Often times versions of 'the person acted like an idiot' or 'the person just needed to comply' are used as defense for egregious police actions.

The fact of the matter is that human beings, any human beings when confronted consistently by bad abusive behaviour will not all just fall into acquiescence and good behaviour to escape the bad situation they should not be in. Some will react emotionally and give back bad behaviour.


This specific instance begins, as we see it with an Officer treating a person as a suspect for no good reason. The cop is also being very combative and snarky in tone calling him “homie”, ”boy” and “dude. That person is calling the cop 'sir' but otherwise giving as good as he gets there, and is clearly angry at the abuse from the cop.


But that is not what matters and strange that you focus on that.

It is that the cops then charge him disorderly conduct and a marijuana charge that is the abuse.

Fine you are both human, and you both did not handle this situation well that the cop started. It happens. But then walk away. Don't abuse your power as a cop to basically say 'It does not matter who started this or who is more in the wrong here, I am the cop and thus you will pay for this'.

That is the Police abuse here and all too often many people, like you do, suggest that if the person being abused reacts badly to said abuse then how it plays out after with more police abuse is no big deal.

That is sad. But sadly not uncommon.

What makes you think the cop started it? It seemed the cop became agitated because someone put a camera/light in his face at night and he responded tit for tat. He says this on camera. The cop asks why is he being followed by the civilian not the other way around.

Also the cop literally was walking away and the civilian came back to antagonize him. I don’t think that guy has a good temperament for policing but yes the civilian instigated an incident and was following the cop and being told to stay away but chose not to and some petty consequences happened. This isn’t what’s wrong with policing in America. All the bad **** that happens out there and this is what you dig up?

Like I said, the he said, she said nature of this is less interesting. They both behaved badly but the 'reporting' says the Police were following him in the neighbourhood and the cop makes it clear he does not think the guy belongs there. It certainly seems to be a case of walking while black suspicion that escalated.

Cops should be trained to deescalate situations and that is certainly not what happened here. But again the shitty back and forth is not something to be fussed about imo.

It is the jump to Charges that is the concern. If each of us had the ability to level criminal charges against anyone we had a frustrating interchange with, this society would be a mess. The power would be abused.

Police abusing it is even worse and we see all too often. Silly verbal exchanges, escalated by the police to aggressive take downs and assaults and then the person assaulted ends up charged and the cop believed.

It is a clear abuse of power. Thankfully body cams are now starting to rebalance that little and bringing to light how often the police lie and are the ones at fault as prior citizens had almost no chance against this type of abuse.

The cops are wearing body cams in this video. It would be interesting to see the body cam of this incident which likely includes how the altercation started. There is no “reporting”, some guy submitted a video to an anti-cop YouTube channel and they posted it. You think they called the station for a statement or requested bodycam to verify how this started?

Again though, the entirety on your focus seems to be on the 'shitty' engagement instead of seeing there seems to be clearly no reason for this to escalate to a physical take down and charges.

that is my point. There seems to be this desire by many to look for a 'he deserved it' reason to turn a blind eye to escalating abuse as opposed to an expectation that the police need to know how to deescalate these situations, when there is CLEARLY no merit to the conflict to begin with.

Remember citizens have no obligation to interact with the police and simply being obstinate is not a reason for the cop to escalate. We need to put more of an obligation on the Cops to walk away in these instances. They need to be trained to be the adult in the room.

I would like to see the final takedown from the bodycam as the phone drop doesn't given anything but sound.

CP I agree with the above completely but this cop clearly wanted to arrest and search this citizen and he escalated the encounter to achieve his goal. He was not trying to be the adult in the room.

And the citizen's conduct in the mind of some people justifies the takedown giving the cop cover in what would normally be a situation were the cop doesn't get to arrest his "suspect."

I disagree for this reason;

If you allow citizens to constantly harass/antagonize police how are they supposed to do their job? These aren’t cops at a protest whose job is to stand in a line and get yelled at; these guys are on patrol or leaving a call they just responded to. How can they pay attention and do their job? You have do draw a line somewhere. When the civilian was across the street he started heckling the cop, this is douche move but not a problem. When he comes back in close to antagonize the cop of course the cop has to be concerned. The civilians behavior is abnormal, there is no incident to be filmed the civilian is creating the incident with his behavior and the cop sees him approaching his space one last time and decided to arrest. It’s abnormal behavior by the civilian that led to arrest not the fact that both guys are douchebags

And that is the big picture problem few think about.

Time and time and time again these are exercises in backwards justification and that is wrong. We are looking at some reason in the engagement to justify the engagement, that should have never happened in the first place.

The cop wants a reason to engage, question and search the person. If they comply nicely the cop gets what they want. If they get pissy the cop gets even more as then that is used to justify charges and an arrest based on what is then found.

But back that up as in both instances the cop was wrong and if we fix that wrong none of this is an issue.

So saying after the fact if the person just acquiesced to the police abuse of power then all would be good, might be wise advice for the individual but it is terrible in that it just makes the Police feel that type of abuse is justified and to expand it.

This is an example of a cop who can't act professional even when he's on camera. He deserved to be razzed. He's a child pretending he can do a man's job.

The civilian is under no obligation to act a certain way and under no obligation to defer to this clown just because he has a costume on.

An adult male would have the social skills to address the civilian in a respectful manner, not call him boy or pretend he doesn't understand him.

This is all on the cop. Screw him. So the civilian did something that he could be arrested for....that's not hard. He said he was at a relatives house and if that's true he has a right to be there.

The immature racist cop's opinion really doesn't matter. He pretty much did all he could do in life. Arrested the guy for nothing and made all cops look foolish.

Good job blue.

I think you are seeing what you want to see.

The cop verbally is clearly being more confrontational and escalating in his language. The individual is saying sir while keeping his voice calm and the cop seems far more excited and confrontational and is calling him “homie”, ”boy” and “dude.

Now at the start of the video the cop says 'why are you chasing me around' but we have no idea what proceeded that.

So if we are playing the guessing game few people generally go chasing cops around or follow them. But if a person notices a cop following him, they might then approach the cop to find out why. Which seems to be what the cop is saying in 'I have a right to be here'. He seems to be suggesting he has a right to walk anywhere too which seems to be a defensive way of saying "I am not following you' to citizen who is confronting him with that question.

Of course, we are both speculating and this guy might be the mentally ill type who who believes in harassing cops by following them.

But given a chance to bet on the body cam footage I would bet you would not take that bet. You would bet the cop started parallel following him first to observe and then the guy walked over to engage to see why.


But more so again I find your stance here to be a big part of the problem...

"...allow citizens to constantly harass/antagonize police how are they supposed to do their job? ..."

Explain very clearly to me what you think this citizen should not be allowed to do that you heard in this video that you think rises to a level of Police harassment that should not be allowed?

I want specifics from THIS encounter as what you say is so often the push back to apply this broadly to most encounters.

Not nitpicking a good post but want to add to the bolded above...

- the cop is this person (civilians) employee. He actually has the obligation to defer and be more civil. I think that is a big problem as Cops need to have training that re-enforces that they 'serve and protect' all citizens, first and foremost, and to break from that should REQUIRE real reasons or there will be consequences for the cops.

In other words, if a Cop is in conflict with a citizen he better be able to demonstrate a real good reason FIRST for it.

- even if the guy had no relative living there he has every right to be on those streets. Too often we have this Ahmaud Arbery situation where if the person (of a certain look) cannot give others reasons they will accept for their presence then that presence is deemed the offense that then justifies other actions, such as questioning, detention and arrest.

That's not exactly what I see here. I see an initialated interaction by the cop, the citizen asserts himself and the cop doesn't get the desired search and arrest. The cop tries to bait the citizen and is unsuccessful. Citizen starts being antagonistic, re-approaches cop and cop gets his arrest for bullshit pot possession.

It's like the Cougar song before he was Mellencamp: I fight authority, authority always wins. In this case, a tie for bad behavior leads to a win for the cop.

It’s funny but the first part of your quote is how I feel about you. You don’t think going to anti-cop YouTube channels isn’t giving you confirmation bias?

Anyway with regards to the specific incident. At around the 4 minute mark the civilian says stop following me I just want to walk away. Cop says he’s not following him and civilian starts to walk away. But then the civilian turns around to continue antagonizing the cop. As he approaches the cop around 4:30 the cop says “don’t come up on me” the civilian then crosses the street to and starts throwing insults at the cop. He is literally stalking the cop notice he did a 180 in the direction he was going just so he could follow the cop. He did not want this negative interaction to end! His sole purpose at this point is not to document police activity in the neighborhood it’s to antagonize another human being who is currently working at their job, a job where they have to be alert, especially at night when most crimes are committed. Again he was leaving his relative house, but then goes back in that direction just to antagonize police. He was specifically stalking that meat head cop. You see that right? The cop set him up in a way by letting the civilian walk up on him which he warned him about prior. But the civilian got what he wanted I guess. He was stalking the cop, throwing insults at him and then got too close.

You also say he is being nice from beginning but he shined a light/camera on a stranger in the dark and very quickly played the race card “don’t wanna get shot cuz I’m black”. The cop literally gave everything back the civilian did (shine light in face, race card, hurl insults)

I’d love to see the bodycam shown from beginning and people request these from police so if you get it post it here.

My guess as to what happened; civilian leaves his aunts house , cops walking in same direction, and because of all the hostility out there torwards police it all starts with civilian saying; not “how’s it going/what up” in a friendly way but “why are you following me?” In a hostile way and things took off from there

Fair enough as I almost wrote 'you probably feel the same' re biases. But to be clear I don't go to any anti cop YouTube channels. I grabbed this from links I saw in a twitter thread. I have never sought this stuff out but i am sure the Social Media algorithms are now selecting them for me since i have clicked on them more since the Floyd incident. Prior to that I would rarely see this stuff.

And yes, I am not disputing they both took turns escalating and by the end the civilian was almost begging for escalation. Humans gonna human and escalation gonna happen.

That is why I say in the end it is a dick move for the cops to charge on this stuff when this is the equivalent of two guys mouthing at one another at a bar over a girl and getting thrown out of the bar and continuing it as thy walk down the street.

Fine, you were both childish d*cks. But walk away. No need to throw fists and no need to arrest anyone, just because you can.

Not when the cop has such a clear role in how this played out so badly.

I have to play devil’s advocate on this. Is it possible that the higher rate of pull overs is not because of race but economic status? The poorest people are the ones who don’t pay emissions/registration, leave broken taillights and bumpers. Blacks have double the poverty rate of whites in Philadelphia.

Race my be a factor but so is income but that info isn’t collected during traffic stop

So basically, maybe race isn't the main factor it's this other thing super correlated with race?

Everyone knows Asians are the worst drivers. If cops didn't have bias they would get pulled over the most.

You can be a poor driver but not actually break any traffic laws.

I have a buddy who is a cop that I have long argued with that if the cops lives are in such peril for these types of traffic stops (and turn signal or lane weaving) that they should not be detainable offenses and we can eliminate the danger to their safety. I.e., cops can't detain or arrest someone for most minor traffic offenses. A simply picture of the vehicle and a civil fine through the mail would suffice.

He opposes because minor traffic stops is how they catch most guys w more serous criminal warrants.

More would get done focusing on helping the poor than on helping a singular race. Racial policies are politically polarizing but improving the lives of the poor not as much.

I know you're just a boring old white dude from the burbs, so it probably surprises you to find out that those tickets by mail will never be acknowledged much less paid, even if they do make it to the person who actually owns the vehicle in question.

Have you honestly never had your license plates stolen?

Though, nowadays you don't even need to do that. You can just go to any website and print an approximation of a "legit" temporary plate and tape it in your back window.

Even if by some miracle the criminal in question has legit tags and receives the tickets in the mail. What consequences will you implement in the event they don't pay? Whatever you choose, you better follow through or you'll just invite more of the same behavior.

I always struggle to try and understand what motivates those in the system (right up to governor) to stubbornly stick to keeping someone in jail, even when it is undeniable the investigation, prosecution or verdict against the convicted was terribly compromised or worse to try and offer a coercive bargain that 'ok fine this hell you have lived wrongly can end if you just plead guilty'.


I mean that offered deal should be considered blackmail. If he pleads guilty why then let him out. That makes no sense. But they know he is going to get out (not guilty) and so they dangle this can be quicker and less painful if you admit guilt.




"... Prosecutor Michael O'Malley would dismiss the charge against Andrews. O'Malley instead offered a plea bargain that would keep Andrews out of prison if he pleaded guilty to killing his wife.

Andrews rejected the offer, telling visiting Judge Tim McGinty, "I want justice for my wife."


In cases like this I think an civil suit penalties awarded should get a multiplier due to 'unreasonable negligent behaviour of the Officials' but also the D.A should get the one thing they hate which is a 'loss' on their records.

We know they hate court case losses on their record but perhaps these metrics should be tracked and used when a Lawyer wants to show how successful they were in their legal careers.

I guess we all can't be old, hip urban slumlords like you. You seem to think additional criminal behavior of faking license plates or stealing them somehow escapes the computers the cops use from their cars which run every vehicle passing them.

And, as always, you missed the point.

No, I understood your point. I just reject it.

You live in some affluent area where people largely behave themselves and pay their tickets-by-mail in a timely fashion. You can't fathom that cities exist where a significant portion of citizens give zero ****s about such things and will happily drive unregistered cars without a license and maybe a single working tail light but no headlights. That's what the street lights are for, ldo. Your friend's point about catching people with outstanding warrants can't be overstated, either.

I know none of this affects you in Whitesville, IA or wherever you live, but some of us would prefer not to be driving with more unlicensed and unregistered drivers than we already have to.

It's hilarious to me that you think the automatic plate-scanning technology is just standard issue and further emphasizes how out of touch you are with the reality of urban police budgets. Where are you actually from?