The woman repeatedly says that she is struggling because she is pregnant. After taking her to the ground they repeatedly yell at her to get back up with her hands cuffed behind her back.
I guess I had a hard time believing anything the black lady said after she said that she felt threatened because the other lady was white. Who says that, about someone of any race? Did I hear that correctly?
I heard that she felt threatened because that white woman yelled and honked at her. I will go back and re-listen. - Went back and she does say that she feel threatened because she’s white and making threats. The woman who was arrested waited and stayed and willingly talked with police at first. It wasn’t as if she was leaving or creating issues.
When they move in they immediately pull her hands behind her back when she says don’t touch me I’m pregnant.
I should listen to it again, also, as I seem to be hearing something differently than others. I couldn’t listen to it repetitively, as my family was so irritated by “what is that caterwauling” that I couldn’t repeat it. I’ll have to wait until I am alone!
When she was talking about being scared of the white lady she was making an analogy to how the white lady was acting overly scared of her. Though the black lady did not say it directly she was implying the white lady was only scared of her because she was black. Look about 25 seconds earlier in the video then when she says she is scared of the white lady.
However, it is often the case that whoever complains to authorities first is seen as being more credible. That does not necessarily make that the correct judgement, of course – some people in conflicts try to manipulate authorities into hassling their opponents when the authorities otherwise have no reason to intervene.
To test my own response I re-imagined this video with the roles reversed. What if the first woman were black, wearing those jungle print leggings and little shrug thing with her pointy nails, night club hair and that attitude and delivery making wild claims about damage that cannot be seen? What if the accused were white, in that same modest outfit looking like a regular mom dropping off an elementary schooler and expecting her second child? Watch at about 50-55 seconds. The woman who called says “she scared the hell out of me and she’s like all . . .” and she does this little lip curl head shake side to side thing. Now imagine if the black woman had done that. How would you view her? How about the friend who is milling around behind the responding officer. What if the caller and friend were both black? Would the officer have responded so calmly (knowing what we know about how he dealt with the pregnant woman) if the caller were black and went on with her leggings and gestures and profanity and had a black friend milling around behind the officers?
As it is, it’s just crazy that the complaint about the initial conflict and what I see here as the law enforcement response would end up with one person handcuffed on the ground and hauled away in the back of a police car.
Watched the video. It is horrid!!! Michelle is clearly a person with attitude, but that’s not a crime. All of her actions are constitutionally protected. The officers actions are despicable. And frankly, the arresting officer’s facetiously polite demeanor seems to me is simply a ‘cover your rear’ for the camera.
Sound familiar? “I can’t breathe,” “I can’t breathe.” But it all falls on deaf ears of the police.
@saintfan #86 – spot on. And another thing: police are supposed to be trained in de-escalating tense situations, and this incident cried out for that approach. The fact that one of the parties ended up screaming and on the ground and in the back of the patrol car – 100% the cops’ fault.
So I watched it again, trying to do so with an open mind. As far as the lady who called the cops, she seems like one of those driving etiquette Nazis (those type annoy me immensely, let it go already). However, I can understand why she called the cops. If someone came out of their car and was banging on my window, that elevates the road rage to an entirely new level beyond just yelling at each other. It doesn’t matter if they broke a window or left a dent, you can’t get violent.
I’m not sure why the police arrested Michelle. Perhaps they just went into automatic mode when she started to get upset, and arrested her because she was resisting arrest. There is no reason whatsoever that she should have been arrested. However, she surely did resist, and stupidly so. She could have ended up dead like some other people. She acted like an abused woman to me, and started freaking out the second the officers hand even came close to her.
So my takeaway from this, is that these police officers deserve discipline and some retraining, about why and when you arrest people. And how to do so without using so much force, when the person doesn’t have a weapon.
My other conclusion is that if you are getting arrested, whether you agree with it or not, whether you know why or not, don’t resist. She said she was resisting because they were stupid. The more aggressively you resist, the more aggressively you will be arrested. Right or wrong, you have to protect yourself. She wasn’t standing up for her rights, she was acting like someone who was trying to avoid a beating, in my opinion.
I feel like, rational or not, if I were carrying a child so near to term I would be extremely defensive and protective. We have seen enough video and end results of what can happen after arrest that a fight or flight response to avoid that once they closed in seems understandable to me - not necessarily smart but understandable. The pace of escalation is astounding and the officers in cases like this seem to fill the air with incessant commands with no time or room for answering questions or responding to requests for action. They create situations where citizens become flustered and defensive then punish them for being flustered and defensive.
They certainly did escalate it pretty quickly. They seemed irritated. However, the more she resisted, the worse it got for her. I really think she acted like someone who has been abused, as that isn’t normal behavior. Then again, unfortunately for my husband, when I was pregnant I was pretty irrational too. But only with him.
I personally interact with police officers as if they are wild animals (no offense intended to them). You never know what they are going to do, so you need to be calm and cautious.
Agree, and that is a tragic and damning indictment of too many police forces all around the country. They are not supposed to be wild animals.
We ought to be able to rely on them not to escalate, not to use unnecessary force, not to violate the constitutional rights of citizens. Apparently that’s too much to ask.
It’s like the ACLU list a few pages back. We should be taking a hard look at why such lists are even necessary, and making some radical changes in the way policing is done in this country.
Are people in general easily angered and incited into doing something stupid (like both women and the police officer in the video)? Obviously, it is not good in this type of situation for a police officer to be easily angered and incited into doing something stupid.
A problem may be that police officer recruits may be selected or self-selected for characteristics that do not fit well with some of the common tasks that police officers have to do, which are often much like social worker type of tasks (like in this case). If your local police department posts daily summaries on http://www.nixle.com or some such, you may find that many of its notable incidents involve picking up drunks, arresting people with outstanding warrants, dealing with petty disputes, etc…
Worse than a pack of wolves - as the thread title says. So you wonder, do I play dead? That is supposed to work with bears, or is it only with black bears? Do I run? Do I walk away slowly backwards while not making eye contact? Do I wave my arms and make loud noises? Oh no, bad idea!
The best advice would seem to be to remain calm, quiet and passive. Yet, how hard that would be if someone were twisting your arms behind your back, or pressing down on you so hard you were afraid your baby would be hurt, or you couldn’t breathe, or your bones might be damaged. Ugh, I’ve never been in this situation and hope no one else has to be either.
Until they’re punished (not specifically these men), officers won’t have any disincentive to stop bullying citizens they’re not fond of.
I didn’t see her resisting or escalating the encounter until the police officers put their hands on her.
We have the other women saying she banged on the window or threw something at her car, but she denied that and stated she was with her 8yo daughter and would not have done that. I’m not assuming the first woman is a reliable report.
@stugace - I agree, but we see the problem with that in Baltimore. Six officers were indicted for causing the death of Freddie Gray, and now the rest of them are refusing to work that area of the city. In too many police departments, the culture is that police get to treat (some) citizens any way they please and woe be to the prosecutor who holds them accountable for it. Someone had it right upthread: in some places, the whole department needs to be purged root and branch.
I’ve been on vacation, visiting my in laws for the past week, so I didn’t see this thread until now. But I do have a couple of thought’s/questions to register.
Why is it that people have given the police a pass on knowing the most basic of civil liberty law? The police are “officers of the law/court”, after all, sworn to uphold “the law”. If one can’t be bothered to know the law which one is tasked to uphold, how is one to do one’s job? Do we really feel comfortable giving the power of life and death to people incapable of working within the most basic parameters of such an important job?
…But I think these officers knew this woman did not have to show them her ID. They just decided they could make things up as they went along because they were the ones with the muscle. They are used to thinking of themselves as “the law” unto themselves, and whatever they say goes. What. Ever. They. Say. That people in this thread seem to think the fault lies with the person who had her rights violated, speaks of some mighty powerful cognitive disconnection, as far as I’m concerned. People who otherwise hold fiercely to the ideals of liberty and constitutionally protected rights, fought for by our much vaunted founders against the greatest power on earth, are disturbingly comfortable with blaming this woman for her arrest. Maybe our founders should have been more polite to The Crown when it insisted on treating The Colonies as revenue generators with no rights to representation. They were “stupid” and “hysterical” and “resistant” against a power that “had the guns”, after all.
But then again, that same demographic has often shown that they value civil liberty and the protections of this nation’s most sacred document, only when it is folks such as themselves who are deprived of such. This stupid woman has no one but herself to blame. Check. And those people who insist on living in NYC neighborhoods where they can be stopped and searched for merely existing within the boundaries of such neighborhoods? What? They think they should be covered by the the 4th Amendment as well? Who the hell do they think they are?
I guess it’s easy to be nonchalant about giving police state powers to the police as long as people think they’ll be exempt from the reach of police state powers. And I can only curl my lip with contempt when they bobble-head as some Fox News correspondent sounds the alarm at the latest perceived Presidential violation of the Constitution.
Michele should have gotten in her car and driven away after having had this ridiculous parking lot confrontation. She was indeed stupid to hang around and wait for the police. She was stupid to think that her side of the story would have any credibility whatsoever against a white complainant who claimed she had become violent (did she forget that black people are automatically believed to be violent, if a white person says he/she was?). The fact that there was no visible mark on either the woman or her property was immaterial.
So what will she now teach her daughter, whom she had just dropped off at the school, and to the child she just gave birth to about the police? Anyone want to have a guess?