeit money, is not a “danger” or “emergency.” Store owners and others might have a different definition.
Let’s get a handle on the number of police “interactions” with individuals per year. From somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I seem to recall 375,000 as of the last available data (Heather MacDonald), but I could be off somewhat on that. How many George Floyd’s are there as a percentage of that number? It’s fine to include the most recent (accidental) event in Minnesota, as well as others–even including the guy with the knife in Kenosha.
Let’s play with the percentages a bit before making sweeping statements about the “power of the police.”
.
There are societal consequences to hard drug use.
What nonsense. Those camps are a result of allowing camps, not from allowing drugs.
Nope. It’s both. Non enforcement of camping laws, and non enforcement of the drug laws.
Where I live, my neighbors and I pay to hire cops, train cops, equip cops, and create the policies and procedures. Cops do what cities pay them to do. Historically, city leaders have given cops free reign, but that is changing. More city leaders should be held responsible for the police forces they control.
I remember a police union guy bragging about nearly 400 million annual interactions. That is about once per person. I think that is way too high. Amazon.com is a big part of my life and yet I rarely need to interact with their employees. I bet that when self-driving cars become common, three-fourths of interactions will go away.
I agree Al. One thing that jumped out at me was the part where you say that being a danger to others is enough to justify a police stop. I’d like to add that danger is not and should not be the standard otherwise non-violent crime, petty crime, civil disputes, and such could never be pursued because there is no enforcement mechanism. I realize I might be accused of being pedantically semantic about this, but I think it’s important. George Floyd wasn’t killed because he passed a counterfeit bill or because he was high (I don’t believe he was “killed” either – more like he OD’d); Eric Garner wasn’t killed for selling loosies; Michael Brown wasn’t killed over shoplifting cigarillos. In all of those situations the underlying crime alleged wasn’t exactly a “danger” in the bodily sense but they were still legitimate police matters; in all these cases the escalation from minor infraction to scuffles in the danger zone of unpredictable altercation was driven not by the police. Going to issue a summons later doesn’t really change the equation. Sometimes people are going to resist and escalate.
There would still be enforcement, in my proposal, after a warrant is issued. If you resist a warrant, sure, kill the guy.
What I think we need to change is how we allow this escalation to deadly force merely on the suspicion of a police officer of a petty, non-violent infraction or crime.
You’re leaving out many steps in between though. Escalation to deadly force isn’t happening merely on the suspicion of a police officer. You’re leaving out the agency and (poor) choices of the people involved. Of course we shouldn’t “allow” escalation to deadly force, which is why officers are trained that at a point before that they need to shut down the exchange and subdue the person so that escalation is no longer possible. Easy to say – at that point we’re in the unpredictable danger zone of physical altercation.
Floyd was intoxicated and passed out behind the wheel of a car. That’s DUI right there. Floyd certainly presented an immediate threat. Sitting in the drivers seat of a car is legally intent to drive, and leaving an intoxicated man behind the wheel would have been dereliction of duty of the officers involved. Things unfortunately escalated from there. The bad check was just the occasion that the officers happened to be there. It’s not the reason the use of force on Floyd evolved. It’s a good thing that officers tracked down Floyd. He might have started that car and killed someone.
The prosecution in this case keeps making a big deal of this. Who gets arrested and handcuffed for a bad bill? Not many people. But everyone gets arrested for sitting in a driver’s seat intoxicated, holding controlled substances, and resisting arrest.
I jaywalked.
I ran away when the cop tried to give me a ticket.
When the cop caught up to me I punched him and ran away again.
When the cop caught up to me again I picked up a pipe and took a swing.
The cop tased me, but I’m high so it didn’t really affect me.
I tried to take his taser
He shot me.
============================================================================================
Why did he shoot me for jaywalking? Why did we allow this to escalate?
Speaking of tasing, an interesting moment in the Chauvin trial came when a prosecution use-of-force expert admitted that Chauvin would have been within the use of force guidelines to tase Floyd when he (Chauvin) arrived on the scene and Floyd was wrestling with police officers. Instead, Chauvin and the other officers allowed Floyd out of the car and to lay on the ground. The same prosecution witness admitted this was a de-escalation of force.
Do you think Chauvin now wishes he had just tased the guy immediately?
I think the answer is, it’s stupid to give a ticket for jaywalking. Had this fictitious officer not been so petty no one would have had any problem.
I certainly see your point that you can’t let people get away with ignoring the law. I’m just saying that the police have gotten to the point that your scenario isn’t that unrealistic. A cop absolutely would escalate a jay walk into a death sentence. In Austin many years ago, a woman was jay walking. A police officer yelled at her to stop. She didn’t realize the moron was yelling at her so kept going. The police officer ran at her, picked her up and threw her onto the ground.
So, sticking with the jay walking theme here, I see the officer’s assault on the woman to be excessive. The officer believes his every utterance must be obeyed or he can escalate to deadly force. That is the mentality of our militarized police. That is not what we should expect. There should be proportionality in the police response that is sadly missing. We have too many laws. The police can enforce any law at any time. Every one of us can be arrested on the drop of a hat for some obscure violation. The police are too powerful, almost unrestrained, and very rarely have any consequences if they make bad decisions or are corrupt.
But at the same time, we have terrorists also undermining the rule of law. The people are caught in pincers between police officers with too much power, and terrorists like BLM and other race hustlers who behave lawlessly.
I’ll bet Chauvin now wishes he had stayed in bed that day.
Clearly you have never had to restrain anyone in the throes of drug induced psychosis. Further, no one on the planet can know with any certainty at all that the police killed George Floyd, as opposed to the drugs that were in his system. The medical experts that testified to that effect were spouting malarkey.
What an odd conclusion.
Skyler, you keep leaving out steps in favor of your preference for hating on cops. If you really want, you can start with the city council who makes jaywalking a violation. Next, however, is the citizen who chooses to jaywalk anyway. You keep leaving our the citizen and their choices. Only then does the officer get involved, and and you keep assigning emotional or moral motivations to them instead of duty to enforce law.
It may be stupid for jaywalking to be a ticketable offense. Take it up with the city council. Stop taking it out on the officer or thinking that you get to declare yourself above such pettiness of the laws of others and then declaring the officer to be at fault for enforcing the duly enacted laws. You want to commit peaceful civil disobedience? Great go ahead – just realize that ends up with you getting arrested to raise a public stink and tp change hearts and minds.
A lot of the belly aching about cops made me paranoid after a while, thinking that I could be in a situation where cops barge into my house and shot my baby in a crib.
Truth is, if you look at the lifestyles the vast majority of people interacting with cops live, it isn’t that surprising that they have interactions with cops.
That doesn’t change that policing should be responsible, and it needs some reforming, but it should have some bearing on how we look at escalated cases.
Jay walking is against the law. Now I don’t know if there is any way to sub classify laws as only relevant when assigning blame for accidents (for adjudicating insurance claims), but for now, the law exists and people don’t want the law going away because no one wants to be charged with homicide because some crazy person in black was jaywalking in the middle of the night and they hit them with their car.
In my example the officer wasn’t the one escalating at any stage of the scenario.
Yes, that is an example of police escalation and wrongdoing. I disagree that you can conclude that that is the mentality of police generally. I don’t think anyone expects police to think or act that way. In general I don’t think police do act that way, examples of exceptions notwithstanding.
Yes there should be proportionality. I don’t think it’s missing generally. Writing a ticket for jaywalking is not disproportional.
Maybe. Depends. In any event as a free and participatory system we have methods for changing that.
Kind of. Depends on jurisdiction. Otherwise – yes. That’s what we pay them to do.
I don’t believe that is true. Can you give some examples.
I honestly don’t know how you can claim this. I see restraints and consequences all over. I also see, however, people attributing malice and corruption where there is none or they attribute negligence where there is really only accident. I see people attribute fault to officers skipping the fault of the other entirely.
Mental illness is high among the homeless too. If they were mentally ill and homeless before using drugs, that seems to make it a problem of mental illness, not drugs.
What if you count multiple “interactions” with the same people, which I expect happens a good deal?
What an odd premise on your part.
The reason its an offense is because it increases the probability of pedestrian accidents, or motor vehicle collisions.
Some idiot jaywalks in front of me I may A. Hit him or B Hit another vehicle trying to avoid him.
There’s a reason for most of the traffic rules we have.
Maybe there are just too many laws.