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In reply to the discussion: Cop Slammed Emory Professor's Head Into Concrete, Then Charged Her With Battery [View all]EndlessWire
(6,622 posts)I knew when I posted my opinion that I would probably have opposition. This board has a history of being brutal with anyone with a diverse opinion. So, this will probably be the last comment I post on this thread.
Like it or not, if you get your face down low like that, you are interfering with an arrest. I'm not saying that they were right! I'm saying that she went beyond a protest. She was okay as she was walking forward and yelling at them, what are you doing, etc., and nothing happened to her, but when she leaned over and got her head down there, she was in their purview of arrest.
Hopefully, she will have jurors who see it the way you do. But, a case can be made that she was interfering with the arrest at the point that she leaned down really close to the student's head. She leaned down far enough to have been doing the arrest herself. At that point, the other cop obviously thought that she was doing something unlawful, and he rushed to push her away. He made the decision to arrest her, and after that, she got roughed up, the same as the student that she was trying to protect..
I am NOT presenting cops as "unimpeachable arms of the law." I went with what I saw on the clip. The cops may be wrong in making an arrest, they may be violent and overreaching, but if you do what she did, you can be arrested. Many people choose that course of action, and more power to them. But, they should be aware of what it looks like to a cop, and the cops are dangerous. We have a lot of examples of that. Maybe they made an unlawful arrest. But, they could have killed her, and she would be just as dead. That's the point.
I hesitate to say this, but not everything a cop does is wrong. The last cop there wasn't wrong to push her away. I think he was wrong to rough her up. And I think that her announcing she was a professor may have led to harsher charges because of her perceived connections. But, at the time she could have been anybody.
I am a person who looks at both sides. I would look at this like an arrest gone wrong. He wasn't wrong to push her away, but he was wrong to rough her up. So, I don't think it matters whether he was right or wrong about an arrest; he was wrong in how he did it, and certainly banging her head against concrete would be unlawful all on its own.
Do you remember the man who was arrested in a park fairly recently? They banged his head against concrete, and he died. A death sentence. Or, what about the guy who became paralyzed after they violently arrested him? All for what? And, what about the fat man they had laid on his stomach, with onlookers yelling at cops to help him, but the man stopped breathing, and died. Or, what about the woman they stuffed in the back seat of a cruiser to drive her to jail, after ignoring her personal pleas that she was in trouble? She stopped breathing in the back seat, and was DOA. Or, what about the man they arrested, and propped up against their vehicle, and he died? All of this from mishandling prisoners. It's horrible. Real people, in trouble from cops.
So, don't you accuse me of presenting cops as "unimpeachable arms of the law. " No comment I have ever posted here has been biased like that. You have to look at it from both sides. That's what I did.