He has every right to be defensive. The situation is grossly disproportionate in terms of possible outcomes; the police have guns and immediately demonstrated a willingness to bully and lie, immediately destroying any benefit of the doubt as to their good intentions. The worst-case scenario for that driver is orders of magnitude worse than that for the police in this scenario, and that’s fucking terrifying.
Yes - the followup officer was much more reasonable, but he knew that the person in the car was aware of his actual rights and wasn’t easily cowed or lied to; the 2nd cop realized that he had better make nice. And good for him! When your co-worker screws up, it’s nice to know there are others who can recognize the issue and try to make up for the deficit.
I wish the police in general would learn that assholes like that first copy drag the rest of the department down. A tiny fraction of police officers are like that (I have never met one in person - but I live in an affluent white community) - but they screw up things for every cop, causing people to distrust all police officers. The bad apples need more than a reprimand - they need to be removed from duty, for the good of the department and the reputation it should be able to rely on.
Agreed; that’s what I was trying to get across. I didn’t know that “broken window policing” was a thing, only that cops (e.g., in NY) were doing the “stop and frisk” and targeting minorities. Thanks for the education.
Sort of, but the sousveillance narrative internalizes the norm of being the inferior. That’s distinct from citizens confronting police and government from the perspective that as public servants, they are directly accountable to the public. Government, and by extension police, get what authority they arguably have from the public. Of course it would be naive to expect them to acknowledge this - but that’s why it’s folly to let them define the narrative.
You mean the one who first appears to assume out of the blue that there’s “history on the car” from it being “stopped a lot”, then goes on to say “we’re gonna wait for the K9 because I dunno if he might have dumped something under the seat and you don’t want us to look” and then acted all shocked and defensive when the driver took that as a possible indication that they would treat anything that might be found as being associated with the driver?
Yeah, the driver is totally the one being antagonistic in that conversation.
Oddly we were talking earlier today of the scam that is law school*, where one person who will never have the earning capability ends up doing minimum wage jobs to pay off the debt because they can’t succeed as a lawyer, while another who is well suited to the job will be debt free in a very few years. Unless you really, really have the aptitude it’s a very high risk occupation.
*One of the lawyers in the family complaining about how unsuitable people are being admitted because, fees.
Had it not been for the officer’s “Oh a lawyer who drives for Uber?” quip, I could see that being pompous. But the officer had just sarcastically dismissed the man out of hand.
So the larger problem you have in this situation isn’t armed officers of the state providing false information to a citizen who has broken no laws, with one threatening to arrest him for breaking a law that does not exist, but rather that the citizen drove for a company you don’t like and actually challenged the officers on their incompetence.
I can’t imagine why cops think they can get away with things like this.
Imagine if he was just an uber drive who wasn’t a lawyer asserting his rights. Hell, we have the later officer saying “I think I recognize you from the courthouse.” If he hadn’t basically said “I’m an agent of the court and a lawyer,” how likely would it be that he wound up spread-eagled on his hood or with an overnight trip to county?
My first thought on this was “Wow, I have to imagine this may have played out a little differently had this particular lawyer’s melanin count been a little higher”…
Then I thought “You know, this is a really good way to use privilege.” If you’re white, and can (almost) completely depend on the cops not just shooting you outright or beating the holy hell out of you for being “uppity”, then by all means push the envelope in a way that only you may be able to get away with.
After this exposure, and a history of being censured, this single cop may have second thoughts about his behavior the next time he’s being recorded, whether it’s by a white, brown, or black person.
Not while their union rep is there at a moment’s notice defending their right to be assholes. Firing unionized government employees is extremely difficult. Unions can be very good for society, or very bad.
Hmm, let me get out my magic “make cops learn to act like self-aware and compassionate humans beam”…
To not be sarcastic, I agree, but when something is so broken, I’ll take even a small victory as being a step in the right direction.
If you can use your privilege, whatever it may be, to advance society or help a fellow human, it’s the right thing to do. And while it’s usually going to be white males, and those in relatively high privilege social spots, it strikes me that you can’t say that across the board. Say for example, if you’re a black female and you witness an idiotic racist getting the holy hell beaten out of him, but you recognize that mob justice probably isn’t the best thing, and you realize that the mob will think twice about beating a black woman, then it’s truly a compassionate thing to throw yourself on the racist to prevent his imminent maiming/death. I’m not saying that in this particular case it was a thought out plan where she realized that she was probably safe from the mob as much as it was a truly heroic unconscious act, but things would have likely gone down differently if a random white dude had tried to shield this idiot’s body with his own.
So, basically, if you have any advantages at all, in any particular situation, and you can help a fellow person, or help change society for the better, do you not have an inherent responsibility to make the attempt?
I don’t know how to multi-quote in this, but wanted to let everyone know that commented on my (in hindsight) little screed, of sorts, that everyone got a ‘like’ and I read them all, and everyone had great and fair points. I went back and listened to it again, and realized some of what I was seeing was taken out of context even though I was watching the very thing that ‘had’ all the context, as my hearing isn’t so hot, and I wasn’t really catching ‘every’ little thing each officer said, including ‘Officer 5:24 Mark’.
Additionally, while I gave my own context, that I’m male and white, I forgot to mention I’m ‘older’. Not ‘old’, just ‘older’, and that effects my opinion of things sometimes. I have a niece that in some ways is very much like the young man in the video, and after having thought about it, could have easily produced the same product given the same encounter. I’m very proud of her, and knowing most in her circle of friends share her same drive, it makes me very hopeful for the future.
In this case, what is the best way to not have been searched?
The lying cop was out to get Bright. The K9 unit is trained to “alert”, and we aren’t told what the method is so basically the cops (who we already know lie) can say the dog signaled that there are drugs and there goes the 5th amendment.
If you want to multi-quote, there are a couple of ways, but for me I usually just keep my reply window open and scroll to the right post, highlight what I want, click on the button that pops up, and it drops right into the open reply window. You can keep doing that (is there an upper limit?) until you’ve dropped in all the quotes you want to respond to.
