Sandra Bland arrest video has continuity problems, anomalies
latimes.com
latimes.com
The willingness of police to label death a suicide never ceases to amaze me. I was on the beach down in Florida a few years ago and found a dead girl with her hands tied. Cops showed up and immediately assumed suicide. Turns out she had drug issues and had a history to support the assumption, but no reasonable person would approach a situation like that with such strong priors.
I'm not saying every crime scene is out of a Hollywood movie with a serial killer lurking in the shadows, but I would have really liked to see zero prior beliefs at that point. I'd sleep better knowing the people out there in charge of "serving and protecting" the general public viewed their occupation as a search for truth rather than some perverse version of The Office with guns.
Some days, every profession is "some perverse version of The Office with X".
I don't mean to excuse LEOs, but rather to point out that the expectation that they're somehow different from the rest of us, is one of society's problems.
They are different from the rest of us, in the same way that those who are border patrol officers, paramedics and military officers are. Not only does your job greatly influence your persona but you should be expected to take your job more seriously depending on the subject matter you're dealing with.
We do not send airplanes into the skies comfortably secure in the knowledge that airline pilots take their responsibilities very seriously. (Which they do, I am sure.) We do not do that because the airline industry cannot survive a failure rate of 'everyone tries hard'. Instead, there are checklists, redundant safety mechanisms, and the like, all of which greatly improve the airline success rate.
Judges, police, politicians all are very different from those of us not giving the power over others lives. You should expect them to behave accordingly or expect that they be locked away in prison or executed. Just like they do to other people often times wrongfully.
"Control over other people's lives" is the problem. Occasionally those who obtain that control use it only in benign fashion, but such conduct is exceptional.
Can you elaborate a bit? In what way are they "no different"? At the very least they are LEO, unlike all the "rest of society" AKA non-LEO.
Are these stats wrong? http://womenandpolicing.com/violencefs.asp
And what is the civilian equivalent of the blue shield? How come people snitch on each other all the time for petty things, or even make UP bad things about each other? How come LEO are rather more tribe like when it comes to that stuff, seem to cover up even murder with no problem, and sometimes even threaten the precious few cops who do speak out? How many cases are there of cops blowing the whistle about concrete cops who killed concrete persons? Is that just not being reported on as often?
I don't mean when something or someone ELSE, the non-LEO society if you will, proved without a doubt that a cop did a heinous thing, and the cop is impossible to defend, that some will condemn that cop as well and distance themselves. That one's a given, and if you see a whole lot of cops getting caught horrible things and not very many cops speaking out before anyone got caught, you should be worried IMHO. If you aren't, that just makes me worry about the US public as well. But again, "if" is the operative word here, I'm asking more than claiming this.
But this I will claim: The pre-"super-high-tech" era is the last window of opportunity to solve the problems of power and morality.
We simply have no political consciousness, at all, anywhere in the world; not in the sense of Hannah Arendt, who said politics is not about life, it's about the world, which should be one way or another, which should outlast us one way or another. I would add, so life can prosper in it. Here's an idea, to not think about what offends people who are living right now, but to think about what would offend people who might live in 1000 years, that is, what results of our (in)actions would they like, what would they curse our names for, maybe even in between screams of torture. Yes, this takes courage, which I lack as well, but even realizing one should be able to do something but doesn't dare, is better than rationalizing it. There's at least some measure of hope and dignity there.
And the story is that because the shitty quality video long after the main event happens has a few frames messed-up - which more than likely originates from technical issues - that this proves that there is something being covered up.
http://bennorton.com/dashcam-video-of-violent-arrest-of-sand...
If someone edited the video, why did they choose to make their cuts at times where cars or people are in scene? They would have gone unnoticed had they occurred a few seconds earlier. Who would be so stupid?
But, as another commenter stated, we can't know the answer until we know what the original video holds.
Interestingly, if they then release the full video which shows nothing, then suspicions around the overall case will presumably be calmed. That would make me wonder if it was an intentional red herring to engender more trust and reduce suspicion around her eventual death. After all, why else release obviously edited video that would raise suspicion only to later quell it with unedited footage that was always available?
Sadly their actions have created suspicion. Further releases of video will be doubted by a wide range of people, from calm but cautious scrutineers to rabid conspiracy theorists.
Truth doesn't matter at that point.
Not saying this is happening. But, if the full video suddenly comes out and is "all-clear", then the police department will certainly receive that benefit, whether intentional or not.
Maybe the editing was accomplished via an interface that just had a time slider.
Maybe the minimum resolution was 1 second, or five seconds...
Hell, maybe the best tech they had was the "use two VCRs, push play on one and push record on the other, push pause at the beginning and end of the segment you want to remove" method. ;)
In Rising Sun there's a slightly different polemic. A security video from a murder is edited before being given to the police (albeit more sophisticated in editing), and the detective takes offense to the assumption that it wouldn't be noticed, because of a (stereotype) Japanese attention to detail and an American indifference.
Sure, its looped a few times. And the update is that they are re-uploading it.
Like I said, it warrants further investigation.
Personally, I think it was a hit, but that is besides the point of my earlier comment.
Sandra Bland -- as a citizen -- has no obligation to be polite and deferential. To suggest that her attitude somehow justifies abuse against her is despicable. The police offer escalated the situation at every opportunity, even though it's his job to deescalate, to serve and protect, and to keep the peace.
When dealing with a suspicious suicide of course the public is going to demand whatever raw footage is available. Not a cropped and edited version. It doesn't matter that the edits are probably innocuous. Denying the public the raw footage by itself speaks of arrogance.
Or maybe as he was in the traffic lane, and now that she was clearly irate and argumentative, he did not want to stand there waiting to be hit by a car... while trying to explain to her that he was just issuing her a warning with no fine.
> Sandra Bland -- as a citizen -- has no obligation to be polite and deferential.
Except she did have an obligation to comply with the order to get out of the car.
> The police offer escalated the situation at every opportunity
That's a projection of what you want to see.
Once someone disobeys an order, they can arrest you... And when you refuse again, their job is to arrest you.
Being nasty and combative might be your right, but it in no way helps you.
If he had said "this is just a warning, there's no fine or penalty" (as he did with the first woman) the stop would hae been very much shorter.
His own actions prolonged the length of time that he was standing in the road. His own needless power-tripping prolonged the stop.
Around 11:50 she says "scared of a female - I was trying to sign the fucking ticket", suggesting that she considers that some action she performed was something he was scared of. I guess this was the reason he asked her to get out of the car.
She says "I can't wait until we go to court" refuses to stand still, refuses to listen to his responses, refuses to stand in view of the camera where he tries to put her. At 8:58 when he notes explicitly she seems "very irritated" I'm assuming, and with the subsequent search, that he's considering she's hiding something that warrants further investigation (like drug-driving?).
>His own needless power-tripping prolonged the stop. //
It doesn't seem like this to me. Assuming the stop was valid - and in none of the footage did I hear her say it wasn't - then what should he do, just ignore the ticket because she won't comply?
From a sister article (http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sandra-bland-arrest-expe...):
>"In hindsight, [Retired Los Angeles Police Capt.] Meyer said, it may have been better to wait for backup. “The lady seemed committed to her resistance to lawful detention and arrest, so the presence of a backup unit might not have made much difference,” he said.
“This is yet another case of someone who chooses to illegally resist the directions of a police officer, thus escalating the situation, “ he said." //
That's exactly how this reads to me.
Not really. Their job is to assess the situation and see if it make sense to arrest the person. In most cases, the answer is that it doesn't.
In all of the recent cases that have made the news, this question seems to go unposed, when it should be a litmus test WRT the overall approach to policing.
Instead, we have a culture that shifts the conversation to one about what the officer and victim each did as the situation escalated.
If the apparent exaggerated agitation was due to say drug-driving then the officer will have made a potential increase in the "safety and peace for the public". There is no way for them to find the facts without questioning the person and their refusal to comply peaceably makes it impossible.
If you're going to stop people for road-traffic offences, which does appear to increase safety, then do you really want LEO to let people off if they're obnoxious and evasive?
That's a non sequitur. She said "I'm in my car. Why do I have to put out my cigarette". His immediate reply was "Ok, then I'm telling you to get out of the car", implying cause and effect.
Except asking her to put out her cigarette kind of seems to imply he intended to stay in her face for a good while longer.
> Being nasty and combative might be your right, but it in no way helps you.
Same for being an apologist for this. People have the right to be that way; I don't have the right to let them.
What this is, is an ultra-common case of yet another cop "escalating everything always" because there is no downside for them to do so. They do it because they can, because they are taught power and control over people is everything and the slightest challenge should be met with extreme force.
She should have never have been ordered to get out of the car, so this was a false arrest.
The Met continues to arrest people for swearing at police as they rejected the ruling. I know that Police Scotland continue to arrest people for swearing at police but I'm not sure how/if it has affected forces in England and Wales. At the time it was reported that the precedent could likely quash any future charges in similar circumstances.
There's 2011 advice provided to the Met which says that courts are unlikely to convict because officers are assumed to be robust: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15816761
It's probably a bad idea to direct insults at officers (because no-one likes being called a fucking facist wanker) and results will vary by location.
I'm not sure, but I think that after the first time the officer should say "don't use that language at me" and therefore probably tells the citizen that they are causing harassment and distress. Then if they continue to do it, after the warning, it becomes an offence. So perhaps it should be "continues to use offensive language after a warning about the language has been given".
Having a quick Google, the articles I've come across seem to indicate that swearing at police has in the past been interpreted as illegal, but nothing has mentioned it being classed as assault.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8902770...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010...
Not a lawyer, obviously.
Where did that opinion come from? Do you have a source?
[The same laws apply for insulting non officers btw.]
Edit: Upper limit is technically one year in prison or a corresponding monetary fine (value depends on your income as is standard in Germany)
Then, there isn't a catalogue for insults and their penalty. That's because criminal law in Germany is driven by the idea that the thing to be penalised is the individual guilt, rather than an objective action. This has a lot of consequences, one of them being that your action is weighted by what you wanted when doing the potentially criminal action, i.e. the intent.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/15/1321904/-Ferguson-p...
Maybe they do it for more mundane reasons: because they are bored of nothing happening and just decide to check a car to break monotony. Maybe they are having a bad day and something that would not have bothered them any other day is pissing them off.
The problem is that comparatively to other first world countries, the US society is quite violent. You put a small army of armed regular human being on the street in a country with a small to medium expectation of violence and stupidity will have dearer consequences.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-kille...
I once lived next to a guy who drank a lot and who assaulted his older daughter when he drank too much. We had thin wales so we heard the scuffles and the cries. We always called the police but they didn't do anything about the situation. To be honest Belgian justice is a joke, in a lot of cases involving violence they never prosecute anybody.
After I while I got really fed-up after the x number of times the police came and did really nothing than telling the guy to be quit.. . I made - not saying that I was correct - remark that being a police officer in Belgium must really been the most pointless job you could do. Drive your bike without a light and you get fined, hitting your children and you get a free pass. That - and that alone - was enough to get verbalised.
In this case, the woman was irritated because she was being penalised for a really, really minor infraction. And then she was defensive because persisting with the cigarette request and the demand to leave the car seemed unfair. And then she was rude because he was abusing his authority and he was too embarrassed to acquiesce to a member of the public (giving him the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't because she was a woman and a black woman). The police should accept in the first, explain in the second and then deescalate in the third stage of a case like this.
But that's not about de-escalation training. That's about focus on duties. You poke a toe over the wrong line and you're going to get aggressively yelled at, or shoved.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=e65-wLp1yyI
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NKOj1sQh3Jw
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_bW4bRcEVEk
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xDPK1kPWj1E
These are armed soldiers, not police.
The police should react appropriately when faced with violence or an especially difficult customer, but their focus on duties should be to minimise fiery situations where they can.
They are trained in de-escalation techniques. The issue is that in so many of these videos, it's not the person they've stopped or arrested, but the police themselves being the ones _actively_ escalating a situation until a use of force is near inevitable.
I can appreciate that police would develop a strong us-vs-them reaction when dealing with organised crime for example, but there's little excuse for extending that a woman pulled over for not indicating when changing lanes. That was a real opportunity to give her a reminder, not warn or ticket her, and rebuild a really fractured relationship that people can have with their police.
It isn't illegal to be rude, but the cop also doesn't have to let you off if you are being an asshole. She broke the law and he was going to be nice and let her off with a warning. Instead she was combative and he decided not to.
He asked her nicely to put out the cigarette and she essentially told him to fuck off she can do what she wants. Nobody has to sit there as inhale your shitty smoke.
Cops can order you out of your car for no reason once you got pulled over. It is definitely not false arrest. And I think the cop had totally reasonable grounds to make her get out.
Would you sit there and get shittalked while someones blowing smoke in your face because she has an authority/anger problem.
Being a dick to a police office who can still use his discretion to let you off is a really dumb move.
12:19 in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=762&v=yf8GR3OO9mU
"You were getting a warning, but now you're going to jail."
Why not admit the "warning" upfront? Maybe exactly like the one happening the first minute of the video?
As for why he didn't say so right away the second time, probably because she was making faces or otherwise indicating that she was mad. And that is when he starts asking more questions.
I bet the minute she refused to put out her cig, he was going to give her a real ticket.
If the cigarette is such an issue, why didn't he ask her that before she rebuked his grounds for the ticket? He's power tripping the whole time after she hints that she's not pleased, and you're greenlighting his power trip because she wasn't a bootlicker.
This is victim blaming at its finest... she's rightfully angry, and you're saying we can't blame the cop for not keeping his cool?
I always find it ironic that, for example, the NYPD's slogan is "Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect"... I have no doubt that the majority of interactions between citizenry and police are filled with all three, but it's the sore thumbs like the OP that are truly glaring.
The cop isn't disrespectful until she refuses his order several times and he was to force her out of the car. At which point she cusses him out for several minutes straight.
It would be great if we had saints who could stand being yelled at like that without yelling back, but I sure couldn't.
See how that works? It's a he-said, she-said. It's great that there's one side that's obligated to act professionally and respectfully; it's a pity that that obligation seems to have fallen by the wayside. (Or, perhaps it never existed for certain segments of the population.)
The second time he asks if she is okay and she goes on a tirade. He says "ok" and then asks politely if she can put her cigarrate out. He literally says "Do you mind" and "please."
And her resonance is "I'm in my car, why do I have to put out my cigarette." And he says to get out of the car. She refuses and says she doesn't have to.
>"threatening a ticket for failure to signal when pressured by aggressive driving"
He's like 5-6 car lengths behind her. Watch the video.
8:42: You ok? (An apparently conscientious and concerned question from the police. Good, but too bad he doesn't stay like this.)
8:53: (Irritated, but civil response, by the accused, detailing why the cop is being a dickhead.)
9:15: (Cop doesn't like that he's being called out on dickhead moves and the tenor of the conversation changes. Cop proceeds to use his higher standing to escalate the situation instead of deescalating.)
You're missing the change in the cop's mindset right before the "asking about the cigarette." If the cop actually felt confident about why he pulled her over, he would have been able to handle how she responded. Instead, he felt threatened by the questioning of his motives. Why didn't he articulate the full reason and purpose for the stop right then and there? He decided to continuing escalating, and that is primarily on him. He could have slapped the ticket into her face and walked away.
Also, he wasn't bothered by the cigarette until he perceived an affront to his authority. That's childish playground behavior, not an attitude befit a public servant.
5-6 car lengths on a wide open road is an instigation. If a non-police officer driver does this, you wonder to yourself, "why is this guy up my ass?" This isn't some densely packed freeway, and he's 5-6 car lengths behind her. Why do that?
Is there another possibility?
But my money is on editing.
I'd say your money is in the smart place!
Far more likely the recording software is crappy and sometimes skips back a second or two.
The problem is whatever they released, people would start picking apart and launching conspiracy theories about.
Never put down to stupidity what can be explained by malice.
What?
I usually take the side of the cops, but this whole thing is pretty sketchy.
First, she gets pulled over for an improper lane change. When was the last time you got pulled over for something so random and minor? Then the cop starts harassing her to put out her cigarette, then tells her to get out of the car, then threatens to tase her, then the officer leaves out may of the details of the arrest in his report.
Then she dies in an apparent suicide days later. And now, we have a poorly edited video of the incident.
None of the facts in this case add up at all.
So yes, it would seem they have plenty to hide and this video only adds fuel to the fire that they're covering something up.
Drive a beat up old vehicle in a wealthy area and it will happen every month or two, even if you're doing the same speed as everyone else. If it's a slow shift cops will pull over anyone suspicious which basically means looking different or out of place, just a funny looking hat or a bunch of boxes in your back seat could be enough to catch their eye, then they'll pull you over for something like doing 4 over, rolling a 4-way stop or a lane change violation even if you're the only vehicle around and it's 1AM. I find a lot wrong with this "stopping people the check their papers" behavior, but that's not the point, point is that it happens and is likely what happened here so making the traffic stop itself was likely a perfectly normal practice.
Being white with a clean record I've always gotten off with a warning. If any of those weren't the case or I fumbled the "where are you coming from/going to" question I'm sure I'd receive a lot more scrutiny. If you don't just bend over at that point and the officer is a jerk then theres a chance of things going downhill like we've seen here.
It wouldn't surprise me if they doctored the video as a knee-jerk reaction. It's a small organization with lots of group-think with a culture discouraging transparency. They had after more than a decade of being allowed to do all sorts of things without public scrutiny. A dumb mistake like releasing a edited video is most certainly not out of the question. If they edited it it was likely done in-house (explaining the abundance of "rookie mistakes") to prevent a loose end.
This one... is apparently not? What's going on here?
It's digitally signed and then the officer's recording system uploads it securely to the police servers when back at the station. This is all to maintain a complete chain-of-custody, so when used as evidence in court it can't be easily dismissed or disregarded by the criminal's attorney.
It can't be edited because there wouldn't be a digital signature!!!?
Cameras will malfunction but not like you're saying they will.
There's the chance someone would agree with the grand/parent ('malfunction...', secure, etc.), read my comment, and think... well that's ridiculous.
Case study for "'/s' considered harmful"; Would-be PhDs take note.
Also the parent says "There are some evidence recording systems..." We don't know if this police department's system is one of those.
Keep commenting. Moderate yourself; Fuck karma... just stay positive, I don't know what happens to the people <0. I heard they burn the bodies for fuel to run the server.
Oh no, you attempted two-level sarcasm? That simply won't work here. b^)
You'd think I wouldn't be getting killed here. Everything is falling flat. Bah humbug.
1. "The Truth About Satire" -- Faye Weather, 2001, http://thereisnopunchlinehere.com.us/books/weather,faye%20th...
>Sarcasm can be seen as 'inauthentic' and diminish the immediately perceived value of a piece.
I'd rewrite this as such:
"Sarcasm is seen as 'inauthentic' and diminishes the perceived value of the piece."
>the majority of Gen-Y simply can't process more than 140 characters at a time.
I'd strike 'simply'. It's unnecessarily condescending.
>post-2000
Didn't like it when I wrote^H^H^H^H^Hread it and don't like it now. Clumsy. More forced than I'm comfortable with.
It can be useful because when you're watching a video where nothing is moving, you know the video hasn't frozen; and if you transcode the video to another format (upload to youtube, for example) the data is preserved.
Of course, even better would be if the cops' cameras recorded to a standard format that included accurate timecodes and secure digital signatures - and that same format could be viewed by most video players.
I'd like to think that things (other than the format) have improved in ~25 years, but there is no guarantee of that. Often enough, it takes a significant event like this in order to motivate the right people to do their jobs properly.
1)Repeated unimportant segments of video.
2)A fairly good sounding audio track.
3)An audio track which is not the same length of the video track.
4)The video issues do not start happening till over 20 minutes into the uploaded video, and then happen at multiple times over the next 15 minutes.
What can we conclude about the video? Well I can't conclude anything, but I sure get a lot of questions.
Could this be an issue with the recording of the video stream? I don't know seems like we might have some experts here on video recording equipment here that might be able to say if this is a type of problem that is even possible, maybe even some with knowledge of the type of equipment used in police dash cams.
Has anyone seen anything like this 'just happen' in digital video before? I haven't but my experience is limited. Anyone else?
Why is the audio OK but the video is bad? Well audio and video could be recorded separately, and if they weren't they are not hard to separate, and audio is much easier to edit.
Could the video of been edited? Well sure it was probably at least cut for upload. If it was edited the editor really sucked.
If the video was edited, why would the video be edited? Maybe it was cut to remove something that happened in one of the frames somewhere during one of the repeats. Maybe the audio was edited too and it was edited to more closely match the audio length (matching just as well as the video was edited). Maybe someone started editing the video to hide something in a missing segment and didn't finish or get to the audio before it was uploaded.
What other things besides editing and recording failure could explain the video issue? I don't know.
Do we have any experts here who given the available youtube video on the Texas Department of Public Safetys youtube page could do analysis on a more in depth level than watching it? I don't know but I think this question is why I see this belonging on Hacker News.
This is plausible.
But is this quote really from the video or someone's imagination?
If it is true, holy hell:
"Why are you arresting me?"
"Because you know your rights."
"Because I can."
"Because no one'll believe you."I don't have the best of memories though, if this quote does happen in the video can some one give us a time stamp. I mean I assume its after asking her to put out her cigarette and before her head was slammed into the concrete if this conversation did take place, but as I said don't have the time at the moment to check.
Is sharing doctored evidence with the media a crime itself, or is it only a crime if that evidence is used in court? Sure, the are free to only share a subset because of privacy etc., but purposefully misleading?
This can be a whole bunch of technical problems, or more likely incompetence with uploading it.
If this was someone pressing play+record on an analogue audio-only tape, after fumbling around with fast-forward and rewind, sure! But this most certainly is not that, let's be clear.
This is not a technical "problem". There is incompetence here, I agree, but not the flavor you are suggesting.
This video is probably encoded 2-3 times. The first time it is digitized in the camera. The cops might have recoded after taking it off the camera. And then youtube.
This is some low budget police department whose IT department is probably a secretary who happened to have a PC at her house in 1993 when the spot was created.
Warez scene release come with errors with regularity and those guys release stuff all the time and know what they are doing.
That's because they are supposed to make edits (cutting out the commercial breaks, for instance), the errors happen because the edits are done hastily, in order to release first.
The police isn't supposed to edit or tamper with the video at all, and I can't imagine any way edits like this (missing bits and looping) can just appear by accident or technical error. The only edit I can imagine to happen by accident is an interrupted upload/transfer, which would cause the video to be truncated at some point, all the way to the end. It can't just leave parts out in the middle or loop certain bits.
No, this isn't anywhere in the realm of what could happen during uploading. The video has very clearly been edited intentionally by a human. Poorly.
Cops have stopped pulling me over for no reason. Before the cam, I was getting pulled over for driving an old car, or I was driving between 10 p.m. - 2:30 a.m.? I wish I had these cams when I was younger. Could have saved a lot of pointless questions, and aggravation?
I'm a white guy who's been pulled over so many times for no reason--I lost count; I can't imagine what minorites have to go through? We should be able to drive without that constant fear of harassment. Harrasement is being pulled over for made up reasons? Cams have helped in my world. They have worked so well, I thinking about mounting a rear cam? "See them coming and going?" Sorry, if I sound jaded, but I live in a low crime area. Cops have become revenue collects here.
> I'm a white guy who's been pulled over so many times for no reason
Is there a correlation here?
Where I'm from you don't get pulled over for anything. The roads are a free-for-all wild west: taxis stop in the middle of the road in front of you for no reason. So many people die on the road every year. If you do get pulled over for a misdemeanor there is a good chance you can talk or bribe your way out of it and carry on with your reckless driving.
I would happily take a ticket for failing to indicate.
That is different from racial profiling and hate crimes. Don't confuse hard working cops doing their job with idiots with badges and guns.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/tag/curfew
Having been on the receiving end of (just a little) police harassment, it's very easy to see how aggressive policing has led to tragedies like this one and countless others. Cops deal with a lot of bad characters, but it seems they're too often looking for trouble when they harass people like this.
3rd world. It would be pointless to divulge more because: people would have a hard time believing it, it would detract from what happened to Sandra and it's quite off-topic. The core of the point is that there are good cops and bad cops.
> I was harassed multiple times by police for violating curfew.
There's a line. Harassment/your experience is firmly on the wrong side of the line. Being kindly escorted home during a lawful curfew is not the wrong side of the line. I'd happily oblige to the later: the cop is just doing his job.
What I'm really trying to say is: the American police force seems so have a bunch of bad apples, however, you really don't want to tie the hands of the good apples.
Now (in my 40s)? I get stopped every 4-5 years.
What's different? I grew up, got married, had kids and, most importantly, stopped driving like a jackass.
I don't doubt for a second that some people get stopped a lot, and that some of those stops are for "thin" or distasteful reasons. However, my experience is that keeping your car registration current and not drawing attention to yourself with aggressive driving goes a long way to not meeting the police on the side of the road.
Whatever else went on here, that part was not out of the ordinary.
It's why young African Americans are more likely to be arrested for minor drug offenses, despite offending less then the average young white person. (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/04/t... ) And indeed if you look at the ACLU Report on disparities between whites and blacks for minor marijuana offenses, page 178 has Waller County, where this happened, as one of the ones with disparities in arrests above the national average. Note: It's a PDF: https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu-thewaronmarijuana-rel...
How can you tell?
Surely the point you're making is that the real reason for pulling the person over is not the one given, how then can you establish it's "racial profiling".
I've been pulled over (UK) by police for having a stop light out, reasonable as it's a traffic violation. They asked the usual sort of questions and I got a "producer" (notice to produce various documents at a police station in the near future). How could you establish that this was because the officer was acting racist towards me?
Telling the race of a person from behind when following their car seems quite hard.
Statistics could show that more of a particular race were pulled over but that race could constitute a greater proportion of the local poor who being less able to keep their vehicles in good order are more likely to be stopped. That would create an apparent bias were there was none.
It's about time to do something about these context stops. They are just too easy for the weak-minded to abuse for their own ends.
As for the pull over, out of state tags and not signaling when a cop is coming up on you just makes you a good choice to pull over.
How do we know? Isn't that by nature the nefarious issue with racism. It hides in plain sight.
Note the following shows a 50% difference in call back rates based on name alone, with identical resumes, which is pretty relevant for techies looking at resumes. http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/05/12/marvin-ba...
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/florida-executes-mentally...
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nypd-shooter-20141221-st...
I've heard that's much less about race than about class; Jamal may be a predominately black name but even more than that it's a predominately poor name. I'd be interested to see a replication that watched the names by average income/education/similar - or one that used stereotypically rich and poor names within the same race.
I'd be interested to see how the study you suggest turns out, but I wouldn't expect it to be much different; there's too much other evidence of purely racial bias.
First they attempted to assess names race, and got rid of names that were insufficiently suggestive of race.
The study varied postal addresses and included African American names from richer neighborhoods and whites from poorer neighborhoods, and included both low and high quality resumes. Hypothetically, if people were associating black names with low class more then white names, then there should be a significant difference in the benefits of a "good" neighborhood between whites with a good neighborhood and blacks. There was none.
Further, one would assume that if class was the determining factor, then a better quality of resume might offset this. It did, but to a lesser degree for African American Names... that is, whites got more effect from a better resume then blacks did.
A white name was, by the researchers estimates, the equivalent of an additional eight years of experience for black people.
If being perceived as black, or if names that are predominantly understood as black are sufficient to assign a person to a lower class, I'd argue that that's inherently racial discrimination.
When someone says "I saw you driving fast behind me, and I got out of your way" the correct response is probably "oh, thank you maam, I misunderstood. Sorry for pulling you over. You have a nice day" or somesuch.
Any police officers knows if they really need such an excuse, they just need to follow a given car for a few minutes: it's guaranteed something will happen which justifies the traffic stop.
And the worst thing is they tail you when they follow you, making you nervous and more likely to make a mistake. That's also what the officer did here.
Tailgating does apply to officers of the law, they need to act in a way that reduces the possibility of serious harm proportional to any criminals being pursued. Police on duty can be guilty of DWDC&A or dangerous driving.
Example - not tailgating - http://road.cc/content/news/64021-speeding-police-officer-co... an officer using sirens & lights convicted of dangerous driving.
Sadly Smiley died/committed suicide during a police raid on his house.
Sounds like time for one of those discretionary arrests for a traffic violation."
Just wow. A lot of the responses on this forum are incredibly entitled, power trip-y, and precisely why no one trusts cops anymore.
• 8.4% of all drivers were pulled over in a traffic stop that year.
• 9.9% of male drivers were stopped, 7.0% of female drivers.
• 8.4% of white drivers were stopped, 8.8% of black drivers were stopped, and 9.1% of hispanic drivers were stopped.
• Speeding was the most common reason for being stopped.
• 85% of drivers felt the stop was legitimate. This breaks down as 86% of white drivers thought the stop was legitimate, 74% for black drivers, and 82% for hispanic drivers.
• 5% of stops led to a search of the driver, the vehicle, or both. Male drivers were more likely to be searched than female drivers (7.4% vs. 1.6%). By race, it was 3.9% for whites, 12.3% for blacks, and 5.8% for hispanics.
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=702
By 2011, the percent of drivers of each race that were stopped had gone up, to 10% of whites, 13% of blacks, and 10% of hispanics.
• Black or African American alone, percent definition and source info Black or African American alone, percent, 2013 (a) 13.2%
• American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent definition and source info American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2013 (a) 1.2%
• Asian alone, percent definition and source info Asian alone, percent, 2013 (a) 5.3%
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent definition and source info Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2013 (a) 0.2%
• Two or More Races, percent definition and source info Two or More Races, percent, 2013 2.4%
• Hispanic or Latino, percent definition and source info Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013 (b) 17.1%
• White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent definition and source info White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2013 62.6%
I wonder though if there was something off about the license plate associated with the car. Does anyone know if this thing was completely clean?
Can I just check: you think it's reasonable to be irritated after being stopped after being caught speeding? Or you think Sandra Bland is reasonable in being irritated?
I know the consensus here is to refuse to answer any questions, but I think if I had tried that approach in this situation, I would have spent the night in jail (and maybe longer, depending on the availability of a judge).
I was pretty pissed off at the time, but I only let myself show it after he let me go.
He asked me what I did for a living. I should have refused to answer that as irrelevant and none-of-his-business, and I could easily have afforded the unjust consequences (unlike many people who are racially profiled), yet I still felt powerless and coerced to answer. I regret that. I was polite, cooperative, and with my wife. The officer was rude and menacing. The racial profiling and assumptions about how I could be driving a nice car were clear as day.
Wow, that's infuriating. Tough call what to do in that situation.
(nah, prolly better not)
I have always been polite and honest. Got away with verbal warnings both times (was above the speed limit).
Do you really think he asked you what you did for a living out of racial profiling?
That being said, instead of thinking about the question first and then asking if it points to racial profiling, start the other way: Do you think racial profiling exists? If yes, is it plausible that an officer would ask a non-white person this question after profiling?
What other purpose does that question have other than to further profile you? How does it bear in any way on a driving infraction?
1. To find out who you are.
2. To decide if they should give you a ticket or let you go.
3. To try to get you to give them permission to search you and your car, or to get you to say something that gives them probable cause to search you and your car without your permission.
Whether it makes sense to answer a question or not depends on the reason behind that question.
If you refuse to answer the #1 questions, that is your right. They can then arrest you, and hold you until they can figure out who you are.
They cannot arrest you for not answering the #2 or #3 questions, and you should definitely not answer the #3 questions. Even if you never use illegal drugs or engage in any other illegal activity, a passenger may have accidentally dropped something in your car.
If you don't answer the #2 questions, you are almost certainly going to get the ticket for whatever they pulled you over for. If you want to get off with a warning, you have to give the officer some reason to not give you a ticket, and that's hard to do without saying something (especially if you were actually violating a traffic law).
-----
Justice Kennedy wrote, "While we recognize petitioner's strong belief that he should not have to disclose his identity, the Fifth Amendment does not override the Nevada Legislature's judgment to the contrary absent a reasonable belief that the disclosure would tend to incriminate him."
I've always thought you Americans were just complaining about "first world problems." However, between Charleston and Sandra Bland I am really sitting up and taking notice now: please continue to demand answers. These hate crimes simply cannot be a reality in advanced societies.
Hey man, Russia and China are first world countries too. But seriously, that's one of the most interesting comments I've seen on this.
First World originally meant the US and its allies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World
The later confuzzled meaning, where First World is associated with being highly economically developed, also doesn't really apply to Russia and China:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC
There is still a stark difference in economic productivity between Russia/China and the countries with high per capita GDP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP...
I also got told off a few times for soliciting without a license.
I was with my brother both times. We were shouted at, separated, patted down, and questioned repeatedly, trying to find some disparity in our stories and an excuse to search the truck.
I imagine it would have been much worse/more aggressive if we were minorities.
And the locals will tell you where the trick half-mile-long speed limit drops that you'll never notice until you're pulled over are.
Yes, exactly that. We like those things. We have almost all of those things in Sussex County NJ, and a good job to boot, but it's a really nice town to visit. Reminds me of where I went to school in Boone NC.
On the flip side, a couple years earlier, when I had just moved to the Bay area in 1995 (from Vancouver,BC ) I had gotten a bit lost with friends, and had slowed down, and were stopping at various intersections in East Palo Alto trying to get our bearing. (I just realized - this is something anybody who grows up with GPS enabled smartphones will never have to do) A police office pulled us over to find out what we were doing, and then suggested (once again, really nicely), that we probably shouldn't be stopping in this neighborhood at that time of night (East Palo Alto, unbeknownst to us, was a very high-crime area in 1995)
I guess my point is - Police pull people over when their spidey sense goes off all the time. And it can be all sorts of things that will trigger it. I guess I'm blessed with white skin, but the many interactions I've had with police in which they've engaged me because whatever it was I was doing seemed sketchy at the time, always ended up well. Though, honestly - they've got guns, so I've also been pretty sensitive to the fact that if I made them nervous they might shoot me.
That seems reasonable.
As the officer, you're not even likely to notice you're doing it. As a person of the "wrong skin color" driving through a high-rent neighborhood, you'll start to notice real fast that your commute is disrupted all the damn time.
My personal story: I'm white, but I used to drive a beater with crappy temperature control and was taking a new route home late at night while wearing a stocking cap. Got pulled over for ostensibly making a left on red (on a deserted road in the middle of the night, when I'm pretty confident the light was green). If the officer's real reason for pulling me over is that I looked like I was casing the neighborhood for a place to rob, I don't really blame him; I was dressed like one of the Wet Bandits from Home Alone. ;)
Be that as it may, the "spidey sense" excuse could and should hold at least some water with most people, if they trust the intentions of the police. But I grew up with harassment by the NYPD and then small-time police in the Hudson Valley, and saw non-white friends and bystanders (I'm white) get it ten times worse. Surely, this applies to many in the US.
In the few experiences I've had where police help was legitimately needed, I was met with bored annoyed "what can we do?" apathy. So, forgive me if I respectfully doubt that any significant number of street-level police cultivate some intuitive sense for crime, when routine profiling, harassment, and fabrication (much easier modes of operating) seem to be standard practice.
American relations with law-enforcement are about as low-trust as it gets in a 1st world country, that's the unfortunate reality, which will take decades to turn around, if ever.
I've talked to my kid a lot about the relationship between the cops and citizens. He was very calm about it, and maintained his speed. The cop passed and left after a minute or so.
Failing to signal. Infinitesimal failure to stop. Changing lanes just a smidgeon before the solid white line changes to dashed. These are all just entry points for cops to fuck with you, either just for the sake of fucking with you, or to escalate up into something that goes on their performance evaluation metrics. 'Cause you know that they get measured, and you can't measure "didn't pull that guy over because he wasn't doing anything." Their incentives are your peril.
And, I wish police would fine people for tailgating. I've never seen it happen.
That sounds like being goaded.
>Maybe I am naive,
No disrespect intended, but I think you are.
>but I think that assuming the cops are out to get you is a bad place to start from.
I didn't start from there. I've been around them my whole life.
I've actually seen that happen, it was obviously on purpose after a guy was riding someone during commute.
When he got to the car, he claimed to smell a large amount of alcohol on my friend and me. It was like noon on a Saturday and we had not been drinking at all. He asked me to get out and do a sobriety test, which I did and passed. After that he just gave me a warning for the tabs, which I was not expecting considering how out of date they were. He never mentioned the lane change again after he first said why he pulled me over. Full disclosure, I'm white.
Was never ticketed for it, but did have to entertain the officer's BS line of questioning about where I was going and such.
I was escorted out of my car and asked how much marijuana I was carrying. I wasn't carrying any, so I told them so. They searched the car and didn't find any, so then escorted me to the police station for further questioning.
The investigative officer there quickly realized that I was not the person they initially thought. Overall a great experience.
I'm not so sure that's the case though these days. Everyone has a bad mood, a bad day or a sucky life, the only difference is some have a gun and the ability to lawfully leave me to bleed out on the side of the road. Is this the person I going to meet when I get pull over next time?
I have seen someone who was pulled over by the police, then let go, then make an illegal u-turn while turning back onto the road and was pulled over again within seconds :)
Edit: I have been randomly questioned a few times playing Ingress at post offices at 3am.
Of course, that smartass approach may get you more crap in the future.
At 12:50 the policeman slams shut the door of her car and it is in sync with the audio.
At 25:55 the same door gots slammed, but no sound is to be heard. Maybe because the policeman is carrying the microphone? Is he that far away?
At about 48:00 the door of another car gets slammed. Its clearly on the audio, but about 1 second too early.
If it's an order, get out of the car. White, black, asian, or hispanic, once that order is given, you're getting out of the car one way or another.
If you really think the order was given unlawfully, take it to court where these things can be debated.
Do not, under any circumstance, make the officer feel uncomfortable. If you play nice, so will they. Always respect/practice the 4th.
I was in Madison WI when Tony Robinson was killed and saw some of the protests against the police. It was interesting to me that the spirit of the protests weren't harmed by the fact that Tony had assaulted people on the street then tried to kill the police officer responding to the incident.
Sitting in jail innocent and alive is always better in my book than being gunned down in the street by a scared and trigger-happy cop.
Sitting in jail innocent and alive should not be the lesser of two evils.
Now, if your goal is to become a martyr for your cause, then you've just hit the jackpot. If your goal is to take another breath, to see your loved ones one more time... becoming physically violent with a cop is a really bad idea. Is this the way it should be? No, we shouldn't be afraid of police officers. But for better or worse, this is how it is. Your platitudes about "cops are bad, the victim is right" isn't entirely realistic unless the goal is to create more martyrs.
Have you never met a bully? Did they play nice when you did? Not everyone is inherently as reasonable and "nice" as you think yourself to be. This may be hard to grasp if you've spent your entire life in exclusively civil company, but there are plenty of people with malicious intent in the world. And is it any surprise that they would be drawn to a profession wielding physical dominion over the common citizen?
I suspect that part of eevilspock's basis for the statement was a belief (which I would think is justified) that these experiences are substantially correlated with race.
That sounds like excellent advice if your goal is to get executed.
At least in a vehicle, the Supreme Court has ruled that the police have the authority to order you to exit the vehicle and to use force to compel your compliance.
"I'm going to search your vehicle, ok"
If you say "ok", then you just volunteered to have your car searched.
The Supreme Court has determined that the police have the authority to -demand- your exit from a vehicle, orthogonal to the issue of "Am I free to go?" and other detainment questions, and to compel your exit from the vehicle using force if necessary (at which point you reach the awkward catch-22 of "is this classified as 'resisting arrest'?"
"Please" implies a non-obligatory request; it can also be used as a layer of politeness over a command, but confirming the intent is not unreasonable. That police have the power to order you to exit the vehicle does not imply that any request to do so is an order.
But yes, legitimate issues with driver error will be a thing of the past.
I have no clue if the cop was right when he said that he has "every right" to ask her to put down her cigarette and step out of her car. Cops pull this shit all the time betting on the fact that citizens have no f-ing idea what they actually can and can't order them to do.
"I will light you up!", just for that this guy deserves to be fired.
It's probably better to teachchildren how to safely interact with police, and how to safely gather evidence which can be used later to persue complaints against abusive officers.
The fact that this is already a thing in some parts of the US should be a big flag that something is seriously wrong.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HkdWdefMvTw
It's baffling to me that when police accept communication problems are a thing that they then train African american youth to be compliant, rather than training police to not be assholes.
Are you being detained or arrested is not a bright line rule. You can go from one to teh other without anyone saying anything. And the rules for police differ.
I'm a lawyer and I couldn't even begin to tell you the rules for my own state, let a lone some random place in Texas.
Though one bright line rule is that cops can make you get out of your car. That is pretty much their discretion.
I find it very scary that we accept a principle such as Ignorantia juris non excusat but don't bother teaching law and make it understandable to common people.
And to be clear, I'm not talking about details to be used during a trial, but just day-to-day interaction with police officer / social services / etc.
Can they really order you out of your car? Do they have to give a reason? Can they enter your home without a warrant? Can they really take your kids if you don't willingly let them in? Are they authorized to ask you about your profession?
They will always use people's ignorance to scare them and force them to comply, but that's the direct road towards a police state.
The big stuff is more clear but there are always exceptions. So no, a cop can't just enter your house without a weapon. EXCEPT: if they are in hot pursuit of a criminal; as part of a legal arrest; to save someones life; etc. But each of those rules has wrinkles that local courts have rules on.
If true, oddly enough, I'm not sure a crime was committed, although it sure feels like somebody should go to jail. But I am not sure. Is there a law that says that everything the police releases to the media concerning possible court cases must be the same evidence that will be presented at trial? Or are they free to spin and edit things however they like? I believe they are.
Assuming this line of reasoning, the LAT may have jumped the gun by releasing the story when it did. It would have been much more interesting to have let the video stand as a Press Release, then see if they tried to use it in court, then run the story. As it is now, we'll never know how that scenario would have turned out.
Is it possible the original audio stretched to fill the old "glitched" video?
Some police killings most likely could have been avoided if not for the disrespect given to the police.
I picked a few at random from the July group, and the closest any came to someone being killed for "disrespecting" the police was a couple of them who were shot for pointing guns at police, which is certainly disrespectful.
I have no idea why you are getting down voted.
If you have a group of people that have right to kill someone for legitimate reason you can be sure, I think, that some of them will be less reluctant to exercise this right if they are distressed by disrespect shown towards them by this person.
Take this guy for example (I just read about one at random):
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-man-wounded-lapd...
Unarmed guy who riding skateboard down the street was killed because he didn't obey commands from police and they were unable to subdue him. Technically he was killed for using potentially lethal weapon on police officer. For me if disrespect and police vulnerability towards disrespect wasn't a factor there, the policemen would back off after initial trouble and keep an eye on the guy while waiting for back-up.
One of the first things you notice after for instance binning all the deaths for a couple randomly-selected months: the modal circumstance for police-involved fatality in the US is "engage in a confrontation with police with a lethal weapon". This remains the case even after you discard from that bin every story in which the involvement of the weapon is contested. For every case in which the victim's family, friends, or bystanders argue no weapon was involved, there are several --- often 4-5 --- in which the victim was clearly armed; roughly 1:3 knives:firearms.
Really, the modal circumstance for police-involved fatality in the US is "engage in a confrontation with police while illegally armed with a firearm".
It's easy to see why the data would show this but the news narrative wouldn't. People who wave guns at police officers are almost always in some way marginalized: they're mentally ill, and/or already deeply involved in criminality. Those stories are unfortunately not newsworthy. There's a bigtime availability bias involved in analyzing police policy from the news media.
I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. I think the attention being focused on police departments today is an unalloyed good.
The next thing you learn is that we really need to do something about tasers, because if there's a top 3 set of circumstances for death involving police officers, "death after tasing" is at least #3.
Since you've looked at the data, could this be survivorship bias? Is there data on how often tasers are used where firearms would've been, in the absence of tasers? It certainly could be that tasers reduce the number of people killed by police, but it sounds hard to measure that.
I'd say that it all still leaves plenty of room, given how many people are killed by the police and how few are legally executed to believe that there's no huge gap between number of people legally executed and number of people killed by the police as a result of policemen vulnerability towards disrespect and propensity to escalate confrontation to maintain authority.
Remember how they dissed Snowden when that story broke out? But then once he became a cause celebre, they came over to his side.
If an article does not gratify your intellectual curiosity, I suggest just ignoring it.
Several HN readers are involved (professionally or as a hobby) in "film stuff" - editing software; cameras; etc. there's probably someone here who could point to known bugs in software / hardware if these exist.
Many people on HN are involved in selling stuff, which means they have an interest in manipulating people. Seeing examples of failed human interactions is instructive. Although it's tempting to say "you'd have to be a fucking idiot to think the cop's attitude would work" there are enough of these videos to show that people get caught up by something that cause poor interaction. There are probably examples of founders making similar mistakes leading to PR disasters.
Another concern is the absence of a timestamp. This I'm not as worried about because they probably cropped it out. It's definitely understandable, especially for public-facing video to crop out some of more sensitive metadata like time, officer info, car info, etc. It's not nearly as concerning as the video itself.
Then there is the case of the actual jumps themselves. What makes me doubt is that they aren't just jump cuts, there's some stutter and back and forth motion for each cut, and there's also some video artifacts for each one.
I despise the police, I really do. The very idea of police is repulsive and disturbing, in my opinion. That being said, I think LA Times is definitely suspect here for such a bait-y headline over what looks to be an actual video issue. I mean: "arrest video has continuit problems, anomalies"? No shit, the video is messed up. It also has the entire dialogue between the two leading up to the arrest, it even has a whole other stop from another time!
I just don't see the possibility that they are hiding something, when there is so much on tape already.
You mean this in an idealistic sense? I was just remembering this morning an old friend who regularly used the word 'pigs' to describe police, and how I found it ridiculous.
And I still do.
How would a world without police be better than the one we have? It wouldn't. It would be a horrendous place where the strong, the violent, the aggressive, triumph over the vulnerable. I honestly can't understand your attitude.
Your point is taken, but I feel like it's fundamentally flawed.
People should be smart enough to defend themselves and their physical safety. Weak people who call the cops over a bump in the night are digging their grave, handing over their security to the state.
You think that the world would be ruled by the violent? Open your eyes, guy. It already is. I'm talking about equalizing the playing field. The weak won't get stronger unless someone is there to show them how to be strong.
Any third world country there are areas where government can't reach. People fend for themselves there.
I don't think that's something we should be striving for. You can visit those places if defending your physical safety is something you like.
Just a bit of warring. It's a full time job.
Only if there WERE violent and aggressive people who take advantage of the vulnerable. You could argue that it would be nice if everybody was nice to each other.
At their worst, the police can do this.
Police following the Peel principles are a great improvement to society. Many of the US's fragmented matrix of police forces have forgotten them and succumbed to lazy racism and target-driven enforcement.
The UK equivalent would be the rebuilding of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to stop it being explicitly sectarian.
Science thrives on peer review and making sure members of the community keep each other in check; let's give the police incentives to do that.
Also, break the police unions. Make it a felony for police officers to unionize.
Well, come to Brazil, then. Murder rate comparable to modern armed conflicts but hey! Almost no police interactions at all! I've only ever been stopped at checkpoints - and that's their purpose. They might not even show up if you call the emergency number.
If you do interact with them, know that there are no dashcams. And even if they are, you'll never ever see their footage.
Also, you can't legally own a gun.
Let us know how long will it take to change your mind.
Is this enforced? By the police? Police who allow all crimes other than the "crime" of armed self-defense seem to match the description "repulsive and disturbing".
The officer's behavior was deplorable, but I'm not convinced the video was doctored.
How often does this "just happen"? It's not like someone jogging a CD player.
I suppose this is just a bad choice in equipment. For example, in Germany CCTV cams in underground stations seem to have an incredibly bad black/white low-resolution quality and when bad things happen people are supposed to recognize some blurry face..
I really don't understand the absolute lack of respect some people have for the law and other humans. Is it that hard to be civil?
Also she responded in a way that seemed to be in keeping with her civil rights.
I don't care if she has the right to remain smoking in her car or not. Someone asked kindly for her to put it out, and she went full rant in return.
I'm sure statistically speaking, if someone is a complete asshole and "resists" any attempt to be nice to the police, they're likely to be breaking other laws - carrying drugs, no car insurance, etc etc.
If you get pulled over by the police, starting an argument and forcing them to escalate things isn't the best idea.
Given that there's a lot of questions about the audio in general, I'm not sure how nicely he really asked - the entire veracity of the audio stream is under question here: the video skips around but the audio doesn't. That certainly lends credence to the "he was being nice" argument, except for the part where the "nice" could well have been added in post-processing.
Ultimately, a racist institution staffed by racists most likely murdered a woman whose only crimes were (a) not signaling to pull over after the officer signaled her to pull over, for some other reason, and (b) not being polite to the officer in question.
Until and unless you show me that police deserve politeness, the only reason to be polite to them is "because otherwise they may kill you". That is not only f'd up, it's literally terrorism. As in: these acts make us terrified and we are less likely to resist their authority. So, yeah.
Spot on. Everyone saying "she should have been nicer" are effectively saying that you should submit to the police or they'll kill you. Nobody is saying "he deserved politeness and she was rude" because it's very obvious that he was not polite to her. "How are you doing? You seem upset?" Well she just got pulled over and is getting a ticket bozo, what do you think?
Which is not illegal. If she has the right to smoke, he has the right to ask her to stop and she has the right to say no.
"If you get pulled over by the police, starting an argument and forcing them to escalate things isn't the best idea." Yeah, much better to let them do what they want, bully you and find something to arrest you and meet their quotas.
One should not get arrested for being rude, being rude is a fucking right, period.
9:20 in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=560&v=yf8GR3OO9mU
While I agree knowing her rights certainly didn't work to her advantage in this situation. Your interpretation of events is not what I consider correct, and mine may not be either. I would encourage other people to watch it and determine for themselves what was ranting and what was polite.
Maybe if you're stopped regularly, then it's hard to keep your temper. It'd be interesting to know how many times she'd been stopped in the past.
So to me this just sounds like some small parts of the video got repeated by accident, leading to a slightly "extended" video that becomes out of sync with the audio.
But maybe I'm being too naive here, I don't actually know the backstory of this.
How? Is this an error for any camera or recording software?
It feels like it can only happen after editing, and the fact that edits happened make people wonder about what was edited out.
http://bennorton.com/dashcam-video-of-violent-arrest-of-sand...