For a reported stolen car/felony stop, it seems pretty reasonable that they'd handcuff the driver before checking the driver's license and discovering it matches the registration.
After reading the article but before reading the comments, I thought to myself, people will defend all manner of awful things, even when they’re this clear cut. Sure wish I’d been wrong.
Being forcibly detained is traumatic. Especially when you know you’re being detained wrongly. I’m speaking from experience here, and as someone who has received a settlement in a wrongful arrest suit.
There’s nothing reasonable about armed officers of the state putting someone in handcuffs without any prior effort to ascertain the appropriateness of that person being in handcuffs. Asking for license and registration is routine. If anything after that suggests they have actually stopped a car thief, the next appropriate action might be to forcibly detain them. It might also be more appropriate to question them further without force.
Putting a car’s rightful owner in handcuffs because their car had been towed without their knowledge, and they understandably reported it stolen when it wasn’t where they’d left it, and then they had the temerity to drive their own car after it had been recovered, is cruel. All of the prior facts would already be unbelievably stressful for most people. And of course no random cop is gonna know all of those prior facts, but that’s why they should ask questions before acting.
Let me reiterate: being forced into constraints by armed agents of the state who have broad authority, and get broad allowance, to use their monopoly on violence is terrifying. It’s even more terrifying when you know you’ve done nothing to warrant it, and especially when you’re being treated that way because of other wrongs done to you.
The state's monopoly, qua Max Weber, is on the legitimate use of violence. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state.
Absent this, one of three conditions exist;
1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.
2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious. This is your condition of tyranny (unaccountable power).
3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition the State.
The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy
Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California P. p. 54.
The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.
After I posted my comment above, I had to calm myself because I had a spike of anxiety remembering the details of my own experiences with police aggression, and the memory takes me far away from my body into a place of distilled fear. I’m remembering more as I type this.
I think the word you’re looking for is “comprehend”. I do comprehend why police act aggressively without cause or warning. I don’t think it’s benign. I do think you’re very fortunate not to know that.
I’ve been detained, pushed down onto the trunk of the cruiser, handcuffed behind my back, patted down, put in the back, backup called, investigated, and released on the scene. The cop had a fairly reasonable reason to do what they did that turned out to be based on a false premise [I "matched the description" but wasn't the guy], I complied, and 15-20 minutes of my life was wasted.
Was it awesome? Nope. Do I get that cops aren’t clairvoyant or omniscient and sometimes people get put in and then taken out of cuffs without being arrested? Yup.
Please stop and ask yourself if you’re engaging in a harmful way, or if you could be more considerate about how other people experience police confrontations. My anxiety is through the roof from this interaction. I’m reliving physical and psychological trauma I don’t often revisit, including being bludgeoned while trying to get people to safety away from police and having guns drawn on me for asking about the safety of others.
I’m far from the most vulnerable to police abuse. If it’s affected me this much, I have no reason to doubt how much it’s affected people who are more vulnerable. If having my relatively mild experience so callously dismissed feels like being left on my own to suffer whatever trauma I remember, I can’t imagine how it feels for people who experience police violence alone.
No. I don’t give the police the benefit of the doubt. And you won’t convince me to by dismissing my relatively minor traumatic experience and expecting me to extend that dismissal to people who have much worse experiences.
Years ago, I was pulled over while driving a rental car that had been reported stolen by an earlier renter a few weeks prior. I'm certainly glad that the officers in Atlanta approached the situation professionally and without any cuffs involved.
No. And the rental agency seemed pretty blameless in the whole situation. A previous renter had reported the car stolen, but then found the car not long after. It turns out that anyone can report a car stolen, but only the owner can report it un-stolen, and I'm guessing the previous renter somehow forgot to mention the whole affair to the rental agency.
The rental agency ended up giving me a free rental and a credit for another free day or something on a future rental.
Cops generally determine the risk of a suspect by the severity of a crime. A felony crime is considered a significant crime.
But regardless, cops put cuffs on everyone they arrest. The point being that they don’t know who is going to fight you to get away. People will fight to escape over the dumbest things.
It’s not really a huge injustice to sit in cuffs for a couple minutes while cops verify wtf is going on. I’m the first to criticize the cops but this isn’t really that kind of situation.
If I reported my car stolen, I would expect the cops to have a reasonable assumption that the person they find it with could be the thief.
Being forcibly detained is traumatic. Especially when you know you’re being detained wrongly. I’m speaking from experience here, and as someone who has received a settlement in a wrongful arrest suit.
There’s nothing reasonable about armed officers of the state putting someone in handcuffs without any prior effort to ascertain the appropriateness of that person being in handcuffs. Asking for license and registration is routine. If anything after that suggests they have actually stopped a car thief, the next appropriate action might be to forcibly detain them. It might also be more appropriate to question them further without force.
Putting a car’s rightful owner in handcuffs because their car had been towed without their knowledge, and they understandably reported it stolen when it wasn’t where they’d left it, and then they had the temerity to drive their own car after it had been recovered, is cruel. All of the prior facts would already be unbelievably stressful for most people. And of course no random cop is gonna know all of those prior facts, but that’s why they should ask questions before acting.
Let me reiterate: being forced into constraints by armed agents of the state who have broad authority, and get broad allowance, to use their monopoly on violence is terrifying. It’s even more terrifying when you know you’ve done nothing to warrant it, and especially when you’re being treated that way because of other wrongs done to you.