Sure, the guy is annoying, but the officers’ response to someone annoying them is the problem: the police can, and too often do, respond to slights with physical violence and/or arrest. They escalate a situation intentionally to raise the stakes, and then when the person jerks their arm back or tries to turn away or continues to protest, the police now have turned this into “resisting arrest” and lives can change as a result.
I think this video is really instructive, because the majority of the officers’ first instinct was to laugh this off and de-escalate, but all it took was one bad apple to react like a piss-baby and turn a nothing situation into an arrest
If the incident isn’t on video (and, hell, a lot of times when it is) the police simply claim that they were assaulted and the entire criminal justice system is programmed to take them at their word and levy consequences accordingly.
Simple assault in Washington is defined under Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 9A.36.041, and essentially amounts to (1) intentionally touching or striking another person, in a harmful or offensive way, (2) attempting to inflict injury on another, when the defendant has the apparent ability to do so, or (3) committing any act that intentionally places another person in apprehension of harm.
It is difficult to see any good-faith interpretation of that video that meets this definition.
I certainly agree with all that. However, the people needing to be reached with that message will not be swayed by this video. The videos of real people being beaten death over nothing are powerful because they reach ignorant white people.
This video was specifically crafted. As such, it is trying to convey a message. It does that poorly, IMHO, because the guy is a douche, the whole scenario is disingenuous, and the videography is terrible. Does any of that excuse the cops’ behavior? Absolutely not. However that is a nuance that will be lost on ignorant white people. If you’re going set out to craft a message with intention to reach those people, you’d better do it well or it will backfire. I’m willing to bet every ignorant white person who was moved by George Floyd would look at this and just think “stupid shit got what’s comin’ to him”. Again- to be very clear, the tactical error here is creating a video with intent that I believe will backfire. The cops are 100% in the wrong here.
Intentional communication is about meeting people where they are. These days, that generally means catering to ignorant white people. If you can’t do that, don’t set out to make a video because it will actually hurt the cause, IMHO.
I want to be careful, because I’m not saying you are engaging in this view, but I am loathe to continue to cater to the “he was no angel…” school of thought in minimizing police misconduct. If we only expect police to behave legally and reasonably when dealing with polite and pleasant people, we aren’t expecting very much out of them.
I do agree that assault does not require actually hitting the person–I’ve seen someone arrested for assault for spitting and missing and they were very surprised. As the other poster said, what we generally think of as assault is actually battery.
However, the stick is obviously being used to dangle the doughnut, it is not being used to threaten the cops. I see nothing resembling assault here.
I do have one objection, though–I’m not going to blame the second cop. The logical assumption is that his partner saw something that he missed. I’m only going to blame the one that attacked.
100% agree. I hesitated to try and make my other point for this reason. It should be absolutely okay to walk up and irritate a cop to no end. Bop his nose, make fun of his shoes, whatever. As agents of the state and carriers of guns, they must be held to a higher standard of self-control than we plebs all are. I honestly think not everyone agrees on that point though. Conservatives often trot out lines about cops being “only human” or “that would piss me off too!” as though it’s okay for gun-wielding state agents to behave like spoiled children just because the conservative speaker would.
Very true. In fact, we are ignoring MOST of their contacts during a given rough day, in any real city ^^’. People simply are not angels, en masse. If they can’t deal with a snarky guy with a pastry on a stick, then…?
If you think otherwise, explain specifically how that pastry was a hazard or particularly threatening. You are, however, going to have to roll that boulder REALLY hard, Sisyphus.
Maybe it’s just your wording, but I don’t agree: Just like it’s not OK for me to bop your nose, it’s not OK to bop a cop’s. The question is what the consequence of this misbehavior is. Cop throws the guy to the ground? Terrible, cop should be punished. Cop jokingly deescalates? Good, what should happen. Cop arrests the guy? Somewhere in the middle. Same situations but it’s not a cop? Same answers.
Fair enough. If the outrage is about the “pushy” cop (I think it’s the same one in both cases, but can’t tell for sure), I can see it. But the outrage seems to be about the arrest, which seems to be done in a controlled way to me.
Considering the nutritional content of donuts and the prevalence of metabolic disease in the US, the kid is lucky the charge wasn’t assault with a deadly weapon.
Yep. This is an almost perfect example of what people mean by “no good cops.” (It’d be more useful if the time were slightly compressed, so they could see it in 5 seconds, rather than 50, 'cuz you know ain’t nobody got time for that.)
Literally everyone present then AND in this forum, including you notably, knows he was not actually threatening the cop with a stick. Did you really think that would fly?
The cop felt his ego was threatened, nothing more, nothing less. Your excuses are rather transparent.
Yah, that’s fair. My example was needlessly goofy to make a point. Let’s say it should be okay to dangle a doughnut in front of them and say whatever you want.
Honestly, I think pretty much this degree of trouble: Getting arrested for a pretty minor violation, basically a slap on the wrist. (Although who knows these days, with Trump’s unmarked vans.) Small price to get his 15 minutes of fame, or less cynically, to make his point.
What do you imagine they expected to happen? The alternatives I can imagine are either much worse or mostly unrealistic. It felt to me like he had made his joke, and even gotten his laughs, but he was looking for more.
It’s also possible he’s a young person with not a lot of world experience under his belt yet and pushed his joke near an officer’s face 1 second longer than an adult probably would have.
