There is a diary on the Rec List now in which a Koster tells of his encounter with police at an Ann Coulter lecture at his college. The police acted badly post arrest and I don't defend them for that. This diary deals with the arrest itself, and the misconception that many good liberals have about the duty to follow a public safety officer's lawful orders. This misconception can quite seriously get you killed, which is why I commented in that diary and have decided to turn that comment into my own diary on the topic.
Essentially: you have to obey a lawful order. Understand that.
Here's my comment from the other diary:
This is a good diary and the behavior of the police, at least as reported, was inexcusable. But for your own good and those of your readers, I want to explain why you were arrested, and why that part of the story is not a scandal.
Essentially, you failed to obey a lawful order from a public safety officer. Note that this is not the same as your failing the obey a reasonable order or a just order. All the order has to be, to force your compliance, is lawful.
Here are the things you said that sent my antennae up:
When it was my turn in line, I walked onto the stage, and toward Coulter. I was immediately cut off by two security officials, one a police officer, one in plainclothes. They said that I could not come up to her table if I did not have a book. I said I just wanted to ask a question, and approached the table.
They have the right to tell you that you can't approach the table on any basis that doesn't violate your equal protection of the law. You might thank all of those people who laugh at Ann Coulter being hit with pies for their hypervigilance. If they say that you can't go there, you can't; it doesn't have to be reasonable.
I did not utter more than three words of my question before I was forcibly escorted to the end of the stage, led down the stairs, told I was being ejected, and again pushed in the direction of the building's exit without so much as a pause or an explanation.
Not allowing myself to be physically removed without even talking about it for a moment, I then began to walk in the opposite direction, back toward the center of the auditorium where I had been sitting and mingling with people after the lecture.
Again, they were within their legal rights to send you directly to the exit. You know that your motivations were benign; they have no way to read your mind. Your starting off in the wrong direction could be going back to get a gun, signal a confederate, or fake the officer out and go around him. When you violated the order not to approach the table, you forfeited your right to determine by what exit you would leave the building. You also forfeited the right to talk about it with the officer, who had a job to do and possibly confederates of yours to watch and catch. The officer's decision doesn't have to be reasonable; it only has to be legal. It was.
The officer suddenly started to pull my coat and grab at my shoulders. Instinctively, I didn't simply allow him to do this, and kept moving forward. I did not resist, nor did I shove or strike the officer in any way. I simply started walking in a different direction. I was then tackled to the ground by the officer and surrounded by several others.
You say that you didn't resist. Of course you did. The officer at that point had decided to physically detain -- aka "physically arrest"* -- you. You resisted that arrest. You didn't do so violently, but it was resistance. It may be that the officer's call was wrong, unreasonable, unfair. Yet, it was legal. Your legal responsibility was to comply. If you didn't, they were well within their right to tackle you.
[*"physically" added for clarifation, h/t to ben masel]
What they did after that suggests that they were poorly trained, had bad intent, and any number of other things. That part of the diary earned my recommendation. But your belief that because you knew that you were not a danger to Coulter and were simply exercising your freedom to do what you want, and that having initially defied the officers you could then decide how and when to terminate the interaction is wrongheaded. In other circumstances, it could get you killed, and that goes tenfold (or more) if you're not a college student, and especially if you're an ethnic or racial minority.
I am not saying that you were morally wrong; I am saying that you were legally wrong and that the smug assurance that one can act this way with the cops is something that, quite seriously, can lead to greater tragedies than the one you experienced. People need to know that cops are not reasonable because they don't have to be reasonable; to an extent, being reasonable may impede their job performance.
If you imagine that it was Obama rather than Coulter on the stage, and that you were a radical fundamentalist rather than yourself, you may better see the wisdom of these very unpleasant policies. To avoid arrest and worse, obey lawful demands. If you don't, and in civil disobedience situations, there can be great arguments for not doing so, don't be surprised when things like this happen. If you still decide to go ahead and do then, that's your choice, but it should not be made in ignorance.
Update: to be fair, jwcisneros offers a fair and measured rebuttal here, to which I have responded.