re: Black Man's Unfortunate Interaction With Cincinnati Police While Getting Coffee

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While I agree with a lot of what you are saying, you shouldn't be required to show respect to a police officer or else you will have problems. They are just regular people, they don't deserve anything just because they were gifted a badge and gun. I got no problem interacting with police but if one is following me around and eyeballing me or waiting for me to mess up, frick that guy.

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That's all fine and good but when a cop stops you, it's not up to your personal discretion in that moment to decide if his stopping you is justified or not. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't, but it's pretty well established that criminals are going to lie and play innocent every chance they get, so an officer can't allow everyone they stop to arbitrarily disobey their commands because they claim innocence or take issue with the stop. And you don't get to decide that you are going to refuse his demands and then go reaching in your pockets against his instruction not to without very predictable repercussions.

I've been stopped before for no good reason and I was as pissed about it as anyone else. You will always have some police officers that abuse their power. That's life. Cry about it theoretically all you want but it is inevitable. What I didn't do was decide that I didn't like them stopping me and get combative with them. Because that would be stupid and they would then be justified in taking harsh measures with me for their own precaution.

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It's crazy to me to think that if he would have been cool, he would have walked. frick that, he shouldn't be required to be cool. The cop was looking for someone to jam up and he found one. That shouldn't be a police officers job. Why on earth would anyone trust police when they are actively looking to screw with people?

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I didn't suggest he would have walked. Since he had weed he might not have. But he certainly created the physical nature of the interaction. And whether you trust police or not is irrelevant. The point is, if you take the approach this guy did then the cop is reasonably justified in using force in the encounter. It's just common sense but if you want to say frick it I don't have to comply because I don't agree with their probable cause, then don't act surprised and play victim when the encounter turns physical. You are now responsible for that aspect of the encounter.

ETA: Meant to reply to Barf.