A video that captured the brutal arrest of a Black college student pulled from his car and beaten by officers in Florida has led to an investigation and calls for motorists to consider protecting themselves by placing a camera inside their vehicles.
The footage shows that William McNeil Jr., 22, was sitting in the driver’s seat, asking to speak to the Jacksonville deputies’ supervisor, when authorities broke his window, punched him in the face, pulled him from the vehicle, punched him again and threw him to the ground.
Having body cams on cops was the one of the best decisions we’ve made as a society in recent years. Not only do they flush out shitty cops like this, but they have also protected good cops from false accusations and violent people. They need to be required everywhere and cops must have them on their entire shifts or they’ll face criminal investigations.
Don’t u worry, Trump’s on it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/drug-enforcement-administration-ends-body-camera-program-trump
Of course he is. President dipshit is on a mission to make everything worse
I mean, this is a weird article to post that on lol
“Protecting” yourself with a camera is pretty minimal. If the cop sees the dash cam they can grab it and destroy it. I was going to suggest the ACLU’s mobile justice app, but that got shut down. Anyone got a good app you can record with that can work on a locked phone?
I think the best solutions to problems like this take a sociotechnical approach. That is to say that in this case, I think that a crowd of people recording is more powerful than any app. I live in a country where police violence is less prevalent than in the US, and I have seen times when the police have tried to intimidate someone into stopping recording them. One of those times, it was successful, and the bystander got scared and stopped. Another of those times, someone who was better informed overheard the exchange and whipped out their camera too, and explained that the police had no grounds to ask that, especially given that we weren’t interfering with their investigation of the original person.
It is unfortunate about the ACLU app though. Tech tools like that helped protect individuals who were trying to hold the police accountable, which is a useful step towards normalising a healthy suspicion of the police. I haven’t read the above article yet, but I suspect the only reason why this footage wasn’t destroyed or confiscated is because the cops didn’t realise they were being recorded.
There are dash cams that upload to a cloud so destroying the camera doesn’t destroy the footage as well.
That’s usually a paid subscription feature. People getting pulled over and beaten aren’t always the ones able to afford a subscription. It might be something a few can use.
We need open source, multi channel dashcams that record to a central box that can be hidden deep inside the car and in times of duress, livestream via a connected smartphone. Press a button, the camera connects to a smartphone and triggers an app. All channels, audio and video, livestream out via the smartphone.
Or skip the cell phone pairing. Keep an eSIM in the recorder and upload it that way. Easier said than done, I suppose.
This would be much more expensive. It would also create a weak point. Cops tell cell phone carriers to kill that SIM and you’ll never notice. If it goes through your phone the cost is lower and you’ll notice a service interruption.
Hey, I planned that out over a period of about thirty seconds. My plan is solid!
I’ve been kicking this idea around for months. I just haven’t been able to solve all the problems with it. The biggest among them is small wide angle low light cameras with decent frame rate and resolution are NOT cheap. If I can solve that problem th rest would actually be pretty simple.
You’re sacrificing light for the wide angle. Increase the sensitivity to fix that and you’re introducing noise. Extend the exposure time for each frame to reduce noise and you get motion blur. I know, it sucks. You can’t win. Best of luck, my friend.
Exactly. I can get around some of this to some extent by sacrificing resolution for frame rate and just allowing distorting the image of it just letting showing things as they happen and that could address light sensitivity but that means sacrificing detail which could be important too. I dunno. I haven’t been able to solve this cheaply. There’s definitely off the shelf solutions to this but nothing at all affordable.
U use the cell phone…
The cell phone presents issues when used by itself. It can’t catch what actually happened and led to an event, so cops can lie. It only catches one angle, so it cant see everything. It requires you to directly handle it so it can be wrestled away and destroyed.
This kind of police brutality needs to be a capital offense. We need to start hanging these pigs. Abusing your authority to this level is a crime on the level of treason. You absolutely deserve to die if you do this to another human being.
Start with taking away their qualified immunity…
The death penalty might be a bit extreme, however, I am in favour of a dystopian tournament where these cunts have to face a series of increasingly dangerous tasks in order to be provided with food.
Could call it Pig Game.
How is it extreme? They have literally beaten black people and minorities to death for years. But if you want to kill one single cop for doing this it is all of a sudden too extreme? Wtf.
Yes. I think the death penalty is barbaric and would make us as bad as they are. Better to either educate, or lock em up and throw away the key, so they can spend the rest of their lives regretting their actions. Preferably in an dystopian pig game scenario as a warning to everyone else.
Tattoo their previous police badge to their forehead, throw them into three general population, and call it a day.
The government should not take away anything that it cannot provide. It can’t make life so it should not take it.
That’s a really concise formulation of my own beliefs on this matter. My opinions on how society should handle justice are experiencing extended renovations, so it’s useful to stumble across complex ideas distilled so effectively. Thanks!
Normally I would agree however in this situation a government official took a life so it’s the government self cleansing.
Why?
While I agree that this should be a severe offence that removes the perpetrator permanently from any employment from city to federal, killing people just brings you down to their level.
I have no problem holding police officers to a higher standard of behavior than the general populace.
A higher standard and the death penalty are two very different things.
If you dont wanna die dont beat innocent people, doesnt seem hard.
I get that, but I also don’t like the government deciding who lives and who dies. It’s too error-prone and corruption-prone for me to be comfortable with that.
So? They won’t come up to our level so we’ll just have to beat them at their level. We aren’t going to win this by playing by a set of rules they don’t have to follow.
You aren’t going to win by daydreaming about executing cops either.
The death penalty is an abomination. No.
I get the sentiment, and share it to a large degree, but death penalty? WTF?
The traditional penalty for treason is death by hanging, at best. This is treason against the most fundamental values of what our nation is supposed to stand for. If you do this kind of thing, you have committed an unforgivable offense against everything this nation is supposed to stand for. If you’re a police officer that flagrantly violates someone’s rights, you should hang for it. If you’re a police officer that plants evidence on someone, you should hang for it. If you’re a police officer that shoots an innocent person, you should hang for it.
I have zero problem with holding police officers to a much higher standard that regular citizens. They want to go around calling themselves “officer?” Fine. I have no problem holding them to a brutal system of military justice. Make them earn their titles for a change.
I think you’re misunderstanding me, I’m not disagreeing with how unacceptable, reprehensible and un-fucking-ethical police behaviour is: the Police suck and are, in many cases, an unfixable organisation.
I’m disagreeing with the death penalty.
The fact that it’s traditional is entirely irrelevant and, at worst, an appeal to tradition.
End the death penalty.
Whatever you believe the worst punishment we should give people is, be it death or life in prison, is what it should be.
That’s what it comes down to. It’s not that I’m particularly pro-death penalty. Generally I’m not. But if you’re going to have the death penalty for anything, flagrantly violating someone’s civil rights should be right up there with murder in the list of eligible offenses.
Hell, of anything, using one’s position as a sworn elected or appointed government official to “flagrantly [violate] someone’s civil rights” should be further up that list than murder. Again I say, tattoo their badge to their forehead and throw them in with GenPop.
While I strongly agree that they should be held to a higher standard, I’m opposed to the government dealing out the death penalty for any infraction. And to using the prison population as a deterrent as well, satisfying as that would be - that reinforces the idea of prisoners as other than human, I feel.
But I want to emphasize again, we agree they should absolutely be held accountable - we just differ on what the punishment should be!
I’m not convinced you’re asking yourselves the right question. Do you want revenge and punishment, or do you want a better society?
Don’t get me wrong, the USA are so fucked up currently it’s hard not to want to get back at those causing so much damage. I share that feeling.
But we know from evidence that prison as punishment just generates more violence and horror and doesn’t create a better society. Prison as rehabilitation does a lot better towards that goal.
Literally the same thing as the other person, whatever you believe the highest punishment should be, that’s the punishment this deserves. If you’re morally opposed to life in prison then whatever you think the longest amount of time should be.
I have long been a proponent for mandatory and severe sentencing guides/augments for public officials who violate their oath and duty.
So I agree with you whole heartedly.
At the very least an old school tar and feathering and run em out of town on a rail (watch the series John Adams if you ever thought tar and feathering was silly)
Yes, yes. Once again they are suggesting we, the people, do all the work, because they are too busy to care about us. We have to do the recycling, because it would be too onerus on the producers of waste to change. We have to do the overseeing of unsafe practices by industry, because it’s too costly for the government and hard to ask their friends to stop doing terrible things to save a few dollars. We now also have to protect ourselves from authority, God forbid we ask the government to remain accountable for something. What is the point of having a government if they are not going to do anything but enrich themselves? Are Americans capable of asking questions, or do you just eat what you are fed without even blinking? Wake the fuck up, you don’t live in a country, you live in a billionaire making machine, and you are the fuel, not the product.
“Social Democracy” countries like Sweden and Norway produce more millionaires and billionaires than capitalist ones like the US. So actually we’re not a billionaire making machine, but a poverty making one.
Sweden and Europe in general has 10 times the generational wealth as America, because it’s been around for centuries longer. American wealth came mostly in the past 250 years, and much of it has been accumulated in the past 30.
We made a lot of barons in the slave era, the railroad era, the oil era, the prohibition era, then there was a lull, we got the new deal, and more importantly WW2 and the manufacturing boom where workers had power and socialized wealth (as long as white anyway). Then the barons found a way to weaken and strip our wealth and power since the 80s and set the country up for our current baron crisis.
Maybe a general strike could do something, but it would have to be overwhelming. Like a minimum of 30% of all workers, for weeks or months maybe more, would be necessary to get attention and not be vulnerable to mass firing and replacement.
Other non Social Democracy countries that have been around for millennia have far fewer billionaires.
Well ain’t that just a cup of tea then, eh. It must be the social democracy that allows them to accumulate vast piles of wealth then, hey?! No wonder Canada is full of billionaires!
Social Democracy countries are run more effectively than others. Not saying those countries are perfect but it’s better than what the US has currently.
Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose. Historically this is the requirement for most societies to upend these types of structures. It’s what drove the “New Deal”, which was essentially a stopgap to allow the wealthy an opportunity to comply with the requirements of basic human needs and dignity. Same with Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting.
After that they allowed some tinkering around the edges to make our enclosure more habitable, things like the Civil Rights Act and even parts of LBJ’s “Great Society”. All the while continuing to exploit foreign markets and people for our industries, consolidating economic and military power around the globe. Now, not only have all the lines in the map been filled in, but we are starting to see conglomeracies like BRICS form in order to subvert the total dominance of the United States.
The only way for the wealthy business interests to maintain their profit margins was to turn the exploitation inward, to subject the American people to the same type of exploitation they have been meting out in the global south, while desperately enacting last minute and insufficient plans to suppress these rising entities and eliminate them if possible.
The rot has reached the core
The government always has and still does work for wealthy. They all really do. Some just strike a different balance in perception because they need to in order to keep the people working for the benefit of the wealthy.
Yes, but the wealthy create their wealth off the backs of our labour, so if they don’t tend to the flock, the flock gets unruly. Heads will roll…
Yep, always a balancing act. And of course they tend to make sure thier is a scapegoat so it won’t be thier heads that roll. I bet they really love trump for how well he draws attention to himself and off of them.
Suggestions of the nanny state never come up here. The dichotomy of what were expected to do for ourselves vs what they say the nanny state does are a vast ocean filled with bullshit Republican rhetoric
Yup, there are AMAZING videos of people who use the app Attorney Shield that immediately puts you in contact with a lawyer, starts recording video and audio and blocks the device so their only option is to smash it to stop recording.
It feels like an “anti tyranny” insurance of sorts, you pay what? $200 a year? and you use it even on traffic stops because there’s absolutely and I mean ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT TO COOPERATING WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT, embrace and exercise your rights and then go to court.
What the distopian fuck
TBF, this kind of thing has probably been needed since the inception of police, it’s just now that we have the technology.
ACAB
- Yes, they definitely shouldn’t have hit that man in the face. Hopefully the cop gets in trouble for it, but it’s Florida, so maybe not.
- If the cops ask you to get out of the car, and you sit with your arms folded and ask to speak to a supervisor, you’re going to get dragged out of the car and thrown on the ground and get some extra charges. That’s what they are allowed to do. My guess is that what preceded that was them asking for his ID (which they’re also allowed to do) and him refusing to give it. Generally that’s the way things escalate from traffic stop -> broken window -> violent arrest.
Incredibly lazy to outsource your ethics to your government and its police force. Even if “they’re allowed to do that” which is far from clear here, doesn’t make it right in any way. If anything it would be grounds for a riot.
You gotta talk to the legislature, tell them that if someone gets pulled over the rule should be that they get to just tell the cops to go fuck themselves, and it’s okay because ACAB.
Start a movement, see if you can get a whole city where the city council’s on board with it. Try the experiment. Things aren’t as fixed as you think they are, a lot of it is changeable. (Well, on the local level at least, IDK if we wait a year you may get your fantasy coming true where the federal level is defining what law enforcement is, and no one who’s a “civilian” can exercise any control over it.)
Dragged out of the car is what they’re allowed to do. They’re not allowed to punch and beat someone that isn’t actively resisting.
So they didn’t have probable cause, he politely asked to speak to a supervisors. There was no risk of him fleeing nor danger to himself or others. He just didn’t comply with what seems like an illegal order. You think that’s grounds to escalate? Grounds for police brutality? And it looks like pretty solid evidence they lied on the arrest report.
And you’re comparing it to a case where there was probable cause for the stop, where no one disputes the basic facts, no one claims police excessive force, and the only question was whether the evidence was admissible?
Whether or not they have probable cause is a matter for the courts. Polite or not, you’re dealing with individuals who have little to no oversight and even if they do something illegal they often don’t have to answer for it. The moment to insist on probable cause and reasoning is afterwards. Let them rack up their bill first.
Officers must have reasonable suspicion of a law being broken to require ID: https://legalclarity.org/can-a-cop-ask-for-your-id-for-no-reason/. The case you cited was because of an expired plate.
He was within his rights to ask what law he violated before complying. The cops mentioned he needed his headlights on for the conditions, but he was skeptical, so he asked for the statute or a supervisor. If he refused after that, fine; but the cops escalated way earlier and with more force than was reasonable.
Dude it is in your citation:
One of the most common is during a lawful traffic stop. When an officer pulls you over for a suspected traffic violation, you, as the driver, are obligated to provide your driver’s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance upon request.
The case law’s super clear. You don’t get to ask for a supervisor before providing ID, you don’t get to argue the grounds for the stop before providing ID. They’re not even required to explain why they pulled you over first, although almost all cops will do just because it’s a reasonable question. If you want to have a conversation instead of give your ID, they’re allowed to ask you to get out of the car. If you want to have a conversation instead of getting out of the car, they’re allowed to use force to grab you out of it. Most cops will take at least some time for the argument, it makes their case easier the more clearly it’s laid out what happened and the longer the person refuses to ID, but it looks from the bodycam timestamps like there was about 6 minutes of arguing before they broke his window, which is a little shorter than usual but still not like “ID” “no” (smash).
If you want to have a whole separate conversation about what the law should be, that would be fine, but there’s a whole genre of YouTube videos where people learn that’s not how it works and get arrested for it. Absolutely you should not be giving this as legal advice. It’s actually a common feature of that genre that people will while they are being arrested cite what people like you on the internet told them, as where they got their legal knowledge, and sort of ask for a do-over now that they understand that they can actually be arrested because of following that advice. I have never seen the police agree to the do-over.
Also, the video didn’t appear to be making a sovereign citizen argument, just asking why he was pulled over. Pulling someone over simply for driving while black is not a lawful stop. But like you said, there are 6 more minutes of video, so we have no idea the details of this specific case, but that doesn’t mean it’s lawful for every case.
I’m fully aware of that entire genre of videos from sovereign citizens. /r/amibeingdetained was one of my favorite subreddits before leaving reddit.
Here’s the whole stop from the bodycam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i88VDrI3VA
Yeah, I saw that after I replied. That doesn’t change the fact that ID is only required if the stop itself is lawful. Officers can’t just pull anyone over because they “feel like it,” otherwise the traffic stop itself is unlawful.
Obviously he would have had a much better time if he complied, but that’s a pragmatic solution, not a legally required one. Unless the officers can show to a court what offense warranted the traffic stop in the first place, failure to identify is not by itself an offense.
Failure to use headlights during “inclement weather,” and failure to wear a seat belt.
Is that bullshit? Yeah, arguably so. He’d have had a pretty good chance of beating it in court. Cops also show a marked statistical tendency to pull over black people more than white people, and the statistical tendency only shows up during the day and evaporates for traffic stops conducted at night, which makes it pretty hard to argue that it’s any kind of correlation other than causation. So yeah, you could definitely say the initial stop was bullshit.
Unfortunately, a traffic stop for specifically identified infractions is absolutely a lawful stop even if it’s kinda bullshit. And the guy really screwed himself over by refusing to ID, obstructing their attempts to get him out of the car, and then resisting them arresting him, all of which are unambiguous crimes which it’s gonna be a lot more difficult for him to argue his way out of in court that the initial “inclement weather” bullshit. Maybe he can make something out of the fact that they used excessive force once he started obstructing, but more likely he’s just going to be screwed. It’s not like the system gets less racist if you’re a giant unnecessary pain in the ass about it.
Bleh, you’re right, they did provide the infraction, even though it was BS (it was cloudy, but it was not raining). I still think the excessive force gives him a pretty decent chance at winning.
I suppose I was making a more general argument that may or may not apply to this case. I am just uncomfortable telling people “just comply, or you’ll make things worse,” even if pragmatically that might be true.
No court will side with a suspect for demanding a reason and refusing to comply until given one they agree with. That’s a recipe for idiots and armchair lawyers asserting their “rights” incorrectly. Look up sovereign citizens. They are always horrifically wrong on the law yet still demand the law they broke or to get a supervisor.
Any court would maintain the status quo that any traffic stop should be presumed lawful until proven otherwise in court. This includes your obligation to provide license, registration and/or insurance (depending on state), and to exit the vehicle for “officer safety”. That last one is one of the worst ones protecting bad cops. Used legitimately it makes the stop safe for everyone. Used by some power tripping asshole it’s their easiest path to making the stop violent.
Used by some power tripping asshole it’s their easiest path to making the stop violent.
Ding ding ding
The system still has some massive problems. If your goal is less police brutality and reform of the system, though, committing crimes in front of the police and refusing to cooperate with them in any way unless they use force is not going to be a real good way to go after that goal.
I’ve seen situations that are way worse than this one. One guy got spooked (like legitimately spooked, you could tell he was for-real scared that the cops were going to do something to him) when he got stopped for an open container in the car. They asked him to get out of the car, he took off instead, crashed his car, foot chase, they tackled him, he ended the night with a bunch of felonies and his car totaled. That’s one reason I think this stuff is so absurd and dangerous when people say it on the internet; sometimes it translates to real world behavior too. You could tell that he was influenced by it, and that’s part of why he thought stomping on the gas and making the situation a hundred times worse was the right play.
“During a lawful traffic stop”
What’s your favorite flavor of boot polish?
More Comments (49)
Lol
I’d be interested to see if that ruling would apply with video evidence and no illegal fire arm or reasonable suspicion on the part of the officer. That case seems to uphold the idea of a search on the grounds of reasonable suspicion. That’s not the case here.
Here’s the full bodycam footage. I was right about him failing to ID.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i88VDrI3VA
He commits a misdemeanor 21 seconds after the stop begins.
Cop: “Give me your driver’s license, registration,”
Dude: “No.”
Cop: “… and proof of insurance.”
Dude: “No. Call your supervisor.”
That “no” is enough to arrest him. Most cops won’t do it, they’ll have a conversation about it instead of just busting out the cuffs, but if you go out of your way to piss them off, sometimes they will not. We’re past reasonable suspicion at that point. He pulled him over, explained the reason, and asked for ID, and the guy refused. This is an excellent way to get arrested, and refusing to cooperate with the arrest is an excellent way to get dragged out of the car and thrown around. IDK what the guy expected to happen. The only reason this is news is because the cop hit him in the face, but this was 100% a dude-created situation from start to finish.
The stated reason for the stop is driving without headlights on in inclement weather. Its not raining, its full daylight, a bit overcast. In my opinion the stop is not justified, so the officer has no legal basis to ID the driver.
In my opinion the stop is not justified, so the officer has no legal basis to ID the driver.
… said any number of people, right before they got arrested.
There are circumstances where you can refuse to ID. Probably the only video I can ever remember which featured a supervisor showing up and actually taking the side of the suspect, was a cop hassling a person who was taking video of a police department, some patrolman came out and asked for ID, and the guy told him to get lost because he wasn’t doing anything. That sort of falls into “bold move Cotton” territory, but it is legal, and when the supervisor showed up he told the cop so and ordered him to just leave the guy alone.
Refusing to ID on a traffic stop because you disagree with the reason for the stop is going to get you arrested, it’s going to make it harder to fight the original citation even if you are in the right, and it’s going to get you additional charges that are a much bigger deal than the original traffic citation. That’s just reality, both legal reality and how it’s going to happen in practice. You don’t have to agree with the cop to have to provide ID, otherwise any random person ever pulled over for anything at all could just tell the cop to get lost, I don’t agree, and the cop would have to leave and the person could go on their way.
You see you your interpretation of the law strips you of your 4th amendment rights? You are saying that the police have the right to stop and ID anyone at anytime.
No. There are a lot of circumstances where you can refuse to ID. A traffic stop for a specific infraction isn’t one of them. There’s actually a lot that goes into the courts trying to strike a reasonable balance.
Wait, am I crazy, or did I literally give an example of a situation where you don’t have to ID in the comment you’re replying to? I feel like probably the useful content of this conversation is at an end…
A traffic stop for a
specificnonsensical and nonexistant infractionIt wasn’t raining.
There was no reason for them to escalate.
This is a common tactic used to go after people of color, it isn’t remotely new.
Why in the absolute fuck are you advocating for people to just swallow fucking boot all the damn time?
Challenging this nonsense is the way, historically, any change has happened. You are just arguing against people doing the right thing and saying “but its OK because cops are taught to do this”.
No shit. Thats the fucking problem. He knew what was happening and what would happen, thats why he asked for a supervisor.
The fact that you think this would have gone substantially better for him by just complying shows a complete and utter ignorance of the history of policing.
Im the video you cite (guy in Texas holding signs?) the officers ask for ID and he refused because they have no legal basis to ask him. Similarly in the Florida traffic stop, the officers have no legal basis fir the stop. End of story. You no more have to comply with police, when they are not legally executing their duties, than you do with any random stranger on the street asking for your ID.
The Florida guy was not stopped on suspicion of having committed a crime, because driving without headlights during the day is not a crime. Therfore there is no legal basis for the officer to demand ID. If you think that the officer _thought _ driving without headlights is a traffic violation , and was therfore justified in the stop, you just overturned the 4th amendment, as any officer could claim they thought x or y is a crime and therfore stop anyone yhey choose, for any reason they choose.
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