It feels like I'm in a position defending what the police did on the tape, which is absolutely not the case, but here goes. It seems that many here are giving Duwanna, or any prisoner, all sorts of rights that she doesn't have. I can understand how it might be popular to paint this brutal police action as an automatic civil rights violation, but the truth, I would say, could very likely be far more ordinary. All I've been trying to do is put the events in context. Period.

The "Rule of Law" does not call for violence and brutality to be used in compelling a non-violent and passive prisoner to do anything.

Linking compulsion under the rule of law with violence and brutality? Insinuating that Duwanna was being "passive" given the circumstances? Pippa, you're a smart person and you'll surely understand why I don't need to dissect this any further. :)

If anything, it's in the prisoner's own interest to cooperate in the booking process, to expedite the arraignment and at least get a chance to seek bail, and in the meantime, to get a bunk and a meal. In this case, a little patience and decency on the part of police would have likely done the trick.

Too true in the first instance, very likely in the second.

But let's say it didn't. What then, you ask? There are a number of possibilities, all keeping with the rule of law, and not having to do with the tempers of the men who are supposed to be peace-keepers. For starters, a judge could issue an order to the prisoner to comply, and failing compliance, jail her for contempt until such time as she did comply, or order her to be sent for psychiatric evaluation to make sure she was rational and not a danger to herself or anyone else. If she resisted transporting, she could be restrained, and carried if necessary, but this should be possible without violence or temper.

It's possible that they could get a judge on the phone -- a rare and very unusual step, but possible. I've actually seen that happen once. A friend of mine, a roommate of mine while we were going to school, was angry at the $55 fine he received for not having a county tax sticker on his car, even though he had one from his previous county. He protested by bringing a milk jug with exactly $55 of pennies in it down to the county auditor, who told him to wrap the pennies up into rolls before he would accept it. Mt friend had just taken a course on business law, and so was an "expert" on the subject, and he refused to do so. It was a small town in rural Tennessee, but we were both surprised to see him get a telephone call from the judge, who told him that he had to wrap up the pennies before the auditor would accept them. He said, verbatim, "Your Honor, I don't believe I have to." The judge replied something like, "Well, if you think so." Fifteen minutes later, the Deputy Sheriff (who later had to leave town because he'd gotten a fifteen year-old girl pregnant -- but that's another story), came around, slightly amused, and my friend was off to jail less than a minute later, given just enough time to put on a shirt and shoes.

Anyone being arrested knows that they must be fingerprinted, and that refusal to do so will only get them into greater trouble, at the very least, being put in handcuffs. The police using bad language to make a legal order almost certainly violated internal police procedure, but is not against the law, a VERY key difference. Regardless, Duwanna had a right to be angry (anyone likely would be), but she did not have the legal right to refuse to be fingerprinted because of verbal abuse. Isn't this obvious?

Your solution is to call up a judge to come down to the police station and tell Duwanna that she must cooperate with the police, something they already have the authority to compel her to do, and something a reasonable person knows she must do under the law, and compose some sort of legal order. What would the judge's likely reaction be to such a request? Secondly, all your alternatives involve booking her, something she was refusing to do in the first place. Thirdly, how does one restrain an uncooperative person without using some form of force (violence)?

Just because they're personally annoyed, whether justified or otherwise, doesn't give the police or anyone else the right to issue summary punishment. Nor, for that matter, to use defensive weapons, truncheons or fists on someone who is neither attacking anyone nor trying to escape custody. "Teaching someone a lesson" is a job for the Court, not the Police.

The way you bundle together legal and moral arguments makes me dizzy. :) Nobody is justifying summary punishment or what the cops did. Question: When is a defensive weapon not a defensive weapon? When it is used as an offensive weapon. Mace, pepper spray, tasers: they are not primarily meant to be defensive in an officer's hands; they're intended to control.

It's not quite clear, but I have the feeling that you disapprove of police using any level of force short of self-defense. Your solution to the problem of what level of force was necessary to control a prisoner was a court order from a judge, a seemingly Monty Pythonesque solution: "Stop, or we'll shout 'stop', again!"

Clearly, the cops were wrong to use bad language, which violated police procedure and escalated the situation. After Duwanna became offended and stopped cooperating they might have apologized, but they, being who they are, didn't think much of that option. They were legally wrong to start beating her. They would have been far better served to get three other burly guys around her, then ask her to cooperate or be handcuffed, and, if she still failed to comply, to use the added muscle to compel her into cuffs with a minimum of damage and pain. She could have complained to the authorities afterwards about the bad language, and almost certainly would have had the cops in hot water. After rough treatment and nasty violations of procedure and law, like that, sometimes the judge will throw out a case, which, apparently, is what happened in her case.

Was it all about a violation of civil rights due to the language they supposedly (and probably) used? Did they single her out for abuse and beat her because she was a transperson? I don't think so. Up to that point, she wasn't in cuffs, although, when they arrested her, they had the right to put her in them. I think a far more accurate interpretation is that one of the officers decided to be "tough," wanted to make fun of her because he was a jerk, and the whole matter blew up far beyond their wildest dreams.

Aardvark

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi