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Football player Tyreek Hill was arrested the other day during a traffic stop. Because he refused to keep his tinted windows rolled down for the officers, they commanded him to get out of the vehicle. Because he refused to get out of the vehicle, the officers forced him to the ground for a detainment. In Florida, officers have the right to command you to keep the window low enough for (1) communication and (2) officer safety. This appears to be a universally agreed upon fact before this event, as for instance in a video by a criminal defense attorney specifically about a Floridian just two weeks ago, and in legal advice proffered online just a month ago.
Let us assume that the officers knew who Tyrell Hill was, which isn’t a given because of the arresting officer’s thick Latino accent. They would have every reason to treat him with precaution because of his domestic violence and assault record, meaning that a concern for officer safety is legitimate despite the subject’s fame. And really, even thinking about a subject’s level of fame before enacting a law or police procedure should make us recoil. We don’t want to do that, right? We should treat everyone the same. The typical talking heads, of course, are calling this police brutality.
I am interested in how this scene would be treated if the subject were of a different appearance and nature. Tyreek, a 1%er super-wealthy person of privilege, is extremely rude to a working class minority police officer. Let’s imagine some white CEO stammering to the minority police officer, “don’t knock on my window… I’m going to be late… don’t tell me what to do!”, while ignoring the officer’s requests. We would all agree that this behavior is unacceptable. We would rightfully delight in his retribution, being placed on the ground in subservience to the Law. The comments would read like, “white man realizes the law applies to him”. But Tyreek, a (former) criminal, has a social privilege that would never be afforded to a white CEO: he is a star athlete and the public implicitly expects less of him because of his genetic nature. I can understand the public behaving like the public, but it’s annoying to see media figures excusing the behavior, too.
The police in this case have that "when I say jump you say how high" mentality. Which isn't totally unreasonable but also you don't need to shove a guy onto the ground because he's moderately uncooperative/bitchy. Like at one point they ask him to sit down, he says hold on, and a cop shoves him down, and this is after he's been handcuffed. It's not some super shocking police brutality but just kinda unnecessary.
Would your mentality be different?
I've posted about this before. Watch police bodycam videos. The speed at which ho-hum traffic stops turns into "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" is frightening. One of the things cops are doing is assessing how compliant you're being. If you're being compliant, they can make some assumptions about the next 15 - 30 seconds. If you're not, they're operating on the assumption of "this could go bad right now."
It's interesting how this "moderate" lack of compliance often precedes attempted lethal violence. The number of criminals saying, "I'm going to reach for my gun and shoot you after the count of 10" keeps declining every year.
"but just kinda unnecessary."
Funny how "unnecessary" a lot of actions become when the conditions for death are present. Again, your average patrol cop is dealing with so many unknowns where the penalty for misjudging them tends towards loss of your own life, your partners life, maiming, or endangering other bystanders. Offending the sensitives of a single individual as a rough hedge against those other outcomes seems like a pretty obvious tradeoff, no?
For everyone who thinks that police are predisposed to tyrannical behavior and/or are drunk on power, I would offer that their job description is "interact with highly emotionally activated individuals on a daily basis, often with a very real threat of violence."
Well, nobody is forced to be a police officer and interact with "highly emotionally activated individuals" on a daily basis. I'm still in favour of giving police at most the right to violent self-defence that the normal person gets (except perhaps no duty to retreat), and perhaps even less on account of having special privileges and hence responsibility. If any existing police are unhappy with these terms, they should be fired and replaced with new hires who are; in the event that there is then actually some difficulty filling police positions (which would surprise me) we could discuss next steps.
Surprise!
Follow the logical outcomes. If we tell police officers "If you don't like it, you can quit" some amount of them will. People (despite what they post on social media) want police. That means we have to re-fill those police positions that have quit. Who takes the job? We've already self-selected out the median reasonable person, right?
You see where I'm going. This becomes a doom loop down. Throw in the fact that being a cop doesn't exactly pay great and you're getting people who aren't really meant for the job taking the job. The primary issue I see it cops today is pretty plain - many are obese.
If you create a working environment that is extreme, you get extreme (in one direction on the other) candidates filling those roles. In some cases, this is preferred - you want high performers or the deeply committed. In policing, I would argue you want something like "the modal reasonable person" as a cop.
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