I agree. Police seem to resort to violence way too often. What’s wrong with being polite, informing a citizen what they are doing wrong, and using the bare minimum of violence relative to a situation? It shouldn’t matter if a citizen has an attitude or black skin.
Government powers are few and limited. Citizen rights are everything else. The benefit of the doubt should always go to the citizen. That’s the ideal.
If the police don’t have probable cause that a crime has been committed, what gives them the authority to demand ID from anyone? If a citizen hasn’t been arrested or detained based on reasonable suspicion, they should be free to go about their business unmolested. That should even include the freedom to walk away from the police, i.e. “Am I being detained?” If not, the police have no right to do anything further.
Amen!
As the [Roman] soldiers are stretching their prisoner out with thongs about his wrists to secure him for the scourging, he [St Paul] asks a question that transforms him from victim to master of the situation. "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn't even been found guilty? Though from the Augustan age the Lex Julia contained an absolute prohibition on binding or beating a Roman citizen, Paul's qualified statement accords with later practice (Sherwin-White 1963:72-73; compare Acts 16:37). The centurion is dismayed and immediately reports Paul's Roman citizenship to the tribune. The tribune verifies it by a simple question to Paul, which the apostle answers in the affirmative. To wrongly claim Roman citizenship was a serious, even capital offense...
Guess we must be peasants, then, since we can be bound or beaten on a whim by the Owners' lawdogs, for "resisting".
At a minimum, us peasants will be made to eat dirt, with our hands cinched tight behind us.
I am a private process server. On one occasion I was attempting to serve a subpoena to a women at her residence in a fairly nice subdivision. There were vehicles in the driveway but no one answered the door. I suspected that someone might be home, but just in case no one was home I decided to wait in my car on the street in front of her house so that if/when she or someone did come home I could attempt to serve it to her or, if someone else, to inquire as to her whereabouts. I waited in front of the house for about an hour and 15 minutes.
As it got dark a police car slowly arrived with lights flashing and parked behind me for about five minutes with the lights still flashing. I turned on my interior lights, got out my process server ID and when the cop came up to my driver side window I put my hands on the steering wheel so that he could see them, all as a courtesy to him.
He asked me for my ID, and though I believe that I had no obligation to show him my ID, I did so anyway because I had a purpose in mind. He asked me what I was doing there and I told him. To make a long story longer he told me to wait there and he went to the front door and knocked. She opened the door to him and after a minute or two motioned me to come, and I served the subpoena to her at the front door. Her calling the cops on me actually helped me get her served.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that if the police don’t have probable cause that a crime has been committed they don't have any authority to ask for ID. If indeed these skyways are public property as some comments here have it, and not private property as some comments have it, the guy might want to consider suing the police department and the individual cops for false arrest and imprisonment, and assault and battery, since all the charges against him were dismissed.
As for resisting arrest, in my experience I found that the best way to do so is to use passive resistance. Just sit down on the ground. Mileage may vary with individual cops, but for some reason they don't generally seem to view someone sitting down on the ground as a threat.
Cordially,