Police body camera video shows an officer dragged Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill out of his sports car by his arm and head and then forced him face-first onto the ground after Hill put up the window of his car.
Sure, but once they establish a pattern of non-compliance it doesn’t reset with each new instruction. They expect he will resist getting out of the car based on his refusal to roll down the window. At that point they have to choose whether to get him out of the car quickly, or risk non-compliance issue with that, which could involve fleeing or hitting people with his car.
When officer or public safety are at risk they will always choose to take someone into custody to stabilize the situation and then reassess from there.
The situation with the window can’t be separated from the treatment with the door.
That is a policy of escalation, there is no reason to follow it. It just makes situations where this is more likely. It’s a miniscule increase in safety for an officer at a cost of massive risk to the public.
The three people cops killed today, the at least double that of dogs, and had Hill nor been an nfl player on game day he would probably still be in jail.
So In this specific instance, the specific instance we are talking about, the instance that is the topic of this discussion, no one.
The obvious follow up question is, if he were rolling up the tinted windows so he could retrieve a weapon without the cop seeing, or if he had taken off at high speed in his little sports car and run a high speed chase before crashing, could multiple people have died?
I’ll just give you the obvious answer, “yes”.
The reason your answer is naive isn’t because cops don’t do terrible things, they do, and they should absolutely be held accountable. It is because cops are also often on unpredictable situations and if you can’t look at something like this and see where pulling him out of the car could be justified, you can’t argue in good faith where the line is between this and a true abuse of power.
And if you can’t do that, the people in power will never take your argument seriously, and your will continue to be largely ignored.
Police don’t get to act on every imaginable what-if, they must act reasonably based on the specifics of the case in front of them. Watch the video again and pay attention to the time in the body cams.
The officer knocks on the window and the driver rolls it down and hands him his paperwork while complaining about the knocking. As the officer goes to walk away the driver rolls the window back up. The officer tells him to roll it back down, the driver opens it some. The officer tells him not to roll it up again or he would be taken out of the car. Within 7 seconds the officer changed his mind, ordered him out, and then dragged him out.
Important notes here. 1) not rolling the window all the way down or rolling it back up while the officer walks away are not illegal acts. There is no case law saying you must roll it all the way down and leave it down. 2) while it’s down the officer could see inside and did not note any obvious safety concerns. 3) he wanted the window down while he was walking away and couldn’t see inside anyway. 4) the driver never refused exiting the car and was not given a reasonable amount of time to comply. He said something like “just a moment” when asked once and was dragged out within 7 seconds. 5) the officers don’t later say that they had a safety concern, they say “when we tell you to do something you have to do it” in reference to the window, which again is not an order backed up by case law unlike the order to exit which again was not refused and not given reasonable time for the driver to comply.
You could always imagine a what-if that lets the cops off, but that’s not the way the courts do or the public should view these cases. The primary officer was unreasonable at almost every point. Later in the video he points to a 25ft law that isn’t in effect yet and then says that he has suddenly changed it to 50ft. He was on a power trip because the driver didn’t immediately show him proper deference.
Oh definitely, and the way we get that change is by instinctively supporting the officer’s decisions because of a thousand imagined what-ifs. Of course that officer had to shoot Sonya Massey because she might have thrown the water at them while cowering with her hands up. She might have had a wmd under her night dress! /s
But they didn’t tell him to get out of the car yet. He should have rolled down the window yes, but that’s a separate issue than Penn vs Mimms.
Sure, but once they establish a pattern of non-compliance it doesn’t reset with each new instruction. They expect he will resist getting out of the car based on his refusal to roll down the window. At that point they have to choose whether to get him out of the car quickly, or risk non-compliance issue with that, which could involve fleeing or hitting people with his car.
When officer or public safety are at risk they will always choose to take someone into custody to stabilize the situation and then reassess from there.
The situation with the window can’t be separated from the treatment with the door.
That is a policy of escalation, there is no reason to follow it. It just makes situations where this is more likely. It’s a miniscule increase in safety for an officer at a cost of massive risk to the public.
That’s just naive. And that’s a big claim, a “massive risk” to the public, so back it up… Who got hurt in this instance?
The three people cops killed today, the at least double that of dogs, and had Hill nor been an nfl player on game day he would probably still be in jail.
So In this specific instance, the specific instance we are talking about, the instance that is the topic of this discussion, no one.
The obvious follow up question is, if he were rolling up the tinted windows so he could retrieve a weapon without the cop seeing, or if he had taken off at high speed in his little sports car and run a high speed chase before crashing, could multiple people have died?
I’ll just give you the obvious answer, “yes”.
The reason your answer is naive isn’t because cops don’t do terrible things, they do, and they should absolutely be held accountable. It is because cops are also often on unpredictable situations and if you can’t look at something like this and see where pulling him out of the car could be justified, you can’t argue in good faith where the line is between this and a true abuse of power.
And if you can’t do that, the people in power will never take your argument seriously, and your will continue to be largely ignored.
Police don’t get to act on every imaginable what-if, they must act reasonably based on the specifics of the case in front of them. Watch the video again and pay attention to the time in the body cams.
The officer knocks on the window and the driver rolls it down and hands him his paperwork while complaining about the knocking. As the officer goes to walk away the driver rolls the window back up. The officer tells him to roll it back down, the driver opens it some. The officer tells him not to roll it up again or he would be taken out of the car. Within 7 seconds the officer changed his mind, ordered him out, and then dragged him out.
Important notes here. 1) not rolling the window all the way down or rolling it back up while the officer walks away are not illegal acts. There is no case law saying you must roll it all the way down and leave it down. 2) while it’s down the officer could see inside and did not note any obvious safety concerns. 3) he wanted the window down while he was walking away and couldn’t see inside anyway. 4) the driver never refused exiting the car and was not given a reasonable amount of time to comply. He said something like “just a moment” when asked once and was dragged out within 7 seconds. 5) the officers don’t later say that they had a safety concern, they say “when we tell you to do something you have to do it” in reference to the window, which again is not an order backed up by case law unlike the order to exit which again was not refused and not given reasonable time for the driver to comply.
You could always imagine a what-if that lets the cops off, but that’s not the way the courts do or the public should view these cases. The primary officer was unreasonable at almost every point. Later in the video he points to a 25ft law that isn’t in effect yet and then says that he has suddenly changed it to 50ft. He was on a power trip because the driver didn’t immediately show him proper deference.
That’s a lot of words to admit you have trouble finding common ground so that people can make meaningful change.
Oh definitely, and the way we get that change is by instinctively supporting the officer’s decisions because of a thousand imagined what-ifs. Of course that officer had to shoot Sonya Massey because she might have thrown the water at them while cowering with her hands up. She might have had a wmd under her night dress! /s