slynne said:
Yes. that is true. Ultimately though, what I want is for the police to treat everyone as well as they treat middle aged white women like me. I am not being critical of anyone who doesn't want the very real risks that come with resisting authority fwiw. I totally get it that my opinion of what is the moral course is in opposition to the law, which as you have said is very clear on the subject of resisting arrest. I will, however, not consider it a valid excuse for excessive violence on the part of the police.
You want "the police" to treat everyone "fairly" and not use "excessive violence."
First, there is no "the police" in the U.S. The media and discussions such as this one tend to lump law enforcement all together as though there was some entity who controls all of the officers with a single mind. That's about as far from the reality as could be imagined.
There are about 250,000 individuals in this country who are sworn officers, and who are trained to the standards of their particular state government and who are employed by thousands of individual jurisdictions that each have their own sets of operational requirements and rules. With the general supervision of the supervision of their individual departments, those individuals make the best decisions they can make with the information they have at hand in the face of unreasonable circumstances on every call they go to. Of necessity, they operate under their policy, statute, and case law, not what any citizen deems to be right and proper.
Second, "fairly" is purely judgement on the part of the beholder. What's "fair" to you may be outrageous conduct to another person. That's why cops stick to "best practices," policy, and statute and case law as guidelines. There is much mis-information and wishful thinking that the public has engendered as 'fact' that just ain't so.
Last, "excessive violence" is a concept that only exists when compared to what a "reasonable and prudent person" could expect to encounter under similar circumstances given "best practices," policy, and statute and case law. My earlier comment about citizens having a duty to submit to arrest by a peace officer has a corollary... and that is that an officer has the
absolute right to use "that amount of force required to overcome the resistance offered" during an arrest. So, if you are arrested by a peace officer, he has the right to do what is necessary to take you into custody. Cops are, of course, trained in their use-of-force options. Many departments have adopted Tasers and chemical weapons as a lower level of force than hands-on. But the label of "excessive force" can only be applied AFTER the conclusion of an investigation by a qualified agency with standing. And even then, there will likely be civil suits as is the way of our system.
So, while all that you've said is, in fact, appropriate in making a more utopian society, the mechanics of arriving there are considerably more complex than what you or I would wish for and depend in large part how you and I conduct ourselves in society when confronted with a situation where we need to act with law enforcement. If we act with dignity and respect, the cops with whom we must deal likely will as well. If we act out of spite and resist in some way, we can expect that our resistance will be met "with that amount of force necessary to overcome the resistance offered." How that plays out is really up to us as citizens.
In this case, it didn't work out so well for the doc.
