Police Brutality?

This video of a utah cop tasing a motorist has been a hot button issue lately and has shown a lot of confusion over what your rights are and aren’t. I’m interested to hear everyone’s perspective on this one.

Problems laws “broken”

Does not have Miranda rights read to him
This kid asks quite a few times to have his Miranda rights read to him but doesn’t seem to know much about the law. Miranda rights or a Miranda warning is only required to be mentioned in the event that the Police officer is interrogating someone. Wikipedia has a whole section on the misconceptions on Miranda rights. “On the side of the road” is in fact not the place to have your rights read to you.

The officer never tells him he is under arrest!
Actually, as is my understanding, an officer doesn’t have to tell you that you’re under arrest (even though this officer does) and then he has to give a reason, as per Habeous Corpus. In fact you’re not under arrest when an Officer tells you to but you are under arrest when you are no longer free to leave.

Unlawful search!
I don’t have a reference from this one but I’m pretty sure that once you’re under arrest your immediate property is fair game. They have to search you for obvious reasons and then I think he had reasonable suspicion to search the car. Maybe he was going back for a gun, whatever. At anyrate the officer hands over the “vehicle” to his wife which probably means that it was temporarily the officer’s to look through.

He never tells the motorist how much he was speeding
At this point I think what he was speeding was irrelevant. He wasn’t arrested for speeding, he was arrested for disobeying a lawful order. His arrest has nothing to do with speeding other than the fact that he wouldn’t sign the ticket.

Beyond that his ticket must have had a speed on it because you can’t even get a speeding ticket without a speed written on it. If you did the court would have no idea how to punish you or what class of violation it is. Quickest way out of a ticket ever.

What I think

It seems to me that the police officer was fully within his right to taser this dude and arrest him. At which point would anyone with half a brain think it’s a good idea to walk away from a cop when he is telling you to stop?

I’m all about sniffing out police brutality and I think we’ve seen it quite a few times on youtube but this doesn’t see to be a case of police brutality.

To the motorist’s defense

When the motorist tells the police officer that he will not sign the ticket and that first they will go have a look at the sign the police officer says “alright, get out of the vehicle”. The officer intends to put him under arrest at that point for not signing the ticket. The motorist seems to think they’re going to go look at the sign but then disregards the police officer’s warnings.

So, what do you think?

Posted in Not So Awesome.Comments

Stu

As a general rule, I hate cops. But I certainly don't let my hatred get me in trouble. When a cop tells me to do something, I freakin' do it.

It's against the law to not do what a cop says. You don't do what they say, the expectation is that you are going to get messed up, plain and simple. Five minutes of any Cops episode will tell you that.

Certainly, the Highway Patrolman could have handled that much better, but so could've the guy that got pulled over... you know, by doing what the cop said. He may have been a bully (aren't they all?), but that doesn't make it legal to disobey him.

Dan

Alx, actually the penalty for not signing a ticket is going to jail. At least in Utah and most other states that I know of. If the driver is not intelligent enough to read the ticket or listen to the officer's explanation of what it is than maybe he shouldn't have a license in the first place.

As for the warn of taser before I'm not sure about that. I e-mailed the utah state trooper office to find out what kind of guidelines they have.

Jason: I won't even start.

jason smith

This article is bullshit...troopers around here are igorant bullies...they let elderly drive the wrong way on highways, hit my parked car when I am sitting in it and don't give them even a warning, elderly drive the wrong way all the time....yet if you get pulled over and you are in the younger demographic, you get blackmailed, so you have to pay more...I saw two girls get a ticket in court because the driver was holding the other girl's license because she had a dress with no pockets...the orig reason for being pulled over was irrelevant...recently, my state, NY, just passed a law stating troopers are not responsible for inappropriate actions.....because nobody wants to be a trooper, very similar to the military now accepting criminals....who says you can't get a federal job with a felony??? not our military.....who go on to be cops and troopers when they get discharged....because they are already antisocial and bullies.....

alx

He was Eric Cartman, demanding that the man "Respect his authoritah!" It's just that simple. This could have been resolved easily enough, without anyone going to jail or being tasered, if the cop had just bothered to listen. He didn't. And now he's, apparently, brought a multi-million dollar lawsuit down on his department.

alx

The icing on the cake comes at the end of the video when the officer LIES to his own colleague about the encounter, clearly stating that he verbally warned Massey he was going to tase him, as is the law, when there was no warning whatsoever.

Mr Massey is planning to file a lawsuit against the Utah Highway Patrol. He says he was already slowing down as he approached the 40 mile per hour sign in the construction zone outside of vernal. All charges except for the speeding ticket have been dropped.

This amazing video reveals how eroded civil and constitutional rights have now become. The officer had no legal right to make Massey sign any document he did not understand.

amera

i can't see the video nor do i have interest in youtubing it, but everything you said about the law is right.

I get out of all my speeding tickets knock on wood!

Sam

p.s. What's with all the spam blogs linking to you?

Sam

I agree with you. The kid probably watched half of a video on youtube about what your rights are and thought he could be the big man and take charge.

He was reaching into his pocket, he wasn't complying with the officer, and he was generally being a douche. He got what he deserved. Just be glad the cop wasn't using a gun.

dLay

I'm with you on this one. The whole situation should have never happened, but the guy did not obey the officer... it also seemed that he was fiddling around with the pockets on his cargo shorts - that would have made me nervous if I were the officer. I think we all fear the potential abuse of power that cops could have and that may lead us to get carried away when these sorts of things happen.