Jul 27, 2009

"If a Police Officer Tells You to Do Something and You Don't Do It, You're Actually Resisting"

by Cliopatria

Great video, and perfect timing: At a conservative protest against Democratic health care reform measures, a Baton Rouge police officer repeatedly forbids protestors to speak to other people on a public sidewalk. When they complain, a security guard approaches (starting around 2:09 in the video) and speaks the sentence that I've used as the headline for this post.

I look forward to hearing from the people who argued here that Henry Louis Gates deserved to be handcuffed on his own porch and thrown in jail for failing to respect a police officer. Clearly you have to agree that a police officer may silence conservative protest, since all Americans are obligated to respect police authority without question.

Second favorite moment is at 3:43, when a man in the crowd shouts at the police officer that conservative protestors"oughta be in jail" for publicly disagreeing with ACORN activists. He's absolutely correct, of course -- they're disrespecting a police officer who told them to be silent.

Authority fetishists, here's the ghost of Christmas future. You can help to build a police state, but you're gonna have to live in it.

Elsewhere...

...via Radley Balko, an LAPD officer writing at the National Review Onlinewarns that he might kill you if you try to assert your Fourth Amendment rights.

More Comments:

Chris Bray - 7/29/2009

Fortunately, someone else has addressed this argument, saving me the effort.

William Hopwood - 7/27/2009

"Elsewhere...
...an LAPD officer writing at the National Review Online warns that he might kill you if you try to assert your Fourth Amendment rights."

The Fourth Amendment rights exist against "unreasonable" searches and seizures. The hypothetical stop described in your cite was certainly reasonable and if it had resulted in an arrest could have met the criteria for "probable cause." Neither the Fourth Amendment nor any other Constitutional provision gives one the right to resist a police officer's instructions in a situation such as described. The proper response of one feeling that his rights were violated by the officer is not to go ballistic and create a disturbance but to file a complaint against the officer after the fact. At that time the complaint can be evaluated by the proper authority.

As for the so-called death threat, I think it clear from the context pf the National Review article that the officer meant he would defend against any violence used against him (in the name of civil rights or for any other reason) with appropriate action of his own. That he is certainly permitted to do.