It could be the argument for a sitcom. Not funny in real life when police is pointing a gun at you.
“Oops the dystopian government black bagged the wrong person because of a typo. So sorry! Here’s a check for the inconvenience.”
However, since it was in a different state, perhaps the registration database wasn't available - only the stolen vehicle database was.
> “My sergeant on the scene received information from Philly PD, who said, ‘Go ahead. Lock her up. It’s [a] good [arrest],’” Long Beach Township Police Chief Anthony Deely said in 2020.
https://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/crime/a-philly-police-c...
So they even approached her at gun point. And the initial tow and police report was due to police stupidity.
Now I don’t want to profile people, but she looks like a regular person and she reports her height as 4ft 11. At what point did the police feel threatened enough to draw weapons?
But regardless, cops put cuffs on everyone they arrest. The point being that they don’t know who is going to fight you to get away. People will fight to escape over the dumbest things.
It’s not really a huge injustice to sit in cuffs for a couple minutes while cops verify wtf is going on. I’m the first to criticize the cops but this isn’t really that kind of situation.
If I reported my car stolen, I would expect the cops to have a reasonable assumption that the person they find it with could be the thief.
The rental agency ended up giving me a free rental and a credit for another free day or something on a future rental.
Being forcibly detained is traumatic. Especially when you know you’re being detained wrongly. I’m speaking from experience here, and as someone who has received a settlement in a wrongful arrest suit.
There’s nothing reasonable about armed officers of the state putting someone in handcuffs without any prior effort to ascertain the appropriateness of that person being in handcuffs. Asking for license and registration is routine. If anything after that suggests they have actually stopped a car thief, the next appropriate action might be to forcibly detain them. It might also be more appropriate to question them further without force.
Putting a car’s rightful owner in handcuffs because their car had been towed without their knowledge, and they understandably reported it stolen when it wasn’t where they’d left it, and then they had the temerity to drive their own car after it had been recovered, is cruel. All of the prior facts would already be unbelievably stressful for most people. And of course no random cop is gonna know all of those prior facts, but that’s why they should ask questions before acting.
Let me reiterate: being forced into constraints by armed agents of the state who have broad authority, and get broad allowance, to use their monopoly on violence is terrifying. It’s even more terrifying when you know you’ve done nothing to warrant it, and especially when you’re being treated that way because of other wrongs done to you.
I think the word you’re looking for is “comprehend”. I do comprehend why police act aggressively without cause or warning. I don’t think it’s benign. I do think you’re very fortunate not to know that.
Was it awesome? Nope. Do I get that cops aren’t clairvoyant or omniscient and sometimes people get put in and then taken out of cuffs without being arrested? Yup.
I’m far from the most vulnerable to police abuse. If it’s affected me this much, I have no reason to doubt how much it’s affected people who are more vulnerable. If having my relatively mild experience so callously dismissed feels like being left on my own to suffer whatever trauma I remember, I can’t imagine how it feels for people who experience police violence alone.
No. I don’t give the police the benefit of the doubt. And you won’t convince me to by dismissing my relatively minor traumatic experience and expecting me to extend that dismissal to people who have much worse experiences.
Both seem valid to me. The world doesn’t owe you foam padding at every turn.
That it’s equally valid doesn’t necessarily mean it’s equally important. My experience is less important speaking to how traumatic police encounters are, than experiences of people who’ve experienced worse trauma. It’s just as valid that I don’t share their trauma too.
The world doesn’t owe me anything. It’s a rock hurtling through space that has an unusual concentration of life on it. No one here owes me any consideration at all, “foam padding” or otherwise. But I don’t owe anyone a failure to advocate for myself, either. And I don’t owe anyone a failure to articulate when I think an attitude or argument is harmful or selfish, nor a failure to try to appeal to their better intentions.
Your much more severe interaction which included bludgeoning is totally valid but not a direct analog to her (and my) much less severe interaction.
I’m sorry if my words caused you harm. (That’s meant genuinely, as tone cannot be conveyed in text reliably.)
Absent this, one of three conditions exist;
1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.
2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious. This is your condition of tyranny (unaccountable power).
3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition the State.
The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy
Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California P. p. 54.
<https://archive.org/details/economysociety00webe/page/54/mod...>
There's an excellent explanation of the common misunderstanding in this episode of the Talking Politics podcast: <https://play.acast.com/s/history-of-ideas/weberonleadership>
The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.