- xGHOST270x
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- Exalted Legendary Member
Posted by: A Deaf Boy
LMAO. YouTube is not a credible source. They always upload a fraction of the entire incident and almost always attempt to show the police in a bad light.
Anyhow, the whole idea of having citizens fighting cops is laughably stupid. Officers would have no protection then, especially when dealing with hardened criminals. Arresting a drug addict? Let's have all his buddies start attacking the officer.
Sure, in the event that an officer abuses his power, it would be nice if someone did something. But you can't, and there's a reason for it. If you can't figure out these reasons, than you have no business talking about this. I'll give you an example; Does a bystander always know what an officer is arresting someone for? Or why an officer is trying to get someone to comply? The answer is no. Thus, we can't have people seeing things they know nothing about and acting on it because "they have a right to". That's bad in so many ways. The best a bystander can do is watch and report to the other police after. Let them deal with it.
edit: Also, you've completely fallen victim to the belief that officers "routinely" abuse their powers. That is totally false. Of the thousands upon thousands of officers in this country, maybe 1% of them abuse their powers, and an incredibly small portion of that 1% actually end up in a fatality or horrendous beating which we then see on the news.
I was referring to cases in which the officer acted outside the law and people needed the ability to defend themselves, not when the local weedhead gets busted for possession in front of his buddies
In Plummer v. State, a man killed an officer who was acting outside the law with lethal intent. The decision was upheld by the supreme court that 'citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an officer's life if necessary'. So yes, of an officer is accosting an individual illegally, they have the right to defend ourselves as if it were any other man assaulting that individual, you'd just need to damn well be able to prove it.
Again, I'm not talking about normal happenstance events such as arresting an individual for DUI, disorderly conduct, prostitution, ect. I'm referring to instances where the officer is obviously in the wrong, yet they still continue with the acts. In the OP's linked page, bystanders even told the officer that the man was disabled and had no part in the event in question, yet the officer still beat him and maced him in the face.
As for your edit, any illegal activity, murder, or instance of police brutality is too much. Even if it is as you say, without citing any source, even if 1% of police-citizen interaction results in bodily injury or death due to officer incompetence and overkill, that's more than there needs to be.
[Edited on 12.21.2012 11:48 AM PST]