And since I am assured by many friends that this series gets misunderstood, let me lay some cards on the table up front: I am as appalled by actual police brutality as anybody, maybe more so. I insist, however, that almost all so called police brutality is caused not by out of control police officers but by people who think it's brutality when a cop uses any level of force against them, even if it's their own fault that the situation went down that way. Which, contrary to BoingBoing's outrage and that of much of the Internet, is exactly what happened here.
Let's review, and for the purposes of this review I will concentrate almost entirely on the facts that are not in dispute, where the police account and Mr. Orsack's account are in as full agreement as is possible for any two witnesses to be. Mr. Orsack flew home from somewhere, carrying in his luggage a folding bicycle that is his primary transportation, with a plan of riding his bicycle home from the airport. Since this is his home airport, I have no idea how he didn't know that there are no roads exiting the Minneapolis airport that are legal to ride a bicycle on, but he says that he was taken by surprise by this. There was one non-highway road, which he not unreasonably alleges that he didn't know was a closed access road but that even he admits was one-way the wrong way, one that was not open to him and his bicycle. The airport had banned such traffic long before; to give Mr. Orsack credit, the only sign that said so as of the night of Friday, September 7th of last year was in a place where he wouldn't have seen it. Mr. Orsack was riding his bicycle home when he was stopped by police and told that it was not legal to ride his bicycle here.
According to both sides' accounts, Mr. Orsack told officers that he didn't believe that they were right about the law, that he had no intention of obeying their order, that he intended to break this law again in the future, and that he wasn't going anywhere until he got to speak to those officers' superiors. Then he changed his mind and, by his own admission, made ready to continue breaking the law, to bicycle away. To detain him, the officers ordered him onto his knees. He once again disobeyed their order, and attempted to bicycle off. To stop this, the officers attempted to tackle him. When it became clear to them that he was going to get away, they fired a air-propelled Taser into him, bringing him down. His bicycle ended up flying into a busy street, and his glasses ended up stepped upon; he alleges that both actions were intentional, an accusation I find ridiculous, but it's up to others to decide who to believe. They then cuffed him, threw him into the squad car, booked him into jail, and there he sat until a judge could determine the amount of his bail that Monday. He has been charged with 6 crimes, the technical language of which can be summed up as: he was illegally riding his bicycle the wrong way in a no-bicycle zone, failed to obey the order to stop doing so, failed to obey the order to stop and listen to the officers, and then attempted to leave the scene where they were detaining him. Since on his web page and in his blog he confesses to all the necessary elements to convict him on at least 5 of those 6 charges, I'm fairly sure that he is making the second stupidest mistake of his life so far by insisting on a jury trial on all 6 charges, with jury selection scheduled to begin July 17th.
The biggest mistake he made was, of course, getting into this problem in the first place. And it occurred to me while reading it that this is a special case of a general problem that will, sooner or later, affect almost all Americans. You see, it's a centuries-old legal principle that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." But there is no way in hell that anybody can know every single line of the potentially tens of thousands of pages of laws and regulations that might apply to them in any given situation; odds are pretty good that some of them even conflict in ways that no court has bumped into yet and resolved. So to that end, even though they are legally allowed to arrest you for any crime, are almost legally required to do so, as a matter of good judgment and good public policy if the cop really does believe you when you say that you got into this situation because you really didn't know that part of how you got into it was illegal, we let the cops instruct you as to the law and let you go. Nonetheless, there is no law or even written policy that requires them to do so. If the cop tells you, "Well, it's illegal, so stop doing it and don't do it again," he is doing you a favor that he didn't have to do.
Now, it is quite possible that the cop didn't know the law, or didn't get it right. Cops aren't lawyers, and even lawyers can barely keep up with all the applicable law and case law in even one narrow specialty at a time. (Although that being said, I think it reasonable to assume that a city cop is probably pretty familiar with city ordinances, there usually being a lot fewer of them and they all being applicable to his job.) Mr. Orsack, being a bicyclist and heavily incented to know the laws that applied to bicycling, believed that he knew the applicable law better than the cop did. Some day, on some other specialty, probably so will you. Too bad. While you are detained by a cop and being given orders to comply with his understanding of the law is almost never the time to argue it with him. I've known of cases of extraordinarily careful and polite people getting away with showing the cop applicable law or applicable court orders and having the cop back down, but there are almost no circumstances where this is a good idea. When the cop gives you an order that you think he's not legally entitled to give you, the person to complain about is not that cop, and the time to complain is not right then. Go into the station the next day, or if you can't, call them up; let the cop's supervisors tell him what the law is. In general, if it won't kill you to obey this one time, work through the system to keep it from happening next time, rather than getting yourself arrested because you and the cop are lawyering each other. He doesn't have to lawyer you; his interpretation is binding until a judge says otherwise. That's what power of arrest means.
Although speaking of letting his supervisors handle it, once Mr. Orsack lost his temper he, by his own admission, said that he wasn't going to do anything that the officer asked him to do until the officer brought him his supervisor. Every time I run into this kind of stupidism, my jaw drops. Seriously, where do Americans get this insanely stupid idea that in any situation, public or private, they're entitled to demand that the front line person's supervisor show up right now and deal with their complaint? Yes, there are a few businesses that allow this, although even then, it's mostly a lie, an illusion, a trick. The person you're told is a supervisor almost certainly doesn't actually supervise anyone, let alone the person you're complaining about, they're just there to make you feel better. But even if there are a few restaurants or banks or whatever that have "supervisors" there to listen to your complaints, where did people get the mind-numbingly crazy idea that this is something that they're entitled to, and in every situation? And for Mr. Orsack, of course, the problem seems to be that he still doesn't realize that the sentence, "I'm not going to obey your order until I talk to your supervisor" can be legally punctuated after the word "order," that everything after that word is meaning-free noise since it's a false-to-fact conditional.
All of that being said, what do I think you should do in the all too probable eventual situation where the cop gives you an order that you can't comply with, or that will cost you substantially in time, money, or inconvenience that you don't think is fair since you thought what you were doing was legal? After all, that's really the situation that Orsack was in. Technically, there wasn't even a legal way for him to move. Practially speaking, the only legal way for a guy with a bicycle for transportation to leave the Minneapolis airport is to take a cab from the terminal to the first bicycle-legal road. Which is nuts, of course. But whether the law in question is nuts or not is not the officer's call to make, is it? Nonetheless, I know from long experience of being put in similar situations that if you plunked me into the same situation, about 7 times out of 10 I'd get the cop's own permission to ignore the law, and 9 times out of 10 I'd get the cop's permission to break the law just this one time. How do I do it? Simple.
First, when the cop tells you that you're breaking the law, the first first words out of your mouth need to be the sincerest apology you can manage. Say, "I'm sorry, officer, I didn't mean to break the law" and mean it. (Or at the very least, follow what I've heard most recently mis-attributed as Han Solo's Law.) The next thing you need to do is to make it absolutely clear and unambiguous and enthusiastic that you intend to obey the officer's order. If you do not get these two things up front, on the table, and out of the way right away then you might as well Mace, Taser, and beat the heck out of yourself, and save the officer the trouble. Because if instead you tell the officer that you don't respect the law and have no intention of obeying him, you have set yourself up for serious hard core trouble, and everything that happens after that is your own damned fault for being stupid.
But you're still stuck on a no-bicycles road with no legal way to bicycle out of where you're at, let alone all the way out of the airport, or whatever your equivalent situation is. So how do you get out of that jam without having to pay the cab fare? Once you have established to the officer that you are not an anarchist scofflaw and that you do know that he has the authority to arrest you if you disobey him, be smart and say the words that every officer, that every person, lives to hear: "Can you help me?" Tell him that you don't know how to obey his order legally and still do what you need to do. Ask him what he would do if he were in the same situation. Ask him what you're supposed to do this time, since you either physically can't or can't afford to obey the law and are thus in a jam, and ask him what you're supposed to do the next time? (Add to the evidence that Stephan Orsack is not just a moron but an actually bad person, he felt the need to explicitly tell the officer that not only was he going to break the law this time, but he was going to try to get away with it again in the future. Even if it's true, is it ever smart to tell that to a cop? Is there any reason to do so other than because you want to make him angry enough to beat the crap out of you?) Worst case, he tells you that no, you really are going to have to leave the airport in a motor vehicle every time, or whatever, but even then you're no worse off than you were before. And 3 gets you get he tells you, "Oh, never mind, you're right, that law is impossible to obey" or "Oh, never mind, the law probably is on your side." That was what you wanted, right?
True story of the old Brad Davidian Compound and the Infamous Brad Parties: At one of the first big Brad Parties, I got dragged out of the hot tub around midnight by panicked screaming partygoers yelling, "Brad, Brad, Brad! The police are here! We're in trouble! They want you!" I wrapped a towel around myself and went to the door, where two of Bridgeton's finest (and I say that with no irony at all) were in fact waiting patiently on my porch. I said to them, "Hello officers, I'm Brad Hicks, the home owner. Is there something I can help you with?" They explained that there had been a complaint about how many cars were parked on the road on the way to my house, and that they were concerned that, because of the narrowness of the road, a fire truck wouldn't be able to get through if any house in the neighborhood had a fire. I asked them for a moment so I could get a bathrobe and some slippers and a scrap of paper, and told them that any car they told me had to be moved, if it was one of my guests I would have them move it. I then went out and left it entirely up to them. And while they were deciding that, I said the magic words, "Officer, this has never happened before, and I don't know what to tell my friends to do. Can you give me some advice?" I asked them where I should suggest to people that they park. And even more than when I was polite to them on the porch, I am convinced that that is the point where I stopped being "someone throwing an annoying party" and became "a tax-paying homeowner who needs police help." They stopped what they were doing, pulled out their own copy of the city ordinances to go over them again, concluded that every single car was parked legally, and apologized for bothering me. It never came up again, and from then on the Bridgeton police department were never anything other than polite and helpful to me, no matter how weird my friends got. And trust me, they got pretty stupidly weird a couple of times. By being polite and putting it back on the officers to tell me exactly what I should do, I not only saved myself from a beating, I probably saved a half a dozen or a dozen of my friends from future beatings.
I mean, Jesus, people didn't anybody ever tell you that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?
(P.S.
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dslartoo replied to the first one of these with a link to an appropriate old Chris Rock routine on iFilm: "How to Not Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police.")- Mood:
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Because for the time being, my ass belongs to that cop, and I am to shut the fuck up and be as polite as possible until I am out of that situation.
1: Pull over as soon as you can, safely. If you need to go over a bridge or something before this, put your blinker on to acknowledge the cops.
2: Shut the car off, turn the interior lights on if it's dark, and roll the window down. Put your hands on the steeringn wheel and tell any passengers to do the same and to shut the fuck up.
3: Stay there and don't fuck around with anything until the cop gets there. Don't go into the glove box for your registration or fuck around trying to get your wallet out of your jeans. Do that if the cop asks you to.
4: Don't be a douchebag. If you know you were doing something wrong, and the cop tells you so, apologize. (Don't admit to anything, though!) If it was something you didn't know you were doing, thank the officer and apologize. Call your cop "Officer" or "Sir/Ma'am."
If you follow the above rules, you've likely managed not to piss off the officer involved. If you're nice, seem a little clueless, and seem sincere, and you don't manage to piss off the officer before he gets to the car, you usually can get away with a warning unless you did something particularly egregious.
Which is to say that I'm doing my best to keep as many of both as possible from being Maced, Tasered, and beaten half to death with nightsticks.
Rules I follow:
1) Never do anything that the officer could interpret as a threat, as active noncompliance, or as passive noncompliance. If the officer wants me to stand on one leg and cluck like a duck, I'm hopping and clucking.
2) Always treat officers with respect. This means not only the kind of respect that one person pays another person, but the kind of respect that you would pay to a judge in court. You may both wear pants, but the badge on his chest means that he is acting on behalf of "the People" and while he may not himself deserve any respect, certainly the people he represents do.
3) Never, ever EVER argue law with a police officer. Take the ticket, the citation and/or the arrest. Questions of law and fact belong in court where one has rights, counsel, leisure to think, and a lack of concrete into which one may suddenly be slammed. At most one might say something like, "Not trying to be difficult, but I thought the law said so-and-so." One must be careful not to stipulate to inconvenient facts along the way.
4) Always consider whether to turn the problem or issue back on the officer. In this bicyclist's case, he would have done well to say something like "I just flew in with my bicycle, I'm trying to get home, is there a way I can do that?" Ask the officer to help you solve your problem, in an embarrassed sort of way that makes it clear that you're humbly asking him to solve something too big for you.
You cannot feed the average cop's ego enough.
If asked an outrageous or grossly unfair question, a good answer can be something like, "I'm sorry officer, could you ask me that again? I don't think I understood." followed by (if repeated) "How does the answer to that question help you do your job?" Then consider refusing to answer, realizing that you could thereby create probable cause for an arrest.
5) Never, ever lie to a police officer. At the same time, do not rush to make admissions that should only be made knowingly with the advice of legal counsel. If cited or arrested, SHUT UP.
6) Always remember that the nice officer is NOT your friend. He is just doing his job. He does not work for you, and only in a nebulous sort of way for the taxpayers. He works for his sergeant, his lieutenant and his chief. He does what makes them happy and avoids what makes them unhappy.
7) If everyone is puzzled what to do, suggest calling the sergeant. If the sergeant(s) be puzzled, they are much less likely to push it. Often they will come up with a jackleg and unofficial solution that will not involve the creation of paperwork. As both citations and arrest require paperwork, the odds of this working out in your favor are high.
A little thoughtfulness goes a long, long way in dealing with peace officers. Even the really annoying ones, ranging from ticket-monster to retired-on-the-job to looking-up-skirts to outright banditry and murder.
More comments later, I needs must rush right now...
(I don't see an indication that the specific stretch of road he was on was for authorized vehicles only, either, or that bicycle traffic had been specifically banned from the airport roads. I may have missed that, though, or you may have another source for it.)
Officer Wingate then came up behind me and jerked me up into a standing position. I then heard him yell an order to Officer Bryant -- 'Shoot him!'. Officer Bryant then shot me with the taser.
I'm no lawyer, nor a cop, but the story I hear from my cop friends is that a taser is meant to be a non-lethal alternative to shooting someone. If you have to stop or subdue a fleeing suspect and an armbar ain't gonna do it, but a gun might be a little much, the taser is the way to go.
If the scenario is true as Mr. Orsak describes it, he was already under Officer Wingate's control. There was no reason for Officer Bryant to tase Orsak, except as a superfluous punitive measure ("that'll learn ya").
Of course, there are so many "if this is true" and "if I remember correctly"'s in those two grafs that I might as well not have an opinion on the case. Not that that's stopping me. :)
ttyl
Rule #2: Don't give cops attitude. It's against the law, and they will charge you for it.
Rule #3: Even if the cop orders you to do some horrible thing, refer to rule #1. Then go to the local sheriff. Then go to the news. The odds of a cop taking sexual advantage of you or ordering you to assault your friend must be roughly equal to the odds of being struck by lightening.
My partner is a lawyer, as is my sister and an uncle, and that doesn't matter at all when I'm talking to a cop. If I have a problem with the way I've been treated I'd take it up with one of the many lawyers in my life.
Who most likely would tell me to let it go unless I'd been seriously hurt for no reason.
What gets me is the; "I pay your salary through my taxes" attitude of some idiots, as if the cop is a fucking waiter.
I'm fully with you. Cooperate, comply, and obey at the time. If my civil rights were violated I'd call the ACLU, (for all the good that would likely do me.) Most cops just want to get to their next crisis without being shot at, and they don't care for people who fail the attitude test.
Sounds like this guy got what he deserved, and if I were on that jury I'd likely rule against him, (based on the facts presented.) Only an idiot with a death wish acts that way with a cop.
A number of years ago I was faced with a similar, potentially deadly, problem. I was driving home in North Las Vegas, and by my own admission, was an unsavory looking fellow in a an unsavory looking vehicle. My 72 Monte Carlo was a magnet for profiling and I was frequently pulled over for minor infractions or, in some instances, only because the officer thought I might be a gang member, something they always seemed to admit to me. So, it really wasn't a surprise to me that I was getting pulled over again.
What was a surprise to me, was how many squad cars were pulling me over. When I looked in my rear view, there were five squad cars, and each of the officers had a gun pointed at me. I was given directions via a bullhorn, and I was very careful to comply and be polite while doing so. I and my passenger were instructed to kneel and we were handcuffed and drug up to lay across the hood of seperate squad cars before being searched and interviewed briefly.
This was the point where things could have gone terribly terribly wrong. I hadn't done anything illegal, I wasn't speeding, I didn't run a red light, I had no warrants for my arrest. If I had jumped out of the car and started to proclaim my innocence and my unwillingness to comply with their directions however, I'm pretty sure they would have shot me, and I would have deserved it.
My girlfriend at the time was appalled when I recounted the events to her. "I would report them for false arrest" she claimed. Her vitriol for what turned out to be a minor inconvenience was something I never understood. What I didn't know when they first pulled me over, was that two men matching our descriptions, in a car similar to my own, had just robbed a convenience store and killed the clerk. In the interest of public safety, the police had every right to pull me over and treat me as hostile until they could verify my identity.
That's their job. That's what they're supposed to do.
You should never attempt to convince a police officer that they have no right to interfere with you, that you did nothing wrong. They don't care, that's not their job. They enforce the law. Save all that energy for the judge, because at best all it will get you is a higher fine, at worst you'll get a beating, or even a shooting.
Not only in situations with the police, but in almost any situation where there is a possible confrontation or resistance...those are the magic words.
You change the situation from two people who are odds to two people working together to find a solution.
would it have been okay for the officer to shoot the guy in the leg to keep him from getting away? as far as i know, officers -chase- people, they don't just shoot them, especially for something that would amount to a civil infraction. tasers are pretty likely to cause death or other medical complications (especially when dealing with a random person, rather than say an officer in training who has passed a physical and is expecting to get tased). if a situation doesn't pass the can-shoot test, it shouldn't pass the can-tase test.
the officer should have said 'you are under arrest' before the random order of 'get on your knees', else 'get on your knees' is really one phrase of many in an emotional rant from the officer. having said that, it would have been smart if the cyclist had asked 'am i under arrest'.
furthermore, could a random joe have stopped this guy for a citizens arrest? and then use deadly force because he did not obey joe's request? people have gotten into too much of a mindset that the police are different than an ordinary citizen, somehow to be put on a pedestal and trusted to do no wrong, while the "ordinary people" cannot be trusted.
this country wasn't started with organized police forces. the militarized police forces of today would certainly be looked at as a 'standing army' by the founding fathers. perhaps many years ago the police-powers-that-be deserved respect, but with the complete unaccountability and arbitrary enforcement of laws, they have lost their mandate.
According to the link you gave for Stephan Orsak, he did NOT admit to breaking any laws. In fact, in bold print, he writes "I had broken no laws". Mr. Orsak also notes that he was cycling legally and that the police officer was giving him conflicting commands.
Though I would have backed down to the officer and requested a clarification later from authorities, Mr. Orsak's behavior did not justify being tazed or hit.
Larry Lagarde
RideTHISbike.com
Urging bicycling for recreation, commuting, health and a better future.
And charging him with 6 counts? The local prosecutor obviously has nothing better to do.
While the cyclist did come off as a moron, you seem to be defending the position of police, regardless of their behavior, as soon as a person steps outside of the rules of engagement. Shouldn't the police try to be... reasonable? And why charge him, rather then just giving him a talking to and letting him go? Need we make an example of all people who dare confront the police? It seems the position of "accept it now, deal with it later" yields a slippery slope... let the police do whatever they like to you, then complain to the same people later about it? That seems very naive... I haven't seen many PD's that have a good reputation for investigating their own.
If you get caught breaking the law, deflect attention away from your crime by asking for help. It helps if your crime was very minor, and if your need for help is genuine.
On two occasions when I was pulled over for traffic violations--once for running a stop sign and once for driving erratically--I got out of the ticket by legitimately claiming that I was hopelessly lost and that I desperately needed the officer's help to find my way back to a major landmark or highway.
Cops like to help people. Nine times out of ten, that's why they became cops.
I found myself in a similar situation while living in Chicago, except that I was on foot (the obvious solution to his problem was to hoist his bike onto his shoulder and walk, btw). I hadn't given my route a second thought, having used it numerous times in the past, but this time it was after park hours. Walking around the park was a large enough detour as to be impracticable, considering my blood alcohol content at the time, so I proceded. I mean, what are the odds? I'd made it most of the way, too -- a couple of miles, easily, and I could see the border. But a patroling car spotted me in silhouette, and rather than inconvenience them, I walked (slowly) up to their car, directly on the line of the spotlight, with my hands out of my pockets (a good foot away from them, too).
Their conversation was predictable: "What are you doing here, don't you know the park is closed?" "I'm sorry officer, I though the park closed at midnight." "What time do you think it is?" "It's 11:30. (hic)" "Um, no, it's 1:30." "Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm such an idiot. Um, would you mind if exited the park this way? (pointing to the shortest route out, and of course where I was going anyway)?" "You're going home?" "Why, yes." etc etc.
Of course, you can contrast this with times where I'd been stopped for no reason other than being out of the ordinary (apparantly, anybody walking in suburbia at ~3 am is a criminal until proven innocent). Those stops usually go "You got some ID?" "Am I under arrest? Am I free to go?" "Um, of course." "Goodnight, Officer."