Video shows officers dragged [NFL Star] Tyreek Hill out of his car after he put his window back up

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 208 points –
Video shows officers dragged Tyreek Hill out of his car after he put his window back up
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I am a huge police accountability buff. But also, law matters, and court rulings matter. If police order you out of your car for their safety (in the US), you have to comply. If you do not, they are authorized to use force to pull you out and almost never do that gently. Cops absolutely use excessive force all the time, so not doing things that specifically give them permission would be smart. Him rolling up his tinted windows and refusing to get out of the car are what made this happen.

They still need probably cause to force him out. They might have had it based on prior facts, but they might not have.

Cops are way past getting the benefit of the doubt from me

This looks like they were angry about an uppity black man.

This. They cannot tell you to get out for speeding or some other minor offense. They need probable cause for that. Then while he was in handcuffs, one of these clowns punched him in the face.

We need to end qualified immunity and start jailing these authoritarian tyrants.

This is wrong. Stop spreading misinformation. They can order you out of a car for nearly any reason. Safety being a primary stated purpose that has MASSIVE LEAWAY.

https://www.smithandeulo.com/can-police-order-passenger-out-of-car/?amp

https://defenseadvocates.com/can-police-make-you-get-out-of-your-car/

I can post these all day long. They’re everywhere. There is no excuse for people spreading this misinformation.

However, all other instances outside of those enumerated above appear to be unlawful reasons for ordering a passenger out of the car. For example, if the stop is concluded and the cop wants to talk to you about an unrelated matter. This would be an unlawful seizure. The Mimms case made it clear that while an officer may order an individual out of the car for legitimate safety concerns, the officer is not entitled to ask a driver out of the vehicle in every single instance in which he wants to speak with the occupants. See Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106 (1977).

That's literally you're own link. Pulling a driver over on the highway and asking them to step out and move to the shoulder grass is fine. Asking them to exit the car, on a side street is not a safety issue.

If they can't see in your vehicle, they can tell you to exit the vehicle. If you give off a hostile vibe they can tell you to exit the vehicle. Having overly dark tint creates a scenario where they cannot see what is going on inside the vehicle. I have seen cops pull out their guns and shout at people to get out of the car from 20 ft away because they couldn't see inside. I'm not saying that's the right response, I'm just saying that there are more court-accepted reasons that an officer can pull you out of your vehicle "for their safety".

Maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, but maybe for a simple speeding offense they didn't need to drag him out of the car? Just because they are allowed to based on past court cases doesn't mean they should use that for every issue they see.

There are a lot of people who want to end qualified immunity and reform many realities of policing today. I am describing the reality today. There's a reason I say I'm interested in police accountability/transparency.

The time between them ordering him out of the car (not asking to roll down the window) and them forcing him out was a few seconds.

The one I saw was longer, they knocked at least two different times and he kept telling them off.

But they didn't tell him to get out of the car yet. He should have rolled down the window yes, but that's a separate issue than Penn vs Mimms.

Sure, but once they establish a pattern of non-compliance it doesn't reset with each new instruction. They expect he will resist getting out of the car based on his refusal to roll down the window. At that point they have to choose whether to get him out of the car quickly, or risk non-compliance issue with that, which could involve fleeing or hitting people with his car.

When officer or public safety are at risk they will always choose to take someone into custody to stabilize the situation and then reassess from there.

The situation with the window can't be separated from the treatment with the door.

That is a policy of escalation, there is no reason to follow it. It just makes situations where this is more likely. It's a miniscule increase in safety for an officer at a cost of massive risk to the public.

That's just naive. And that's a big claim, a "massive risk" to the public, so back it up... Who got hurt in this instance?

The three people cops killed today, the at least double that of dogs, and had Hill nor been an nfl player on game day he would probably still be in jail.

So In this specific instance, the specific instance we are talking about, the instance that is the topic of this discussion, no one.

The obvious follow up question is, if he were rolling up the tinted windows so he could retrieve a weapon without the cop seeing, or if he had taken off at high speed in his little sports car and run a high speed chase before crashing, could multiple people have died?

I'll just give you the obvious answer, "yes".

The reason your answer is naive isn't because cops don't do terrible things, they do, and they should absolutely be held accountable. It is because cops are also often on unpredictable situations and if you can't look at something like this and see where pulling him out of the car could be justified, you can't argue in good faith where the line is between this and a true abuse of power.

And if you can't do that, the people in power will never take your argument seriously, and your will continue to be largely ignored.

Police don't get to act on every imaginable what-if, they must act reasonably based on the specifics of the case in front of them. Watch the video again and pay attention to the time in the body cams.

The officer knocks on the window and the driver rolls it down and hands him his paperwork while complaining about the knocking. As the officer goes to walk away the driver rolls the window back up. The officer tells him to roll it back down, the driver opens it some. The officer tells him not to roll it up again or he would be taken out of the car. Within 7 seconds the officer changed his mind, ordered him out, and then dragged him out.

Important notes here. 1) not rolling the window all the way down or rolling it back up while the officer walks away are not illegal acts. There is no case law saying you must roll it all the way down and leave it down. 2) while it's down the officer could see inside and did not note any obvious safety concerns. 3) he wanted the window down while he was walking away and couldn't see inside anyway. 4) the driver never refused exiting the car and was not given a reasonable amount of time to comply. He said something like "just a moment" when asked once and was dragged out within 7 seconds. 5) the officers don't later say that they had a safety concern, they say "when we tell you to do something you have to do it" in reference to the window, which again is not an order backed up by case law unlike the order to exit which again was not refused and not given reasonable time for the driver to comply.

You could always imagine a what-if that lets the cops off, but that's not the way the courts do or the public should view these cases. The primary officer was unreasonable at almost every point. Later in the video he points to a 25ft law that isn't in effect yet and then says that he has suddenly changed it to 50ft. He was on a power trip because the driver didn't immediately show him proper deference.

That's a lot of words to admit you have trouble finding common ground so that people can make meaningful change.

Oh definitely, and the way we get that change is by instinctively supporting the officer's decisions because of a thousand imagined what-ifs. Of course that officer had to shoot Sonya Massey because she might have thrown the water at them while cowering with her hands up. She might have had a wmd under her night dress! /s

Again, I'm not talking about any instance other than the one we have been looking at together here. Personally, I believe cops should always assume they are going too be on trial every time they shoot someone they should know it is always going to be a potentially life altering event for them.

I'm this case, the driver didn't say "oh buddy, you fucked up, see you in court" while complying, he showed the officer his distain and reluctance every step of the way and at that point the officer is going to ask themselves if they might be in danger, and if they think they might be, they are trained to do something about it. In this case taking him into custody.

Question for you. If he wanted to, could he have shot the cop? Was there a gun in the car?

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Nice to finally see someone who knows Penn v. Mimms out in the wild.

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