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Watching the video and looking at some other info, my take on this is that he was A) well aware that arguing points of law with officers on the street is a bad
by fencepost 13y ago
Watching the video and looking at some other info, my take on this is that he was A) well aware that arguing points of law with officers on the street is a bad idea (argue them in court later) and B) quite willing to do so anyway. It's not so much that he refused search as that he refused to even get out of the car when told to do so by an officer after a dog alerted on the car. I'm not sure if he was tied in with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones before this or only after the fact, but if it was before then I'd have no real problem considering him an agent provocateur looking for trouble to get into.
I'm well aware that dog alerts are very questionable and are (arguably) regularly used as a pretext for illegal searches, but what you do in these situations is comply with ALL lawful orders (including GET OUT OF THE CAR) but decline to consent to searches. If you're not sure whether an order is lawful, you comply and let the lawyers and judges sort it out later.
Or put differently, "idiot."
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- linuxhansl 13y agoHe was practicing civil disobedience. Calling him an "idiot" is missing the point.
- tptacek 13y agoHe was not practicing civil disobedience, because he wasn't deliberately violating any law. He seems instead to be the victim of an assault.
- fencepost 13y agoHe indeed was the victim of an assault, which IMHO is not mutually exclusive with his behavior being idiotic. There is a good argument to be made for this being civil disobedience in that he was refusing the orders of law enforcement officials, but in this particular case the evidence later showed that (roughly) A) the officers ordering him out of the car had no legal authority to do so and B) the officers who did have the legal authority to do so didn't actually order him out before breaking in, tasing, etc. At his later trial he was found not guilty of all the charges against him based on this - I don't know if civil disobedience was even brought up but I doubt it.
- bhickey 13y agoAmong other things, you seem confused about the meaning of 'agent provocateur'. An agent provocateur a law enforcement agent who infiltrates a group. Once there, they get violent in order to justify reprisals against the group.
- fencepost 13y agoIs being an agent of law enforcement actually a part of the definition? Still, I agree that I probably should have found a better term.