Police brutality

In some cases you have an absolute right to disobey police officers. I don't know the specifics of this individual case and what I read above is horrible, but it's a huge mistake that many people make to think just because a police officer orders you to do something you must comply. Many times, especially on traffic stops (I am talking about the UK because that's more my experience) police bark out all sorts of incorrect and sometimes illegal orders.

One obvious example of a police order you have no legal obligation to obey is if they ask for your name and address. I think this is the same in the U.S. (presenting ID) and the UK. Only if a crime is suspected are you required to provide this information. Still, police officers, who actually are not amazing at understanding the law, believe they can demand your name and address and you must give it. If you refuse, they will threaten all kinds of bullshit and try to escalate the situation to justify their own error.

Whenever a police officer in the UK has asked me for my name and/or address I flatly refuse. Sometimes they will get annoyed by this and try to push it, which is when you stay completely calm, keep refusing, and also whip out your camera for good measure. It's never got that far with me as the few times it has happened after a brief discussion the police moved on.

This is the account in the NYT today:

The officer [who used pepper spray], Joe Gutierrez, was terminated for his role in the Dec. 5 encounter involving Caron Nazario, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps....

Lieutenant Nazario was driving to Petersburg, Va., from a drill weekend the night of Dec. 5 when he saw police lights flashing behind him.

According to the lawsuit and video footage of the encounter, Lieutenant Nazario, who is Black and Latino, drove about a mile to a gas station because he had been nervous about stopping on a darkened road.

“Get out of the car,” one officer can be heard yelling as Lieutenant Nazario, remaining seated, repeatedly asks why he has been stopped and why the officers have drawn their guns. He positions his empty hands outside the window.

“I’m honestly afraid to get out of the car,” Lieutenant Nazario says.

“Yeah,” says Mr. Gutierrez, according to footage from his body camera. “You should be.”

Lieutenant Nazario was wearing his Army uniform at the time.

“I’m serving this country and this is how I’m treated?” he says. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is you’re fixing to ride the lightning, son,” Mr. Gutierrez yells.

After he was sprayed, Lieutenant Nazario began crying and cursing.

The police officers did not arrest Lieutenant Nazario and did not file charges.

In a report from that night, the officers said they had pulled over Lieutenant Nazario because his S.U.V. did not have license plates. Lieutenant Nazario said he had recently bought a Chevrolet Tahoe and was waiting for license plates. Temporary ones had been taped inside the rear window and were visible, according to the lawsuit.

(NYT, 14 April 2021)

Yet another US police shooting is doing the media rounds. This time in Chicago where a 13 year old was seen with a gun, chased then shot dead.....too bad.

Surely if the general public are walking about in the streets waving guns it shouldn't be a surprise if the police shoot 'em dead? Crazy country if you ask me.

Quote from Semigoodlooking

Whenever a police officer in the UK has asked me for my name and/or address I flatly refuse.

Under what circumstances have you been asked by police for your name and address? I only ask as you make it sound as if it's happened several times.

Quote from UK Man

Yet another US police shooting is doing the media rounds. This time in Chicago where a 13 year old was seen with a gun, chased then shot dead.....too bad.

Surely if the general public are walking about in the streets waving guns it shouldn't be a surprise if the police shoot 'em dead? Crazy country if you ask me.

---

Under what circumstances have you been asked by police for your name and address? I only ask as you make it sound as if it's happened several times.

It has happened several times when I was younger. Police hate loitering teens. Of course, I can see why now but even so no crimes were being committed.

Since I have been older, two times I have been asked for name/address. Once when I was in Cardiff and there was some homeless guy causing trouble and several people, me included calmed him down until police came. They asked everyone involved for name and address. They didn't even arrest the homeless fellow so it was not for witness contacts or anything.

Another time my boss fell asleep while we were driving and he got pulled. I was a passenger and the copper asked for my name and address.

On a slight detour, that boss was hilarious because he had mild narcolepsy so would fall asleep all the time. Yet, he would insist on driving, so many times we would get pulled over because the cops thought he was drunk. We used to be driving down roads and we would see him just drift off to sleep. On less dangerous roads (like a long straight on a mountain pass in Wales) we would just let him have his two minutes. When I was a teenager, that same man used to live near my house. In the early hours of the morning when it was raining and we were out and needed somehwere to go, we would go in his house because we knew he always fell asleep and forget to lock his door. He would wake up in the morning and wouldn't care we were in his house. I found him sleeping on the toilet once in the nude. He was probably going to have a shower but fell asleep. Great big fat man he was (I know you can't call people fat anymore, but he was)... lost all that weight now though.

I don't know the specifics here regarding whether police are able to demand your ID. In the U.S. they are not, unless there a crime is suspected. You can have a quick look around YouTube and find videos of people refusing to present ID or give name/address in both the U.S. and UK. Some of these videos are clearly the person just antogonizing the police, but some are enlightening and show the police usually don't really know the law and quickly become hostile when challenged.

You may be thinking why not just give your name, address, or ID and just move on with your day. That's fine, but I think people are entitled to their privacy from the police.

I don’t think this hatemonger has a fair point about George Floyd’s criminal background: the major point here is that police simply aren’t allowed to murder apprehended suspects.

Giving him airspace and, frankly, increasing his internet presence serves only to deepen the divide being experienced around the world. Since this Australian has such an interest in telling the US what to do, and he purports to be

supporting the police against those who disregard law and order, why is he silently supporting the US Capitol insurrectionists who brutally beat policemen in their drive to upend the government of the United States?

And, as a minor point, with all the ‘cognitive decline’ examples he had to choose from during the former president’s disinfectant-injecting rants (remember ‘cofeve?’), he seriously chooses a fragment of the current president’s sentence, to try to claim dementia?

Criticisms of the mainstream media are laughable if we actually choose to give credence to imitation “journalists” like this Murdoch wannabe.

There is, indeed, always another side. At least one. We need to be careful about considering the agenda of our chosen sources before unwittingly allowing ourselves to be used to spread biases we don’t necessarily share.

Were this the 1930’s, would we let ourselves be used to spread propaganda coming from fascists or nazis? Has history taught us to be reluctant to be used for lesser propaganda on the internet today? Democracy is in crisis, around the world, and requires our vigilance.

Were I leading the BLM movement, I would surely wish for a martyred nun to be the face on the poster. But I would also doggedly stick to the point that this man, arrested for passing along a $20 bill (incidentally, not a capital offense), should not have been executed for that crime by a policeman sworn to uphold the law, not to appoint himself judge, jury and executioner.

Really shocking.

I remember having lost my way in a small town in Kentucky,

It was late, 10 PM, and I did two turns in the main plaza of the town, Inmediately I was stopped by a Police car and an officer in a very rude way asked me to shoe him my ID, accused me to doing "marauding".I never imagined that this was a suspicion to planning a crime.

Fortunately I showed my passport and Visa and the policeman let me go, without any more.

Perhaps they are not familiar with tourist, which often lost their way.

Marauding is not a class of crime here in Argentina,

I had never hear the word marauding. In Argentina, it is called looking for opportunities! 

A past time played by many people from the province on Saturdays here in Palermo Soho.

We went out for a coffee, and in the 5 minutes we were sat outdoor we were approached twice by beggars (a mother with two kids and a disabled man). Many people in the area are simply lying on the sidewalk sleeping, chatting, drinking and looking for opportunities...

Marauding is not a crime I’ve ever heard of in the US.

What SHOULD be a crime is police overreach and bullying.

What IS a crime is police brutality, and, thanks to video evidence, these 5 will go to prison for a long, long time.

This says a lot about police brutality in the US

The person in the video is normally a web developer/tutor

I’d be interested in seeing the data that he quotes.