Everyone, I wrote about this yesterday: http://www.dailykos.com/...
I just made another comment on the topic that morphed into a diary, and here it is!
I feel strongly about getting this matter more visibility.
Lawful orders. A great many of these ugly scenarios boil down to a compliance conflict of some sort. The officer didn't see the compliance they were looking for and escalated the level of force involved, until they got compliance, or the person being policed was rendered unable to comply, up to and including being dead.
How can this be? What can be done?
More below the orange thingy...
Let's take these one at a time, using some of my personal experiences to help you better understand what is happening and how it can all work against us.
First, how can every order be lawful? And how did we arrive at "must comply" as being the primary goal in way too many policing efforts today?
As I wrote yesterday, the difference is in the priority inherent in the policing doctrine.
The older school deescalate, protect and serve doctrine had safety and security as high priorities. If it has to be done, do it, but do the work to limit what has to be done and do that and no more and do no harm, or as little harm as warranted.
Today, the doctrine is simple: Escalate use of force until compliance happens. There is no meaningful latch on this either. It could mean rendering the person unable to comply, or result in a dead person for failure to comply.
Ordinary people get faced with the choice of compliance, or an expensive trial, or some criminal charge on their record, or physical harm and potentially death too. This can happen to you, and it did happen to me. Not every order is lawful. It doesn't matter to them in the vast majority of cases not involving wealth or some status or notoriety.
At any time, the police can and often will do these things to bolster their position on compliance: I call this the "shake and bake" of policing.
1. Charge you with interfering with an [insert type here] officer.
Anything that makes their job seem harder qualifies, particularly with an aggressive and willing prosecutor.
2. Charge you with resisting arrest.
ANY arrest can include resisting for extra bonus points! There is absolutely nothing for them to lose on that one.
Here's the catch:
Demonstrating intent on those is tough. If somebody does get an attorney willing to deal with those charges properly, they will have a hard time making them stick.
And if there are witnesses, it's even harder.
But, who wants to actually fund and experience a trial and it's risks?
Diversions are put on the table:
1. Plead guilty type community courts. You admit it, they make you do stuff, and often when you are a good peep they will expunge the whole thing. This is a rough form of "citizen education" and the education is you are better off to comply.
2. Bench probation and or suspended / reduced sentences. You admit it, and they make you do stuff, and you are stuck with a record that makes it all much easier for them in the future. Repeat offenders get real time. And you are now an offender because you, yourself said so. Neat, isn't it?
3. Of course, you can just do everything they say, right?
A trial will cost you $$$ Expect a few grand to do it right, and if you tort to recover those $$$, expect that to go on for a very long time. Years. And then expect to settle for less.
A trial puts you at risk. In my case, that risk was a year of time and $1000. I really didn't want that on the table, but I also was really chapped over the whole affair too. Decided it was worth it. Most people won't.
A trial takes a lot of your time. They will file motions for you to appear a whole bunch of times and they will file them for just about any bullshit reason they can think of to make your life hard. I appeared 20 some odd times before trial when I experienced all of this.
A trial makes this all public and it involves your friends and family to testify as to you not being an asshole.
Fun and games, isn't it? Not really. No joke.
Now, what can be done?
We need to begin to pick apart the current policing escalation of force to compliance doctrine. My diary yesterday details a lot of how it works and what the impact is.
In my experience, few people really understand that doctrine is in place, and they instead fixate on bad officers. There are bad police. Of course. But, there are a lot of good ones too, and even they must adhere to that doctrine on some level or they may expose themselves personally.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not making excuses. These horrible outcomes are not excusable any more than they are acceptable outcomes. And where we find an officer of poor character, it needs to be talked about. Even worse, angry officers looking to hand out punishment right there can exploit this the same way an otherwise well meaning officer may be required to exploit it!
What I'm trying to say here is let's not make bad officers a distraction from the very real change in policing doctrine and it's impact on these compliance conflicts we keep seeing in the news. We need to improve our police, but we also need to improve on why things are the way they are too.
The escalation of force to compliance doctrine is and may be THE root cause, behind these outcomes, and there isn't a lot of discussion on it. We need to change that. And if we do manage to change that, we may find the whole discussion a lot easier to make progress and reform happen.
All of this is precisely why we really do need to revisit policing doctrine. If we don't do that, the police can and will game any legal bandaid type remedies we could come up with. Patchwork type remedies won't cut it.
The doctrine includes liability management and that means gaming whatever minor league reforms happen. Doesn't mean they aren't good efforts. They are. Know that securing small victories isn't the same as educating people well enough to go after the root cause, which is escalation of force to compliance.
It is that doctrine that leads to people dying at a traffic stop. Let's go after that and not stop, until we have a rational dialog about a return to a more human policing doctrine we can all live with and be proud of.
Finally, not all police forces employ this doctrine. We need to better understand this and promote the good policing as the great doctrine success advocacy it is.