But I can make an observation about federal judges in general: by and large, their primary goal in civil cases is to make them go away as quickly as possible.

That’s not Judge Harmon. I almost had to mandamus her when she refused to default a defendant for 21 months.

Where I’m having trouble in NOT crediting the cops with malice is they “mis-entered” a license plate number that “just happens” to coincide with a stolen vehicle of the same make, model, and presumably, color scheme. Now I grant that such an incredible coincidence is possible.

So why didn’t the police trot out a record of that search? And let the public decide whether or not such a “mis-entry” is anywhere in the realm of probability. And if it is not, then we come to the conclusion that it was deliberately “mis-entered” for the purpose of escalating the situation to a “legitimate” felony stop, and that is illegal detention under color of law. And everything that proceeds from that is also done under color of law. And illegal actions, done under color of law, particularly where physical harm is done, is a Federal crime.

I hope the appeal is successful, because if anyone deserves to be reduced to penury for the rest of their days in lieu of a prison sentence, it is cops that indulge in these kinds of procedural games.

For example, there is serious doubt that the cop who called in the license plate made an honest mistake. It is possible they were looking for an excuse to escalate the situation “legally.”

At any rate, there will be another Black in Texas story along soon to replace this one. I guarantee it.

How, exactly, would that work? Should the cop just take you at your word when you tell him that you didn’t steal the car, turn around and drive off?

Or are you saying that only in situations where the suspect’s mom says he didn’t break any laws that they should take her at her word and leave?

They had to investigate this. Does anyone really think that they shouldn’t have?

What should they have done?

And your answer should not be “they shouldn’t have called in the wrong license plate in the first place” unless you’ve never once made a mistake in your life.

Everything beyond that is he said/she said. Did the mother assault the cop? Did the kid assault the cop? If yes to both, then this thing went down about as well as any sane person involved could imagine it went.

If the answer is “no” then a miscarriage of justice has just occured and you are all correct – the cops did horrible wrong and should be punished.

Do any of you KNOW what happened? JOR seems to. Anyone else?

Because the article that I read had witnesses reporting that the mother grabbed the policeman’s gun arm. And that when the kid got up, it wasn’t a polite protest – he rushed the cop. To me, if that is what happened, the result of the situation is pretty much as I would expect. The cop tried to restrain the mother using overpowering physical force (which would be totally legal for him to do even if he was a civilian under similar circumstances if a person assaulted him). When the kid saw this, he rushed the officer. The officer shot him. Again, something he could legally do even as a private citizen under threat of bodily injury.

How, exaclty, am I wrong?

If it had been left at that, and the folks had just gritted their teeth and gone along with it, it wouldn’t have taken long for the cops to realize their mistake and move on. The fact that the kid got shot is partially on him, is all I’m trying to say.

@ #74 JOR – I’m not even sure what you’re trying to say, but you pretty much lost me when you started calling names at the end. I’m not sure how it is that you think I got the morality and the practicality of the situation confused. Maybe you should take some reading comprehension classes or something, because you certainly need some help in drafting a coherent argument. Possibly that is your problem. Oh, and go fuck yourself.

One can’t control an encounter with a State agent, but one can control how one reacts to the encounter. Like it or not, people make decisions, often emotionally and irrationally. Acting on emotion can have disastrous results, as this blog proves daily.

I agree with Goober that it is foolish to resist a State agent who controls the situation. I agree with JOR that this should not affect moral judgment of the situation, and that State tyranny should be resisted if one so desires. If one were to resist a State agent, one should be the initiator of resistance and control the circumstances of the encounter, not react to an immediate provocation by a State agent.

BTW, that last course of action is probably suicidal in 21st-Century America.

I counter that smaller populations are not necessarily more oppressive, though it is possible and even likely that they are. And freedom is not easily quantifiable.

In my extreme example of solitude, that is the only instance of pure freedom. Every other cohabitation demands a compromise of freedom. Simple logic dictates that increasing population density creates more opportunities for conflict.

In your example of the hunter-gatherer oppressive society, the population density is high despite the low number of tribesmen, due to the small habitable area of their sovereignty within the surrounding wilderness (you can’t count the wilderness as habitable acreage).

The population density of a city may actually be lower than the tribal area if the sovereignty of the city covers a proportionally-greater area and there are fewer citizens per acre.

While correlation is admittedly not causation, I think population density is a strong leading indicator of how much freedom one can expect in a given situation.

It just does not follow that what a court would decide, or what is SOP for cops, should have any effect on our moral judgments (whether we think cops should be punished for a course of action, for instance). Your whole premise is an especially inane non-sequitur. We all understand that the cops are unlikely to be punished, that the state considers their actions justified, that the courts have their backs. That’s part of what we are complaining about, you fucking tool.

In actual, real life societies in places with low population density, people band together in close-knit and extremely authoritarian families, bands, tribes, etc.; there is no privacy, everything is everyone else’s business, and you’re only as free as your father/elders/owner/landlord/neighbors want you to be. They wield the power of immediate life and death over you in a way that even the nastiest modern states could only dream of. What’s more, they wield this power largely because of low population density, as there is nowhere else for you to go and still have a good chance of survival; exile is just a drawn-out execution. People historically go to cities, and the like, for freedom (both economic and social, to whatever extent it makes sense to separate those) and relative anonymity.

That’s quite different from American-bred frontierist fantasies, no doubt. Such is life.

-jcr

Shoot a gun in the middle of a desert, nothing happens.

Shot a gun in a room full of thousands of people, see what happens.

QED

http://courtweb.pamd.uscourts.gov/

I think the opinion may be there.

Side note: no, it doesn’t seem to be in GOOGLE Scholar, but, yes, I know that will be the good tool for us going fwd.

Where in the hell did I say it was right? In fact, i recall numerous times saying it is totally f-ed up beyond recognition, but that it is the situation at hand, and if you don’t want to get your ass shot, then you’d better not resist.

Is there really that much of a cognitive discord on this forum that there is a huge difference between the way things should be and the way things are?

No jury will defend you if you resist against a cop. It ain’t happening, unless the planets align and the singularity occurs all at the same time. And that’s if you survive the resistance to begin with.

We have judges saying that you are required to allow cops to enter your home illegally without resisting them, for chrissakes. How can any of you possibly think that you’ll be able to resist a cop and not get screwed as a result?

No, I didn’t miss the point. I followed it perfectly. If you want to go into a courtroom, and you are 98% right and 2% wrong, you are still wrong. That’s the way it works right now when you are going up against commissioned peace officers.

Resisting the officer’s actions when they were, at least originally, acting in good faith despite a mistake makes these folks in the wrong in the eyes of most jury members (again, assuming that what they did was actual resistance. There are two stories flitting about, one where they did and one where they didn’t.).

If they were 100% right, and hadn’t resisted, their chances in court would have been much, much better.

As for whether it should be that way or not, you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. The fact is, right now, the way things currently are, you are risking your own life if you resist in any way, and you’re also givng up your ability to take the high road in a court of law. Most people believe that police officers act in good faith at all times, so a jury isn’t going to feel sorry for you if you resist.

The same goes for the recent case where cops entered a home illegally and the guy resisted. He was 100% in the right, but he is still going to lose in the end (and I note that he did exactly that). It is the way things are.

Look at it from the police officer’s point of view, given their training. First and foremost, they want to secure the scene. That means get the people in what you think is a stolen car out of the car and on the ground in handcuffs. Anyone interfering with that effort is drawing out the period of time that you are at risk of the un-handcuffed suspect doing something bad in your direction. They hear “It’s not stolen, officer, really. it’s my car!” all the time, and 9 times out of 10, it is totally bogus, so the idea that they holster their weapons and apologize instantly once the mother comes out claiming it’s her car is naive at best. Once everythign is secure, and the suspects are in handcuffs, then you find the facts. My guess is that the mother could have explained that it was her car, provided proof, and they would have figured out in a handful of minutes that it was a big misunderstanding and everyone goes home without bullets in their liver.

The entire case hinges on whether the mother came out and interfered, or if she was calmly talking to the officers from a distance. If it was the latter, then the officer did wrong. But what did the jury hear? Who did they believe? What did the film footage from teh dash cam show? Do you know? I don’t. The jury probably did.

When the same thing happened to my buddy, as previously mentioned, he followed the officer’s orders (at gunpoint, I might add) and it took a grand total of 10 minutes after the incident started for them to let him walk away with an apology for the mix-up. Was he pissed? Yup. Was it messed up? Totally. But what are you going to do about it besides get shot?