Posted on 04/15/2017 4:55:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
Police: “You’re under arrest. Put your hands behind your back!”
Suspect: “Don’t touch me! I didn’t do anything!”
Police: “Oh, you didn’t? Sorry about that. My mistake. Off you go.”
That was a hypothetical conversation that has never occurred.
Do we really want to live in a society where individuals get to choose whether or not they feel like complying with the police at any given time?
In the mid-1960’s, The Bobby Fuller Four fought the law, and the law won. Several years later, John Cougar Mellencamp reminded us that when he fights authority, authority always wins. And the same is true for nearly every American who tried to fight the law before, after and in-between.
When authorities confront an individual, either to place them under arrest, ask them to vacate an area or, whatever the situation may be, and the individual refuses to comply, there can be only two possible outcomes. The authorities can either say, “Okay, you win. Sorry to bother you. Carry on and have a nice day”. Or, they can physically force the individual to comply. And the former never, ever happens.
By now, all of America is familiar with the story of David Dao, the United Airlines passenger who police officers dragged off a flight from Chicago to Louisville this past Sunday after he refused to surrender his seat to members of a flight crew.
After overbooking a flight, United asked for volunteers to give up their seats to make room for crew members in exchange for $1,000. When no one volunteered, United randomly selected several passengers to leave the plane, including Dao. When he refused, he was forcibly removed from the flight by officers working for the Chicago Department of Aviation. Video of the incident ignited a social media frenzy with an overwhelming majority lending their support to Mr. Dao and condemning the airline and police.
Whether United Airlines, the Chicago Aviation Police officers or David Dao handled the situation properly is open for debate. What is not open for debate is that once a person refuses to comply with police, physical altercation, perhaps resulting in bodily injury is inevitable.
Nearly every incident that sparks national outrage, accusations of police brutality, protests, riots and the creation of organized groups like Black Lives Matter has one thing in common - someone initially refused to comply with the orders of law enforcement.
Mr. Dao may have been completely justified in his outrage. The police response may have been completely inappropriate. But we do not have the luxury of deciding that we do not wish to comply with orders from law enforcement, even if we are completely in the right. And the police do not have the luxury of neglecting to enforce their own orders because someone emphatically expresses their desire to be left alone. Your innocence, mistreatment, inconvenience or potential police misconduct is something to be dealt with at a later time. The subsequent legal process can vindicate the victim and punish the wrongdoers. But during the initial confrontation, you must comply. And if you choose to go a different route, you will lose every single time, at least for the moment.
Sometimes, the aesthetics of a police encounter caught on video do not shine the best light on law enforcement. There is the perception that excessive, perhaps completely unwarranted force was deployed. The proper handling of any physical encounter involving the police is subjective. And video doesn’t always tell the whole story.
Protecting citizens from unwarranted abuses by the state is one of the cornerstones of a free society. It is critical that we hold law enforcement accountable for any misconduct and demand the most fair and humane treatment from the police and the justice system. But before we rush to condemn the police every time they use what some perceive to be excessive force, we must ask ourselves what alternatives did they have? If they ask you to do something and you refuse, they will then tell you to do it. If you still refuse, they must make you do it by force or we cease to be a nation of laws.
Mr. Dao has won in the court of public opinion regarding his experience with United Airlines. There is a good chance that he will win in a court of law. There is also a good chance that some of the officers involved will be the ultimate losers in this ordeal. But in the brief few moments following the request for him to vacate his seat on the airplane, there was a zero percent chance that David Dao would come out the victor.
First of all the “police” neither told him he was under arrest nor that he could be arrested. They were simply acting as a goon squad for the airline, illegally called in to remove him from the plane.
Question is how many times has this happened, with or without violence? While his present attorneys stated they are not making this a class action (as his individual damages will be far more than as a member of a class), somewhere I’m sure a law firm is preparing the groundwork for a class action by other passengers involuntarily removed from a United plane after boarding. Other actions are probably brewing for this particular flight - “intentional infliction of emotional distress” by the gate agent telling the passengers the flight would not leave unless four people volunteered or were taken off involuntarily for their $800 offer, and the ensuing violence witnessed by many close up.
Analogies have been made to Rosa Parks. While not racial in context, the analysis is quite appropriate. Someone finally stood up to illegal actions by the airline and the “police.” Once the passengers had boarded, the airlines are very limited in reasons why they can remove a paying passenger. At a minimum, this case has finally brought the “fine print” out for open discussion and analysis so many people understand their rights - and likely a lot of training is going on with “police” that may be called by an airline to remove someone. If the real police had actually been brought in, they likely would have told United to solve their problem themselves, recognizing arrest was not in the cards.
Yes. Anybody on that flight who was distressed over the incident should have given up his seat.
Yep
Bilello needs to pull his hotel out of his alpha and substitute the facts for his BS.
Also, why are there no charges against him, like resisting arrest or trespassing?
>>So they bust his face up, drag him out of the plane, and then leave him dazed and bleeding to walk back on the plane.
Do you realize how screwed these cops are?<<
Something strange happened there.
But to get past the protections cops have you need to be able to PROVE they went well beyond legal force to accomplish their law-enforcement goal. It is a very high hurdle.
Once the airline asked the man to debark, no matter why, and the cops were called and the passenger resisted, the cops were probably within procedure and the law in taking him off physically.
I think the lawyers are hoping the outrage will influence the jury more than the facts or the law. MOstly they want to leverage a fear of that to get a settlement. of which they (the lawyers) will keep most.
Good thing you aren't a lawyer. Dr. Dao certainly had a license to be where he was.
The author unfortunately sums up a major problem with modern police training and attitudes. While from a practical point of view complying with armed people is almost always a good idea, it doesn't help the police, or our nation, to have their authority be based on their likelihood to get violent. That puts them in the same category as thugs, bank robbers, and criminals of all sorts. None of the guys I know who are police officers signed up to be rent-a-thugs.
It didn’t matter. That was not the place to adjudicate a dispute. When the police are called to a scene and there is no question about who owns the property, they are going to remove an offending person from the premises. Everybody except this Dao guy apparently knows this, because this sort of thing happens thousands of times every year and nobody else had to get dragged away by the police.
Cops have the right to protect themselves, and to arrest. I don’t see a charge against him for resisting arrest, or trespass. So, what gives them the right to beat the crap out of him? Also, I think most cops would tell the airline it was a civil dispute, and they needed to solve it themselves. This could have been easily done by offering better incentives to get a volunteer.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/video-appears-to-show-passenger-being-removed-from-united-flight/
_____________________________________________________________________
All three are on leave now. I'd be hiring a good criminal attorney.
What an ass. It is the job of law enforcement to ensure they are acting within the Constitution and the law. The Chicago airport police had neither on their side in this case.
We have gotten too far away from that concept.
why, how come? I put the blame on the greedy agents who overbooked the flight. If they hadn’t this would not have happened.
First of all, they weren't cops in the usual sense of what that word means. They were security officers. Second, dragging a human being like that is far removed from any procedure and law except in the most dire circumstances. Those security officers had all the advantages over a senior citizen who, although resisting removal (not arrest, but removal), was zero threat to anyone. There were three of them, but they still couldn't calmly and orderly restrain the man and walk him down the aisle? Come on...would you so easily given in to totalitarian impulses?
Why on earth were those four employees so valuable?
Was it a life or death situation?
“The Chicago airport police had neither on their side in this case. “
Wanna explain that or would you like to be reminded of private property rights??
“illegally called in to remove him from the plane.”
The passenger had his boarding pass revoked. He refused to leave the plane. How is removing a trespasser on a plane
illegal?
“Dr. Dao certainly had a license to be where he was. “
No, he didn’t. His boarding pass was revoked.
Explain this ‘license’ you speak of that didn’t exist.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.