Police officers throw jogging women to ground, the coming trend.

A woman going for a jog in Austin, Texas, was minding her own business, when police officers threw her to the ground and handcuffed her.
It has begun, and maybe your next.
Papers Please! Papers?!
politicalblindspot.com...

Arrested for 'failure to identify' according to the linked article, I did not know that was a crime in the USA...

reply to post by Violater1


in the previous thread about this they said they had cleared all the real crime out of the area and now target college kids for easy revenue. if you have 4 cops on jaywalking patrol your city damn well better be crime free. why is it with crime at record lows we keep being told we need more police? and where is all this money going?

reply to post by Elton


Apparently, it is now.
So the idea is to avoid the city at all costs, or the cops will end up "protecting" you.
This just makes me sick, the fat illegitimate, usurping, pigs.

Found this other article regarding this and the horrible response from the chief of police regarding this incident.
Chief says jaywalkers should be grateful they are not raped!

Elton
Arrested for 'failure to identify' according to the linked article, I did not know that was a crime in the USA...

It is a crime in some states.

However Texas is not one of them.

Top and Identify statutes according to Wikipedia , has sources.

reply to post by abe froman

if you have 4 cops on jaywalking patrol your city damn well better be crime free.

AMEN!
Well said!

reply to post by Violater1


Its videos like this that make me proud to be Canadian. Our police are bad, I have not yet heard of a cop doing that for failure to comply or jaywalking. Hell the cops out here jay walk all the time.

CynConcepts
Found this other article regarding this and the horrible response from the chief of police regarding this incident.
Chief says jaywalkers should be grateful they are not raped!

Technically he didn't put it like that. But he definitely still put his foot in his mouth:

“quite frankly she wasn’t charged with resisting. She’s lucky I wasn’t the arresting officer, because I wouldn’t have been as generous. … In other cities there’s cops who are actually committing sexual assaults on duty, so I thank God that this is what passes for a controversy in Austin, Texas.”

“During the press conference I attempted to place the arrest into context by bringing attention to the fact that law enforcement deals with many acts of serious misconduct,” Acevedo backtracked. “This includes recent instances in the news of sexual assault by police officers in other cities. In hindsight I believe the comparison was a poor analogy, and for this I apologize. I stand committed to transparent leadership and will continue to engage the community we serve in an open, honest, and timely manner.”

politicalblindspot.com...

Funny because the general response from police to media is, "We are investigating the matter, actions will be taken if we find our people did anything wrong" blah blah blah. And "It's wrong to cast judgement on all police for individual officers".

But this one made the same type generalization they claim is wrong to imply his force is better than others.

reply to post by abe froman


CHA CHING $$

King Bulan Economics Hegelian style

Its a big idea...A NEW WORLD ORDER and the RULE OF LAW goes CHA CHING $$

Those two officers look combined to be about 4 times her weight. Guess they like throwing their weight around since I doubt she could out strong arm them.

"Failure to Indentify"? Are these fat useless pigs now just making up crimes to amuse themselves? Take a nap in the squad car and be thankful the city hasn't realized how redundant your jobs are boys. I hope this girl turns out to be the daughter of an attorney and all these little piggies are stripped of their authority and left to find employment elsewhere.

reply to post by Elton

Failure to Identify. What a simple phrase, I had to look it up.

1. A person commits an offense if he intentionally refuses to give his name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has lawfully arrested the person and requested the information.
   
2. A person commits an offense if he intentionally gives a false or fictitious name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has:
   
   1. lawfully arrested the person;
      
   2. lawfully detained the person; or
      
   3. requested the information from a person that the peace officer has good cause to believe is a witness to a criminal offense.
      
   
   

ExCop-L awStudent

It seems quite simple yet they still managed to get it wrong. According to the linked source, Texas law states an officer must first make a lawful arrest then if identity is false or refused charges for Failure to Identify can be made.

Screaming “I didn’t do anything wrong” doesn’t seem to help. This is a good example of cognitive dissonance or as some like to call it, “a rude awakening”.

abe froman
reply to post by Violater1

 

in the previous thread about this they said they had cleared all the real crime out of the area and now target college kids for easy revenue. if you have 4 cops on jaywalking patrol your city damn well better be crime free. why is it with crime at record lows we keep being told we need more police? and where is all this money going?

“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” ― Ayn Rand

reply to post by Violater1


I was very disturbed by this story. My initial impression of both the article and the video was that it seemed extremely biased. Obviously the video was edited to illustrate the wrongdoing of the police officers in stark detail...it was released by a blogger, not the media, who stated that he was "annoyed" by the police giving citations to jaywalkers, so he decided to film them. I live very close to that area and have several friends who live in Austin as well, so I decided to see if I could find any other accounts of the incident that had a broader view of the entire incident. I by no means am siding with the cops in this situation, just to be perfectly clear, but here are a few more links that show both sides of the incident.

www.statesman.com...

She was ultimately charged with failure to obey a pedestrian control device and failure to identify herself, according to the Daily Texan.

source

To be fair, she was committing a crime when the officers initiated contact with her. Jaywalking is still a criminal act for a reason; it can result in lives being lost...she could have caused an accident or been run over herself, especially if she was unable to hear anything due to her earbuds (which is allegedly the reason she didn't respond to police attempting to get her attention). I mean, if you can't hear four police officers shouting at you, then it stands to reason that you would not hear a car either. So it wasn't as if she was just "minding her own business", as the OP states. She was breaking the law. And needlessly so...in that area there are numerous crosswalks all up and down the streets. And even though the police chief said some stupid things subsequent to the incident, he very clearly stated why his officers are actually enforcing the law regarding jaywalking in that heavily trafficked area:

Acevedo says jaywalking is a serious issue in Austin. “I’d rather have everybody angry at me and my officers, then to see a young person lose their life needlessly,” he said at a press conference. “I’d rather be up here talking about this, than going to our 97th fatality involving a pedestrian or 1800th injury involving a pedestrian.”

After that, it becomes a "he said/she said" situation; the earbuds caused her to not be able to hear the officers, she pulled away from the officer who took her by the arm out of startlement...the officers say that she refused to respond to a cop that was literally right in front of her trying to get her attention, etc. I have a lot of law enforcement officers in my family and it really saddens me to see cops who truly abuse their power, but in this case I think this incident was blown completely out of proportion by the student blogger who filmed her only after she was on the ground and did not (by his own admission) like the fact that the officers had been ticketing jaywalkers. I also think that he realized that after the fact, because he did some backpedaling of his own:

Photos and a video of the arrest of Amanda Jo Stephen, 24, were posted Thursday to the blog of Christopher Lee Quintero in which the University of Texas junior questioned officers actions. The post has since been viewed more than 50,000 times after being linked in social media websites. Though initially critical, Quintero said he could see both sides when he spoke to the Statesman on Friday. “Looking at the video it was not too bad,” Quintero said. “Up until that point, I think (officers were) a little excessive. … But (Stephen) started yelling and making commotion. I think she handled it poorly.”

source

The officers were not arresting her for jaywalking. They were going to write her a citation for jaywalking, just like they had done with six other people that day. The reason it escalated to an arrest was because after they attempted to detain her and asked for her ID (which is no different than asking for ID when a traffic cop pulls someone over), she refused to give it to them. At that point, she pretty much signed her own arrest warrant...she was breaking the law (which she knew she was doing) by jaywalking, got startled when the cop grabbed her arm, most likely got pissed off about that, and when they asked for her ID, she started screaming and cursing at them, and refused to produce her ID, and when they put her in cuffs to arrest her for breaking that law too, she went limp and they lowered her to the ground. After which she sat there screaming, crying and cursing. So no, they did not just converge upon a poor innocent jogger who was minding her own business and doing absolutely nothing wrong.

There are always two sides to every story. Had she not broken the law in the first place, she would not have even been noticed by those officers. Once she knew she had been caught breaking the law, had she just handed over her ID (which they had every right to ask her for) she would have gotten a citation and that would have been the end of it. There are gobs of stories just exploding out there about true, legitimate abuse of power by LEO's...but not this one.

Once again, let me be clear that I am not saying those cops were all sweetness and innocence themselves, or that I am siding with "the bad guys". I'm simply illustrating the incident from a more objective point of view and adding information that sheds a bit of a different light on the whole thing other than the "poor little innocent jogger who did nothing wrong gets abused by big mean cops with an agenda" slant that the OP's article states.

ETA: Not implying that the OP was responsible for the bias in said article, once again just to be clear.

reply to post by Violater1


Looks to me like those two cops are the ones who need to take up jogging.

Just stating the obvious.

It seems that every time I see a similar story it comes from a city or area that is very "progressive" and run by liberal politicians.

reply to post by tigertatzen


Dont you know by now that its ALWAYS the policemans fault? lol seriosly though the crime of "jaywalking" shoudnt even really be a crime at all. its a purely petty rule made to get money. Sure it may save one or two lives but id rather take my chances getting ran over than have somebody tell me i cannot cross the street. If it makes me happy to cross the street and no one gets hit so what? If i get hit or something THEN charge me.

yamammasamonkey
It seems that every time I see a similar story it comes from a city or area that is very "progressive" and run by liberal politicians.

So you consider Austin, Texas is Liberal Progressive?

i feel so much safer knowing that those dangerous criminals are off the streets...in fact i might even sleep easy tonight knowing this.....what would we do without these fearless cops patrolling the streets ?
so this is what we are paying taxes for...hmmmmph