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<p>His ILLEGAL instruction. The fact that the white guy complied doesn’t * make * it legal.</p>
<p>A cop is not going to walk away from someone he thinks might be a statutory rapist. Thankfully. </p>
<p>If what the LAPD did was illegal this should be rather simple. It’s on tape, after all. And, it does seem to be coming out now that there were witnesses in the building including a guy who told them to knock it off because he had people trying to work across the street.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t give them so much credit.</p>
<p>Maybe you should open your mind, Sally. </p>
<p>I have an open mind, Bay. In fact I came out in (cautious) defense of law enforcement having wartime equipment in the militarization thread.</p>
<p>We have all seen cops do stupid things. They are human, like everyone else.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem saying the cops did something stupid, but I do have a problem saying the cops acted based on race. There is nothing to suggested their actions were motivated by race. </p>
<p>Let’s take race out of the equation, then. This still seems to be an issue of overactive policing.</p>
<p>Sure, if the police had come over and seen the couple having sex in the open car, then they would have had reason to arrest them. But that isn’t what happened. There were reports of lewd conduct of some kind. Once the police got there, the people involved were no longer engaged in any such behavior. What possible benefit could there be in pursuing the matter at this point? Unless you caught them in the act, there really isn’t basis for arrest, and given the nature of the alleged offence, investigation seems a little silly. At worst, even if they were having full-on sex in an open car, we’re not dealing with a grave threat to public safety. If someone calls in a report of suspected child abuse, even if by the time the police show up the child in question is sleeping peacefully in bed, there’s a real responsibility to investigate what went on, to the extent that you can legally do so. There’s no comparable interest being served here. Even in the case of child abuse, if there is no probable cause for arrest, you can’t cuff the mother because she refused to show ID in a state that doesn’t require citizens to show ID. </p>
<p>As a practical matter, it is important for police to exercise good judgment because, aside from any moral considerations, there is a real cost to creating an adversarial relationship with the public. Shoplifting is as illegal as terrorism or human trafficking, but we’d probably question the wisdom of sending a SWAT team into the home of a petty thief. Similarly, just because Watts and her boyfriend may have been breaking a law, weighing the chances of finding probable cause for arrest, let alone eventual conviction and the risk posed by the supposed offence vs. the risk of escalation and bad feeling that almost always exist in interactions with police, I don’t think the police acted as intelligently as they could have, even if they were technically in their rights to act as they did (which it seems they probably weren’t in the first place). </p>
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<p>Especially considering the history of corruption and police excesses/brutality involving the LAPD. Google Rampart Scandal for one notorious example. </p>
<p>When a cop is investigating a reported incident, it is stupid not to show him your ID upon request, simply because you don’t have to. You are only going to arouse his suspicions even further. </p>
<p>What is ironic in this case is that Ms Watts has capitalized on the incident because of “Who She Is,” and yet for some reason it was so important to her not to tell the cop “Who She Is” even though she insists she did nothing wrong. </p>
<p>Is there a law in CA that says you have to have ID on you all the time? I certainly go plenty of places without mine. Of course, if I got asked to show it there would be no “don’t you know who I am?” (Nor do I think the police should care, ever.)</p>
<p>No requirement to carry ID in CA, but of course you can still ID yourself when asked. </p>
<p>There are usually areas within states where there are local vagrancy laws that require people to show that they are not vagrants if challenged by LEOs.
Typically they use this to get homeless people to move out of where they are. A person doing in public what is usually done in private could be regarded as potential vagrant.</p>
<p>Just because a cop doesn’t see a person in the act of committing a crime, doesn’t mean the perpetrators are off the hook. This seems to be missed by some. </p>
<p>When there are witnesses and evidence, suspects can be and are arrested later, after an investigation. While it probably won’t happen in this case due to the negative publicity, it is not out of the realm of possibility that a witness may have video’ed the incident in question. Then Ms Watts might really look bad. </p>
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<p>“Can” or “have to”?</p>
<p>“Can…”</p>
<p>And if you refuse and police have probable cause they can detain you until an identification is made. Her boyfriend offered up her ID after he finished the photo shoot, apparently. </p>
<p><a href=“LAPD detains Daniele Watts: New audio released in incident - ABC7 Los Angeles”>Page Not Found | abc7.com - ABC7 Los Angeles; </p>
<p>What some of us think–but can’t prove, obviously–is that if the couple had both been white, the officer would have approached them differently from the moment he saw them. He might have told them that there was a complaint, but probably wouldn’t have asked for ID. I am surprised that a first-time poster who says he is an African-American doesn’t share this opinion, but I guess everybody sees things in different ways.</p>
<p>By the way, I immediately discount the opinion of anybody who characterizes somebody else’s complaints as “screaming,” unless the person was actually screaming. Using that term is a “tell.”</p>
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<p>Depending on how broad those local vagrancy laws happen to be, there may be a decent chance such laws may be ruled unconstitutional in higher-level courts due to their overbroadness and perceived violations of due process. </p>
<p><a href=“Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papachristou_v._Jacksonville</a></p>
<p>It doesn’t help that the media claims the cops assumed she was a prostitute. Unless I missed it, I didn’t see or hear anything indicating that the cop thought she was a prostitute.</p>