[quote]angry chicken wrote:
Will, how about a contest. You post as many videos of animals waterskiing that you can find, and I’ll post as many videos of police officers beating, macing, tasing and killing people that I can find. Who do you think will have more vids?
Also, I am well aware that Scott was driving. I was changing the subject to the police harassing people while they are walking, minding their own business. Or do you contend that, “that never happens either, because they are not allowed to do that”.
In case you haven’t noticed, Will, there are a lot of bad cops out there killing, beating, tasing and macing people for “resisting arrest” or, “not obeying the commands of an officer”…
If I’m walking along the street minding my business and you command me to stop, why should I listen to you? If I’m breaking no laws, what grounds do you have to stop me? If I refuse, will you tase me or shoot me? If I ran from you would you pursue me and attempt to arrest me? On what grounds? Serious question.
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You certainly bring up some good points. If I am walking down the street, doing nothing wrong, why should I be questioned, harassed or otherwise bothered? I shouldn’t be.
My brother and I decided to go for a walk one late night when we were teenagers. We were literally doing nothing but walking. We didn’t have drugs, guns, knives, nothing. We were not high on anything, we had not been drinking, we had done nothing, absolutely nothing wrong. It was probably about 1 AM on a early Saturday morning, or late night Friday if you want to look at it that way. A cop stopped us and started questioning us. With in a minute we were surrounded by 4 cop cars, lights going the full nine yards. They are flashing flashlights in our eyes to see if we were fucked up, repeating the same questions on where we live and why we were out, over and over again. They separated us and talked to us separately again repeating the same questions to see if we would fuck up or change our story and they were not nice about it. They were very aggressive and mean. Asking repeatedly, were we came from, where we were going, what we were doing. We were being polite answering their questions with ‘Yes sir’ and ‘No sir’. They detained us for nearly an hour with 6 cops, who came in 4 cop cars. They had nothing and they found nothing. We were literally out for a walk, shooting the shit and that’s it.
After all this, knowing they had nothing they would not let us walk home. Which is what we were planning to do anyway. We were just walking a big circle, just for the hell of it. We’re night people and we thought it was fun just to be out walking late at night.
2 white guys walking apparently was probable cause for harassing us. They would not let us walk home. One of the cops insisted he drive us home. He didn’t give us a choice, we wanted to walk, 'cause that’s what we were aiming to do in the first place. Nope, since he could not arrest us, he forced us to go home and he forced us into his car to drive us home. While in the car, he continually asked questions, what we were doing out, and if I know this person or that person. We got to the house, he let us out of the car and we went in and it was over. However, what the fuck? We weren’t doing anything illegal, at all. Yet they had to get us off the street. A street we had every right to walk on, at a place it was perfectly legitimate to walk on or in, in a state we had the right to walk whenever the hell we felt like walking, at a time that was perfectly legal for us to be out in.
What’s the point of this story? The point is that police have the ability to ruin your life with in a matter of minutes. They let us go that night, but they certainly would have had no problem concocting some story about us running from them, or resisting their interrogations, or whatever. All they had to do is put their word against ours and they could have if they wanted to. But they had no right to even stop us, much less do anything else they did. The deck is stacked against the average citizen. All you need is a bad cop in a bad mood and you can be randomly picked out and have your life ruined for literally doing nothing. After all who are the authorities going to believe, a police officer or 2 teenagers? We got away with breaking no law whatsoever on the basis of the good graces of the police who illegally detained us.
The reality of this is not lost on me. We live in a country were our laws are supposed to protect us from such harassment from illegal detainment, search and seizure, but that’s exactly what happened. While the law may have been on our side, the law enforcers clearly were not.
This is not the only time I have been detained or questioned by the police for no reason, either. My only crime, I can only imagine is that I was young, I looked young and the only association to crime I was having, was that some young people do illegal things and so being young, I must have been doing something wrong. After all who walks at 1 in the morning? Or drives a convertible with 3 young friends in it? And I am a white guy. Had I been black, who knows…
I have long contended that the police in this country are out of control. They have too many rights to harass you and we have virtually no rights to stop them. While, they are not supposed to stop, detain, or otherwise question you they can and do just that and it can be for no other reason but existing in a place where they share space with you.
I for one am glad people are video recording the police shooting people, or breaking legs (as in the case of the Atlanta Hawks player Thabo Sefolosha), paralyzing people, etc. Because it’s long over due that the overwhelming power entrusted to the police needs a check.
I realize there are plenty of good cops, and I have interacted with my share of them. There are also a minority of bad cops, who make the whole lot look bad. The problem isn’t with the individual cop, but the system they are able to function under virtually unchecked. It takes one bad cop with a wild hair up his ass to ruin your life. And what checks they do have are basically self checks. Their own internal affairs dept, who are members of the dept. So you have cops monitoring cops, the blue wall is real and it is impenetrable.
The stuff that is happening now isn’t new, it being revealed on such a mass scale is; good. It needs to be fixed. The system in place needs a set of checks and balances that gives citizens on the right side of the law the right to be free from being harassed while still giving police the tools to fight real crime.
Next time you get pulled over, think of what options you have… Think about what you can realistically do if the cop you are dealing with decides to be a dick. You’ll find you have no options but to be polite and hope for the best.