Just not the civilised parts of the world…
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This is why you’re bumping heads. You’re insisting based on legal definitions in a discussion based on moral arguments, which by the way have far more to do with the greater context being discussed than whether or not police can technically take an action. The right or wrong of the action is what defines the language, where you assume the opposite.
It’s not pessimistic in the least. The extreme behaviour could be eating ice cream or hand-washing. Both those things were not so far back so uncommon that our standards of them today would be considered extreme. Exits and alterations occur daily & preserve us all.
It is a huge jump to compare curfew enforcement and what is thought of as the most repugnant portions of the holocaust, but that isn’t what is being compared is it? What’s being held against each other is one example of a lawful order against another and the only facet being compared is merely illustrated by the context of each example. That facet being that they are both lawful.
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I’m keen on it, because OP and several commenters have suggested that the arrest was unlawful and amounted to kidnapping. Frame it differently and whether the police had the authority to do what they did indeed becomes irrelevant.
The courts have little to do with justice or right and wrong. The courts deal solely with the law.
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Actually, if you have just broken a law and owe them a fine, you can’t or don’t want to pay up on the spot, why shouldn’t they ask you for your papers?
If you don’t have any, they should use other means to confirm your identify, including, but not limited to, asking the guy next to you whether he knows you, looking into your eyes in order to guess whether you are trustworthy, and giving you a ride home to where you keep their papers. The last one is technically an arrest. Of course, they’d need a pretty good excuse to keep you for more than an hour.
Basically, if police decide that I owe them a 50$ fine, I can either pay up or challenge that in court. It’ll take at least a few days for the court to decide that I don’t need to pay after all. It’s not worth 50 dollars to wait in a prison cell. If my identity is known and confirmed, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be free to go wherever I please.
Compared to many parts of the world, Iran is a rich, progressive and democratic country. What was your point about the US police system again? Actually, it looks like “the US police system is quite well run” is exactly the point that @Brunel was contradicting.
Again: compared to many parts of the world, the US police system is quite well run. I’ll type it a few more times if it was hard to read the first time.
I like how all the reporter has to say is “oh, uh”, then continues with the broadcast.
Yes, compared to “many parts of the world”, the US police system is quite “well run”. That is true. But the only reason why this statement is true is that there are quite a few failed states and quite a few police states in the world. So yes, the US police is better than police in those countries.
I understood the content of your statement, but not its point. How is it worth noting, that the US, one of the richest countries on the planet, the oldest modern democracy, and a nation that has understood itself as the “land of the free” from the day of its founding, is better than the worst places on Earth?
Compared to the police systems of other rich, democratic countries, how well is the US police system doing?
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As I wasn’t making that comparison, I guess you’d be a better choice to answer that question. The OP was lamenting the state of America’s police. I was asking them to compare it to other police systems as a sort of statement to its quality. That’s all. Anything else you read into that statement isn’t my concern, and I’m not prepared to compare democratic police systems worldwide.
Wrong procedure.
(1) The cops suspect you of breaking a law. Only a judge (and jury, unless both sides agree to a bench trial) decides that I’ve broken it.
(2) In what jurisdiction do the cops collect a fine on the spot? They give me a summons to appear in court. If I decide to plead guilty, I file the notice of appearance, send the money to the court, and they deem bail forfeited and waive appearance. A cop collecting a “fine” at the scene is shaking me down for a bribe - and I don’t believe that the bribe is making it into the system as a fine. If he bellieves that I’m a flight risk, let him take me downtown and convince a judge to order bail.
(3) There’s no law saying that I have to have my papers on me to leave my house. It seems that all cops “know” that there is one, and cite routinely for “failure to identify,” but no state has a law requiring production of ID to a cop on demand. Even the Hiibel case turned on Hiibel’s refusal to state his name, not on refusal to produce papers.
(4) “Take me home to check my papers.” There’s no law that even says I have to get a government-issued photo ID, other than to pursue certain activities. (I don’t need a driver’s license if I’m not behind the wheel. I don’t need proof of age if I’m not buying booze or tobacco. And so on.)
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Dear Holy Spaghetti, what’s the deal with all the bootlickers in this thread?
The National Institute of Justice has defined use-of-force.
Law enforcement officers should use only the amount of force necessary to mitigate an incident, make an arrest, or protect themselves or others from harm. The levels, or continuum, of force police use include basic verbal and physical restraint, less-lethal force, and lethal force.
I watched the video muted, so if there was any attempt to use verbalization to de-escalate or arrest, it isn’t apparent from body language. What I did see is an unarmed, nonviolent citizen getting bum-rushed while he wasn’t looking by at least 4 officers in riot gear. At least one of the officers slammed a riot shield into him.
That’s undue force. It’s wrong. The Baltimore Sun has been ALL OVER it. It’s wrong, and it’s been going on for at least 25 years.
Such a brazen deployment of excessive force does nothing to help the Baltimore PD achieve this part of their mission:
The Baltimore Police Department will develop and maintain relationships of trust with all members of the Baltimore community and work collaboratively with other organizations to solve community problems.
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The activist was telling the media to disperse and the media was blowing him off because they were exempt from the curfew as long as they didn’t get in the way, which they weren’t. He was out past curfew and the curfew applied to him, not because he is black, but because he is a citizen of Baltimore.
Umm… to a police station? To be processed for violating curfew?
Isn’t this, like, the second or third curfew in the US this year?
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Isn’t that an Executive Branch agency? The Executive Branch is run by Obama, and everyone knows he’s a liberal, and a Muslim, and stole the election. Why should we believe anything they say?
(Poe’s Law, people!)
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Alright, I’ll ask the question; What does a third world dictatorship snatch-squad arrest look like to you? In what practical ways is it visually different to what happened to Kent.
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No, not wrong procedure. But you misunderstood me: I didn’t say “This is how it should be done according to American law”; I meant, “This is how I think it should be done.” And this opinion of mine is based of how things work in my own country, Austria. Feel free to disagree, but I feel more free with the way we do it.
I’ll provide some more background.
We taking about what Austrian law calls “administrative penalties”, which includes things like traffic violations, “failure to disperse”, etc. are found. The “real” crimes are dealt with by different procedure. Administrative law penalties basically go up to a couple of thousand euros, but are usually much less.
(1) The cops assert that I’m breaking the law. I get to say “yes, that’s right, you caught me”, or “no, that is not true, I want a judge to hear the case”. There’s no reason to go through a lot of bureaucracy for a guilty plea.
(2) In Austria, and I guess in some other European jurisdictions. Police don’t shake down people for bribes in Austria, but to make sure that they don’t, there has to be proper paperwork done on the spot. And it’s only allowed for small fines up to 90EUR. And it’s soooo much more convenient. There’s no penalty for not settling on the spot, though.
Only when you don’t pay up within the 14 days or something that they’ll give you, charges are forwarded to the court. That keeps costs down without sacrificing any legal protection.
(3) Of course not. Austrian law specifies that a cop must have good reasons (enumerated in the law) to even ask my name; I am required by law to help in the process of “being identified”. That does not necessarily include government-issued ID; even if there is the reasonable suspicion that I might by lying, any evidence that I am who I say I am will do.
(4) There’s no law requiring me to own ID in Austria, either, but everyone over the age of 12 is very likely to own a passport, anyway, so the issue doesn’t really arise. But if I’m caught red-handed breaking some minor law, I’d rather show my ID than be ordered to post bail by a judge who can’t be sure I am who I say I am, either.
The real difference between the systems is negligible.
There seems to be a strong tradition against requiring ID in English-speaking nations; I somehow get the impression that you prefer for people to be hauled off to jail for a night or two until there is a proper bail hearing to just checking an ID document and sending them home.
Which puzzles me, especially when we are considering offences where “a night or two” is already quite an excessive punishment for the “crime” committed.
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David Simon on why Baltimore is fucked.
Too many officers who came up in a culture that taught them not the hard job of policing, but simply how to roam the city, jack everyone up, and call for the wagon.
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You are correct, I misinterpreted the video. That being said, your bias is clear since you included this…
not because he is black, but because he is a citizen of Baltimore.
…but I didn’t say once that they arrested him because he’s black. Seems like you’re pretty keen to reinforce that this isn’t race-based, while I don’t think anyone in this thread has said as much.
Don’t bother asking the jerk. I’m still waiting on my requested video that looks in any way like this arrest, which is allegedly totally normal in his parallel universe. Dude’s just talking out of his arse and running away when asked for any kind of proof of what he’s saying.
Stuck in the not-worth-our-time pile.
