Bad idea: driver won't sign $80 citation, drives away from cop

Angry drivers kill people.

People shouting and disobeying traffic cops, aren’t obviously safe drivers.

You’re defending a shitty driver, who looked like she was a hit-and-run asshole waiting to happen.

Why do you want to give her a pass?

5 Likes

She’d be dead.

9 Likes

FFS, I don’t think being required to sign a ticket is nazi germany. I do think that being arrested for not signing a ticket is an overreach of the police. If it’s illegal to not sign the ticket, issue another citation for that. If she doesn’t show in court, she can be tried in abstentia and get a warrant issued for her arrest at that point.
I’m not a fan of cops shooting black kids, either. In fact, there are very few people that I am in favor of the cops shooting. I’d like to be able to call the cops for help without worrying that the folks I’m trying to get help to will be dead instead. And those cages for children are a(nother) stain on our nation in a long, sad history of similar travesties. I know fully open borders are problematic, but I don’t see any argument against them that isn’t at its core racist.
The common thread here is that I think that cops are treading too heavily on all of us. Of course POC get the brunt of that, but I call bullshit on it when it happens to anyone. With their guns, tasers, batons, thin blue line, and prosecutors that won’t send them to jail when they’ve clearly committed crimes, they see every problem as one to be solved with physical violence. My contention is that, even in the cases of entitled white folks like this crazy lady who absolutely made many mistakes and was acting the fool, the police could commit to de-escalating more and we would all be better off for it.

1 Like

I don’t want to give her a pass. Hell, give her a ticket for verbal abuse of the cop if your First Amendment filter is set too low. Then the courts can fine her for it. All without anyone being thrown on the ground. Win/win!

She ran from the cop, which is misdemeanor resisting, then she kicked him in the fucking leg which is most assuredly a felony.

Glad to know you consider this something protected by the first amendment. BRB, gonna try to kick a cop in the nuts…

6 Likes

You’re right. “Anything short of…” was not a fair assessment.

Driving off was after the cop said she was going to be arrested for not signing a piece of paper. I don’t mean to say that there should be no consequence for driving off or kicking him. I’m saying he should have de-escalated before it ever got to that point. And she sure as hell should not have done either of those things.

Okay, so you say she should have gotten an additional charge on top of what she already got?

2 Likes

I’d be OK with an additional citation on top of the defective equipment - instead of escalating to the point where she’s got a misdemeanor evading and felony assault.

If she was walking down the street, I’d agree with you. Cops are definitely known to over-indulge their authoritarian tendencies.

She was behind the wheel. She was a danger to more than herself.

The reason people pay attention to traffic citations is they can give a historical record of what kind of driver the person might be when they’re not caught.

If a person is as belligerent as this woman was in this instance, how can you tell me the cop would have had confidence that this driver wouldn’t be worse to other drivers, or a hit pedestrian, or any other normal driving interaction.

I bet he was arresting her to get her to the station for a breathalyzer, or at least a time-out from being on the road in anger. That’s what the cops should do when confronted with drivers acting irresponsibly or operating a vehicle with insufficient chill.

Your way sounds like you’d let more drunk people drive, just to keep the peace. Plenty of them say “No I’m not arrested”, too, I bet.

6 Likes

I mean I don’t see how he escalated the situation but that’s just me.

I’m not a fan of cops.

She was issued a citation/summons and asked to sign the acknowledgement she’d received it with the legal options for disposing it. She refused. That means she’s choosing to ignore the law. He has a duty to arrest her at this point. He informs her she’s under arrest. She resists. He continues to try to arrest her, she resists with force. He responds with very measured force considering, and makes the arrest.

All aspects of this situation were escalated by her. Now, I’d agree that there weren’t really many attempts at de-escalation and there obviously should be a better way of handling this, and potentially an arrest is just too much for the situation at hand… but I don’t think the officer did anything to personally escalate the situation, he just kept having to rise to the level that the situation was escalated by her.

4 Likes

Again… she drove away.

6 Likes

Again, she shouldn’t have driven off. We agree on that. The problem is before that, though.
At 0:20, she says she doesn’t want to sign and explains her stupid-ass reasons for not wanting to sign. His only response to that, at 0:30, is “Step out of the vehicle”. She asks why, he says she’s under arrest.

He’s not arresting her for driving off. He’s not arresting her for refusing to get out of her car. He’s not arresting her for kicking him in the crotch. He’s arresting her for refusing to sign a piece of paper.

I totally get that there are jurisdictions that require a signature, and that failure to do so is an arrest-able offense. I think those are stupid laws, though. And I think that this moment when he says, “Step out of the vehicle” is the root of the problem. Even if I grant that refusing to sign the ticket is a just reason for arrest, all he had to do was tell her that refusing to sign it would lead to her arrest. Just a simple warning that if she did not comply with his order to sign the ticket, he would bring to bear the full weight of the state’s authority to deprive her of her liberty.

Dangerous belligerent driver.

After clear evidence ignoring yelling at traffic cop.

Refuses to get out of car or turn off engine.

Answer a single question: How should cops remove drunk drivers from the road?

“Step out of the vehicle” is absolutely mandatory. Do you even drive?

4 Likes

Here’s a picture of the truck she was pulled over in.

Anyone wondering why the cop was trying to get her out of this fucked up truck can please desist from making themselves sound like fools…

10 Likes

She is only told to get out of the car because he is placing her under arrest for refusing to sign the ticket.
I must be doing a piss-poor job of explaining myself here. How should cops remove drivers from the road? Any means necessary, I suppose. But here’s a single question for you: Is the danger posed to the public by a drunk driver equivalent to the danger posed by a driver who refuses to sign a ticket?
She definitely should have stepped out of the vehicle when he told her to. At that point, she’s already being arrested and no amount of yelling or denial or even stating your case rationally will ever change that. But he shouldn’t have told her to step out of the vehicle, because refusing to sign a ticket should not be an arrest-able offense. “You don’t want to sign it? Ok, sure. See you in court. Adios”. If he’s somehow required to arrest people for refusing to sign a ticket, how about something like, “If you refuse to sign the ticket I am required to arrest you.”

1 Like

The cop was going to let her drive off in this truck if she signed the ticket, so I don’t see what the fucked-up-edness of the truck has to do with anything.

1 Like

Broken taillight? Broken tailGATE!

8 Likes

False. That tipped it, but it’s the obvious delinquency of her truck, combined with her responses to the cop, and then she refused to sign. You’re confusing the last straw with the pile on the camel’s back at that point. It’s never been “arrested for not signing a single piece of paper”. The cop could have had her towed and she was acting like her truck was fiiiiine. It might have been okay to drive home, but the cop was being lenient with a driver who drove it like that for an admitted six months.

Cops can’t tell if all drunk drivers are drunk just by looking at them through the window. Tell me her blood alcohol percentage in that video. If you can’t then don’t tell me the cop could rule it out.

Illogical belligerence is a red flag for traffic cops for drinking or other driving impairments (stroke, medications, grief, etc.) I don’t know what underlying issue meant she thought she could tell a cop they were full of shit, but neither do you, and neither did that cop. He was right to ask her to stop driving, when it was clear she was not acting like a calm reasonable responsible driver.

Getting out of the vehicle is mandatory if a cop has reasonable belief that the person is not going to be a safe driver in the immediate future. You can’t tell me she presented as a low-risk driver.

Setting aside what you may or may not be able to see, the fucked-up-ness of the truck means the cop was clearly letting her off easy and she aggressively acted like no law would apply to her sovereign person without her consent. That’s more than one red flag.

This woman is rightly off the road. It’s pretty easy to see how she’d endanger other people if she brought this level of “responsible driving” to a car accident with a random person, instead of a cop with a body cam to record it.

8 Likes

In 1995, I drove through Linndale, Ohio, a city that has been sued for speed traps and heavy-handed ticketing, with a crack in my rear tail light. The cop wrote me a $75 ticket, and lectured me because taillights are important. Someone driving behind me might see a white light coming from the crack and think it’s an oncoming driver. His last remark was, “If you want, you can argue it in court.”
I thought, it’s just a crack! and if I get it fixed, it’ll be fine!
Mayor’s court saw me being lectured for not believing the policeman when he told me how important it was, having it fixed what what I should have done immediately, and now I get to pay $85 court costs, for the privilege of being lectured.
First and last time I a)questioned a cop when I was pulled over and b) tried to fight the law.

insert your favorite cover of " I Fought the Law and the Law Won"

6 Likes