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And the cop has the legal right to not give you the benefit of the doubt when you do. The majority of the time you have a hostile interaction with police is bec

And the cop has the legal right to not give you the benefit of the doubt when you do. The majority of the time you have a hostile interaction with police is because you broke the law in some minor way. This is exactly what happened to Sandra Brand. She exercised her right to mouth off and she got arrested, totally legally for something the police typically ignore. You gotta be 100% sure you are clean when you try this. And even then a shitty cop could just make something up.

wtallis 11y ago
> "arrested, totally legally for something the police typically ignore" That's not totally legal any more, because it violates the fourteenth amendment. The exercise of your rights does not justify police charging you with unrelated offenses they would normally let slide; they have to treat all citizens fairly regardless of the extent to which they choose to do legal things.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  But no cop (or few cops) are dumb enough to outright say, "I arrested Mr Foo because he was a mouthy little bastard." Instead, you become just one of the N drivers for whom an expired inspection sticker or failure to stay in marked lanes becomes a citation (and maybe a tow) instead of a warning. Good luck proving a causality between your specific attitude or choice to exercise your rights and the outcome of the traffic stop. For the wide variety of cases where there is discretion afforded the officer in the field, you can antagonize someone who has a great deal of discretion in how the rest of your day will unfold, or you can be polite and civil. I choose polite and civil and have had overwhelmingly neutral-to-positive outcomes from my encounters with police. And I'm talking getting stopped for passing people across an intersection, 25 over on a highway, expired registration/inspection, open exhaust, a suspended license, and once even being caught smoking the tires and doing donuts in a public parking lot. (I often drove like a jackass a decade ago.) You can exercise your rights to their fullest extent and take what you get, or you can "hack" the system to your advantage by being quiet, civil, and respectful.
  - wtallis 11y ago
    Yeah, it's really hard to successfully prosecute a charge like this. But if you at least try, then a cop like the one in question will probably perjure himself at some point or some other evidence will turn up that can get the bully's badge taken away.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Nah. Mouthing off to a cop doesn't make you a protected class. It would be illegal to only enforce the law against blacks. But just against people who shittalk the cop is legally fine. The 14th Amendment doesn't mean you have to be treated exactly the same. This is why cops are allowed to give you a warning.
  - wtallis 11y ago
    Protected classes don't have much to do with the 14th amendment. It doesn't define any classes narrower than all citizens. Laws that do define protected classes may derive their authority from the 14th amendment, but that doesn't mean that equal protection arguments can only be made using the protected classes that Congress has singled out as needing more explicit statutes about. You simply cannot create any kind of class of people who have different rights except through due process, and officers' whims aren't due process.

wtallis 11y ago

> "arrested, totally legally for something the police typically ignore" That's not totally legal any more, because it violates the fourteenth amendment. The exercise of your rights does not justify police charging you with unrelated offenses they would normally let slide; they have to treat all citizens fairly regardless of the extent to which they choose to do legal things.

sokoloff 11y ago
But no cop (or few cops) are dumb enough to outright say, "I arrested Mr Foo because he was a mouthy little bastard." Instead, you become just one of the N drivers for whom an expired inspection sticker or failure to stay in marked lanes becomes a citation (and maybe a tow) instead of a warning. Good luck proving a causality between your specific attitude or choice to exercise your rights and the outcome of the traffic stop. For the wide variety of cases where there is discretion afforded the officer in the field, you can antagonize someone who has a great deal of discretion in how the rest of your day will unfold, or you can be polite and civil. I choose polite and civil and have had overwhelmingly neutral-to-positive outcomes from my encounters with police. And I'm talking getting stopped for passing people across an intersection, 25 over on a highway, expired registration/inspection, open exhaust, a suspended license, and once even being caught smoking the tires and doing donuts in a public parking lot. (I often drove like a jackass a decade ago.) You can exercise your rights to their fullest extent and take what you get, or you can "hack" the system to your advantage by being quiet, civil, and respectful.
- wtallis 11y ago
  Yeah, it's really hard to successfully prosecute a charge like this. But if you at least try, then a cop like the one in question will probably perjure himself at some point or some other evidence will turn up that can get the bully's badge taken away.
rhino369 11y ago
Nah. Mouthing off to a cop doesn't make you a protected class. It would be illegal to only enforce the law against blacks. But just against people who shittalk the cop is legally fine. The 14th Amendment doesn't mean you have to be treated exactly the same. This is why cops are allowed to give you a warning.
- wtallis 11y ago
  Protected classes don't have much to do with the 14th amendment. It doesn't define any classes narrower than all citizens. Laws that do define protected classes may derive their authority from the 14th amendment, but that doesn't mean that equal protection arguments can only be made using the protected classes that Congress has singled out as needing more explicit statutes about. You simply cannot create any kind of class of people who have different rights except through due process, and officers' whims aren't due process.