<p>Thought experiment: a highway patrol officer pulls over and tickets 50 drivers in a particular month for speeding. He has documentary evidence that they were all, in fact, speeding. However, when you look at the videos of the stops, they are all young, attractive women. The officer acted professionally in his interaction with each of them. You are his commanding officer. What do you do?</p>
<p>There are some potential problems with how the officers handled this incident, I think. It did make me twinge when Sgt Parker said something like, “I’ll get your ID one way or another.” Also, the fact that other officers cuffed her off-site and brought her back in the car makes things murky. However, courts tend to give cops leeway in determining whether they have grounds to detain a person in order to ID them, and this was an investigation (not a random stop) in which Watts matched the description of the reported perpetrator. We don’t know what other information the LAPD had with regard to the incident, all of which would count toward reasonable suspicion/probable cause, and the fact that Watts walked away from a the cop while being questioned could add to his reasonable suspicion. No one on this thread can definitively conclude from the information we have that the cop acted appropriately or not, only a court of law can do that. </p>
<p>I guess my question is whether the LAPD has earned the right to get the benefit of the doubt in situations like this.</p>
<p>My understanding is that when there is evidence that a suspect did in fact, commit the crime for which they are being questioned, the courts are more likely to side with the cops.</p>
<p>Excellent question, Hunt. Brings to mind the events in New Jersey in the 1990s, where it was proven that the state police INTENTIONALLY stopped larger number of Black motorists than whites. Sure, some maybe many, were speeders. But during the USDOJ investigation it was revealed that troopers were acting on the instructions of the brass, because the brass was so certain that if you pull over a Black driver, you’re sure to find some violation to pin on them. And as many of us know, this led to the first official confirmation of racial profiling, as candidate Al Gore said during his Presidential debate with NJ Senator Bill Bradley.</p>
<p>Intentionally stopping black speeders more than white speeders is bad, but unintentionally stopping black speeders more than white speeders, due to unintentional but real bias, is just as bad, if you happen to be the black guy who keeps getting stopped while white speeders are ignored.</p>
<p>@LakeWashington and @CardinalFang, I recently read an article by Larry Elder that said there were studies debunking that NJ situation.</p>
<p>Debunked? I don’t think so. The commandant of the State Police admitted it at the time. Several cases were later dismissed in favor of motorists, the USDOJ stepped in and began a major investigation. The oversight of the NJ State police just ended a couple of years ago or so, after several years of federal monitoring. Larry Elder may be letting his bias overcome a clear-headed review of the events in NJ, including the conviction of LYING troopers who nearly killed a set of innocent minority kids on the highway when the troopers began to shoot up a van they had pulled over…and later LIED ABOUT IT. And testified that their superiors told them to lie about it. By the way, as I recall the USDOJ investigation was commenced by the Bush II administration.</p>
<p>Why would Larry Elder be biased when he is black.</p>
<p>Also, we had better begin to ask more hard questions about policing in this country. This poor 17-year old innocent white kid just awoke from a medically induced coma, a result of an encounter with a Missouri cop over a traffic stop, which itself appears to be a bureaucratic blunder. Yet this kid could have ended up dead, perhaps because of poor judgment by the officer involved.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article2139963.html”>http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article2139963.html</a></p>
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<p>Which is not only racist, but flat wrong. Contraband is far more likely to be found in whites’ cars than in blacks’.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/racial-profiling2011/the-reality-of-racial.html”>http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/racial-profiling2011/the-reality-of-racial.html</a></p>
<p>Geo, I invite you to read more of Larry Elder’s opinion pieces, articles etc. He’s a political conservative in the mold of Clarence Thomas. Hey, that’s a perfectly fine basis to start a discussion. But like Thomas, Armstrong Williams (whom was caught in a public lie, by the way) and others, Elder has expressed some very harsh opinions in the past that do not always coincide with the facts. Columnist Juan Williams is rather conservative and doesn’t readily jump on bandwagons. I’ve never seen his politics cloud his perspective, unlike Elder.</p>
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<p>Cough (Zimmerman) cough.</p>
<p>I’m amazed that the police responded to a 911 call about a couple in a car at all, and now that i read they did it in TWO MINUTES I am really shocked. I thought you couldn’t get a cop to a shooting in LA within 20 minutes but I guess that depends on the neighborhood.</p>
<p><a href=“Opinion: Daniele Watts case: Did confrontation with LAPD have to happen?”>http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-daniele-watts-actress-detained-handcuffs-20140915-story.html</a></p>
<p>I saw the photos. Everyone is wearing clothes as far as I can see.</p>
<p>The cops happened to be near-by and expected a quick call. They were not ever planning to arrest the couple for car sex. The GZ situation is very different. Zimmerman would never have been charged at all because the police believed that he acted in self-defense. They brought in a politically motivated out-of-town prosecutor because of the public uproar and eventually the jury found him not guilty, too. Why that’s better I don’t know. But, the part of all of this that intrigues me has nothing to do with race. Rather, it has to do with misinformation shaping public opinion and then people refusing to see the facts when they are right in front of them on tape in photographs or in a court of law. It’s fascinating. Do you all think OJ attempted to cut off his wife’s head? Just curious.</p>
<p>Ok. Lake Washington, maybe the NY Times is a better source to challenge (a better word than the debunking Elder used) the NJ speeding findings.</p>
<p><a href=“Study Suggests Racial Gap In Speeding In New Jersey - The New York Times”>Study Suggests Racial Gap In Speeding In New Jersey - The New York Times;
<p>(And boy am I glad they consider speeding 15 mph over the limit the NJ Turnpike.)</p>
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<p>Isn’t that a decision generally made by a prosecutor, not a decision singlehandedly made by police on the scene?</p>
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<p>So why did the cop “need” to see her ID in the first place?</p>
<p>Sure, but it’s made based on the evidence police gather and present to the prosecutor who decided no and was over-ruled after a PR campaign turned it into a national story. In that case, the police were not happy witnesses. That is just what happened. And, so many people think they know the facts of that case. But, don’t.</p>
<p>So why did the cop “need” to see her ID in the first place? </p>
<p>Need? They probably didn’t need to but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have the right to request it or the right to detain her if she refused. It certainly doesn’t mean they requested it because she was black unless you think a white girl having sex on the street would get a pass. I’m not so sure about that. What interests me is more is the way this morphed from an inter-racial married couple arrested for kissing into a lying girl who the cops knew had just finished up a lewd act in the street with her boyfriend being detained after refusing to show ID and hysterically cussing out the cops and walking away during questioning. And, all in few days. Very interesting. Also, interesting is that the cops are wearing lapell mikes. They knew they had this one handled. And, they had to know what was coming. The chef guy was playing photographer. Sheesh.</p>
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<p>Why are you lying about this? The cops knew no such thing. There are no retroactive rights. There is also no retroactive knowledge. </p>
<p>The cops knew that someone had called in, reporting a sex act. That’s very different.</p>
<p>When I call the cops reporting that you have just robbed a bank, Flossy, that does not mean the cops know you just robbed a bank. </p>