When you run up to officers with their backs turned and their hands full, their backup is going to step in. Why? Because you have X cops surrounded by 20X pissed off people. When you're outnumbered like that, you don't get the luxury of quietly talking things out.
hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 7:46 pm
You’re not understanding me: being forced to the ground by a cop three times your size is physical assault.
What would you have them do - call for shorter backup to ensure that it's a fair match? Or can large cops literally
never take someone smaller than them down without it being assault?
As to what not resisting looks like, it looks like getting on the grass when you are told to get on the grass. She did something that could, legitimately, represent a possible threat. Another cop steps in, grabs her arm for control and gives her an order. The responds by yelling at him and pulling away. She pulls away the entire time, as he repeats the order over and over. She didn't try to start a slow process of getting down. She didn't try to explain why she couldn't. She just kept pulling.
And when it comes to cuffing someone in the open, you have two real choices: have them willingly turn and put their hands behind their back, or put them on the ground. She wasn't going to do #1. 100 out of 100 cops in that situation are going to put her on the ground. As far as that goes, nothing I saw in their use of force was excessive. It was physical restraint, a simple takedown, and both hands placed behind her back to be secured. That's what you're
supposed to do. There was no beating, no tasing, no kneeling on her neck, just one cop on each hand, pushing them behind her back to be cuffed. It was almost textbook.
Was it absolutely necessary in this situation? Maybe not, but the cops on the ground surrounded and outnumbered don't have the luxury of armchair copperbacking from a safe viewport at home. They get two seconds to make that call, and if they make the wrong one, they can end up dead.
It's not as simple as some people seem to want it to be. Use of force never is as simple as what people try to make it out to be from a video they've seen. I've been in their situation. I've had to make that call, more than once. It sucks, and you spend hours, even days, playing it back, trying to decide if you made a mistake. I still wonder what I could have done differently with a certain Mr. Megdall. But at the time, you don't have that kind of luxury.
