He didnt do anything wrong - he was entirely within his rights to ask for a supervisor.

Absolutely (although they’re not obligated to fulfill the request… a lot of departments will, partly because when the stop is getting complicated they may want a supervisor to show up there anyway.) But anyway, that doesn’t absolve him of the requirement to provide an ID. He was arrested for failing to provide the ID, not for asking for a supervisor. Asking for the supervisor was a-OK, and if he’d done that while handing over his ID, he would have been fine.

Because if I fucking recall, George Floyd was not fighting back.

Yeah, and that’s why the cop is in prison right now alongside everyone who was with him that day. That was my point.

Pre-2014, charges for the cops were very rare even when they straight-up just shot somebody for more or less no reason. After that, it was intermittent, until 2020 was the inflection point where charges became practically universal, and also, those big walls of names of people who hadn’t done a damn thing who the cops had killed started drying up, because stuff had actually changed.

There’s a lot that still needs to change, a lot of bad things baked into the system still. But of course some dickheads can only hold one fairly simple type of world model in their head at one time, and so whenever any type of police interaction goes sideways in any manner, even one like this where it is objectively about 90% the guy in the driver’s seat who causes the whole issue in the first place, they start screaming BLACK LIVES MATTER, BLACK LIVES MATTER like that’s going to help everything get better.

This guy isn’t solving police brutality. He is helping to justify it, by diluting the examples of people who actually didn’t do anything, and providing a good example for people who want to say Breonna Taylor deserved it or whatever. Stop making him out as making some bold anti-racist stand because of what some other people did, successfully.

I think I’m just going to say this one more time and then be done with this thread: There are a lot of people who offer the legal theory you’re saying here, right before they get arrested on charges that stick. You can find literally thousands of them on YouTube.

BECAUSE PEOPLE STARTED PROTESTING AFTER THIS SHIT KEPT HAPPENING, AND PEOPLE FUCKING DIED.

Yeah, sounds great. Among other things I think burning down the 3rd precinct had a lot to do with changing the overall dynamic, just because like a lot of things, if people are dealing with some population that can fight back, they react differently than if the people can’t. I am saying that starting to yell at every cop that pulls you over and refuse to ID yourself is not really going to change the system, if you did it for a thousand years.

I know people with way worse than your experience. Yes, it sucks. It would have been much worse if you’d decided “You know what, I think this is a bunch of crap, no you can’t have my ID and I’m not getting out of the car”. That’s part of my point.

IDK why you’re yelling at me, like I’m saying that the cops never did/do anything wrong. I’m saying this dude created his own situation, and people who are one-side-is-fine-other-side-did-everything-wrong, like you are here, are enabling other people to go down his same path, ignore the laws and cops that are reasonable, and then pretend they did nothing wrong and it’s shocking and surprising that they got yanked out and arrested. It’s all everyone else’s fault. Don’t be like this guy.

Used by some power tripping asshole it’s their easiest path to making the stop violent.

Ding ding ding

The system still has some massive problems. If your goal is less police brutality and reform of the system, though, committing crimes in front of the police and refusing to cooperate with them in any way unless they use force is not going to be a real good way to go after that goal.

I’ve seen situations that are way worse than this one. One guy got spooked (like legitimately spooked, you could tell he was for-real scared that the cops were going to do something to him) when he got stopped for an open container in the car. They asked him to get out of the car, he took off instead, crashed his car, foot chase, they tackled him, he ended the night with a bunch of felonies and his car totaled. That’s one reason I think this stuff is so absurd and dangerous when people say it on the internet; sometimes it translates to real world behavior too. You could tell that he was influenced by it, and that’s part of why he thought stomping on the gas and making the situation a hundred times worse was the right play.

The fact that you think this would have gone substantially better for him by just complying

“Can I see your ID?”

“Sure, here you go. You know this is bullshit, though. It’s not raining.”

“HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT TO ME YOU DIRTY (baton strike) FILTHY (baton strike) MOTHER (baton strike) FUCKER”

I mean, maybe. That’s kind of how it used to be, I grew up during that time, it happened to some people I knew. One of the big changes that’s happened recently is that almost always when the cops behave that way in the modern day, they actually get charges. That’s new, like within just the last few years that it started happening consistently. How did that change happen? That’s actually a really important question, and I think you’re glossing over a lot of how we got there by looking at the whole thing through this absolutely absurd lens.

There was no reason for them to escalate.

Challenging this nonsense is the way, historically, any change has happened.

You are just arguing against people doing the right thing

Man… we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this, and just leave it at that.

No. There are a lot of circumstances where you can refuse to ID. A traffic stop for a specific infraction isn’t one of them. There’s actually a lot that goes into the courts trying to strike a reasonable balance.

Wait, am I crazy, or did I literally give an example of a situation where you don’t have to ID in the comment you’re replying to? I feel like probably the useful content of this conversation is at an end…

I am just uncomfortable telling people “just comply, or you’ll make things worse,”

Yeah, I get that. A lot of it depends on the details. If ICE is arresting your family for literally nothing at all, and you may never see them again, then yes, not complying is going to make things worse, but it’s hard for me to say that people “should” comply for that reason. Fuck 'em.

This is not that. This is just a bullshit traffic stop. I get that the frustration comes from the racism inherent in the system, it’s not just the traffic stop, but you gotta be smart about when and how to resist. Getting stubborn and hostile with some random traffic cop and getting tons more charges thrown at you as a result is not going to undo the racism. It also bugs me that people (look around this thread) have some kind of idea that they’re legally in the right if they decide to start arguing with the cops in this way, which… if you’re going to decide to do that (either when getting the ticket or with ICE or anywhere in between), you should have a clear eyed understanding of what you’re getting yourself into.

Basically, I definitely don’t think it’s a good thing people on the internet telling each other how it works and setting up for more things like this to happen to drivers who don’t expect how it is going to play out.

In my opinion the stop is not justified, so the officer has no legal basis to ID the driver.

… said any number of people, right before they got arrested.

There are circumstances where you can refuse to ID. Probably the only video I can ever remember which featured a supervisor showing up and actually taking the side of the suspect, was a cop hassling a person who was taking video of a police department, some patrolman came out and asked for ID, and the guy told him to get lost because he wasn’t doing anything. That sort of falls into “bold move Cotton” territory, but it is legal, and when the supervisor showed up he told the cop so and ordered him to just leave the guy alone.

Refusing to ID on a traffic stop because you disagree with the reason for the stop is going to get you arrested, it’s going to make it harder to fight the original citation even if you are in the right, and it’s going to get you additional charges that are a much bigger deal than the original traffic citation. That’s just reality, both legal reality and how it’s going to happen in practice. You don’t have to agree with the cop to have to provide ID, otherwise any random person ever pulled over for anything at all could just tell the cop to get lost, I don’t agree, and the cop would have to leave and the person could go on their way.

In which (unlikely) case, all that happened to him was damage to his vehicle, some minor injuries, an arrest, tow fees, having to show up in court, maybe some bond, and cost of a lawyer unless he wants to roll the dice with a public defender. And, in return, he gets nothing. But he didn’t get any fines or probation or maybe jail, or a criminal record (although he does have the arrest on his record). Victory!

(This one’s a little more complicated because they actually did use excessive force, so there’s a slim chance that he might be able to sue them civilly and win. In which case it might be completely worth it. But, I would say in about 99% of these cases where someone disagrees with the reason for the stop and so decides to refuse to ID, the only additional results that happen to them are all heavily on the bad side.)

Failure to use headlights during “inclement weather,” and failure to wear a seat belt.

Is that bullshit? Yeah, arguably so. He’d have had a pretty good chance of beating it in court. Cops also show a marked statistical tendency to pull over black people more than white people, and the statistical tendency only shows up during the day and evaporates for traffic stops conducted at night, which makes it pretty hard to argue that it’s any kind of correlation other than causation. So yeah, you could definitely say the initial stop was bullshit.

Unfortunately, a traffic stop for specifically identified infractions is absolutely a lawful stop even if it’s kinda bullshit. And the guy really screwed himself over by refusing to ID, obstructing their attempts to get him out of the car, and then resisting them arresting him, all of which are unambiguous crimes which it’s gonna be a lot more difficult for him to argue his way out of in court that the initial “inclement weather” bullshit. Maybe he can make something out of the fact that they used excessive force once he started obstructing, but more likely he’s just going to be screwed. It’s not like the system gets less racist if you’re a giant unnecessary pain in the ass about it.

Here’s the whole stop from the bodycam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i88VDrI3VA

Completely agree. Yeah, it was definitely wrong for them to hit him in the face. Their whole job is to deal with people who are doing what they’re not supposed to, without losing their shit in turn.

But yes, the initial cop was literally just doing his job, and Shouty McCanISpeakToYourSupervisor escalated it out of literally nowhere from his side, and then got apparently surprised when the cops’ next move wasn’t “Okay, well if he says ‘no,’ I guess we can’t really do anything, free to go have a good day.”

it does NOT permit officers to use violence to achieve identification

I searched for “violence” in both citations and did not find this statement.

Refusing to ID (edit: if you’re stopped for a certain list of reasons, which includes “a traffic stop on the road” as probably the most unambiguous no-wiggle-room one of them) is an arrestable offence. Police do not need an arrest warrant if the crime is literally committed in front of them, to their face, and they’re allowed to use force to effect the arrest.

I think your degree in Bird Law needs updating. I’m not really interested in having an extended he-said-she-said about it, people can read the citations (or investigate the literally thousands of YouTube videos which depict examples of the “ID pls->no->get out->no->window break->ohmygawd->arrest” story arc), and decide what they want to believe about how it works.

Here’s the full bodycam footage. I was right about him failing to ID.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i88VDrI3VA

He commits a misdemeanor 21 seconds after the stop begins.

Cop: “Give me your driver’s license, registration,”

Dude: “No.”

Cop: “… and proof of insurance.”

Dude: “No. Call your supervisor.”

That “no” is enough to arrest him. Most cops won’t do it, they’ll have a conversation about it instead of just busting out the cuffs, but if you go out of your way to piss them off, sometimes they will not. We’re past reasonable suspicion at that point. He pulled him over, explained the reason, and asked for ID, and the guy refused. This is an excellent way to get arrested, and refusing to cooperate with the arrest is an excellent way to get dragged out of the car and thrown around. IDK what the guy expected to happen. The only reason this is news is because the cop hit him in the face, but this was 100% a dude-created situation from start to finish.

Dude it is in your citation:

One of the most common is during a lawful traffic stop. When an officer pulls you over for a suspected traffic violation, you, as the driver, are obligated to provide your driver’s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance upon request.

The case law’s super clear. You don’t get to ask for a supervisor before providing ID, you don’t get to argue the grounds for the stop before providing ID. They’re not even required to explain why they pulled you over first, although almost all cops will do just because it’s a reasonable question. If you want to have a conversation instead of give your ID, they’re allowed to ask you to get out of the car. If you want to have a conversation instead of getting out of the car, they’re allowed to use force to grab you out of it. Most cops will take at least some time for the argument, it makes their case easier the more clearly it’s laid out what happened and the longer the person refuses to ID, but it looks from the bodycam timestamps like there was about 6 minutes of arguing before they broke his window, which is a little shorter than usual but still not like “ID” “no” (smash).

If you want to have a whole separate conversation about what the law should be, that would be fine, but there’s a whole genre of YouTube videos where people learn that’s not how it works and get arrested for it. Absolutely you should not be giving this as legal advice. It’s actually a common feature of that genre that people will while they are being arrested cite what people like you on the internet told them, as where they got their legal knowledge, and sort of ask for a do-over now that they understand that they can actually be arrested because of following that advice. I have never seen the police agree to the do-over.

1. Yes, they definitely shouldn’t have hit that man in the face. Hopefully the cop gets in trouble for it, but it’s Florida, so maybe not.
2. If the cops ask you to get out of the car, and you sit with your arms folded and ask to speak to a supervisor, you’re going to get dragged out of the car and thrown on the ground and get some extra charges. That’s what they are allowed to do. My guess is that what preceded that was them asking for his ID (which they’re also allowed to do) and him refusing to give it. Generally that’s the way things escalate from traffic stop -> broken window -> violent arrest.

I’m not saying he should quit and go home and start watching YouTube videos while the world around him collapses into fascism. I’m saying he should fight.

Lots of federal employees did the “Okay, fire me then” game when Trump demanded various things from them. It still takes time, effort, and organization to fill the roles they left behind. It slows things down. You can sue the administration for their blatantly illegal attempt to remove you. You can show up with a megaphone outside the office, now yelling about how it’s a power grab. You can do something other than just going along with it.

This isn’t even “just following orders,” because he clearly knows it’s wrong. But, he’s still putting people on cattle cars, because they told him if he didn’t, he’d lose his job. THE RIGHT ANSWER IN THAT SITUATION IS, EVEN IF NO OTHER OPTION IS AVAILABLE, TO LOSE YOUR FUCKING JOB.

You fucking ass hole.

Sure, people are getting snatched and sent away, to never see their families, maybe never taste freedom again, and in the meantime torture. But if someone wants to remove you from office, all of a sudden it’s a problem.