Police Officer: 'if you don’t want to get shot...just do what I tell you.'

Reason.com ^ | 08/19/2014 | J.D. Tuccille

[Rusty0604]

"If you don't want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground," warns Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police Department, "just do what I tell you."

The thing is, Officer Dutta (pictured) is also an Adjunct Professor of Homeland Security and Criminal Justice at Colorado Technical University. And he uttered those words not in the heat of the moment, but in an opinion piece in the Washington Post responding to widespread criticism of police attitudes and tactics currently on display in Ferguson, Missouri, but increasingly common nationwide.

Dutta continues:

Don't argue with me, don't call me names, don't tell me that I can't stop you, don't say I'm a racist pig, don't threaten that you'll sue me and take away my badge. Don't scream at me that you pay my salary, and don't even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

Dutta actually comes off as a reasonable law enforcement officer...He endorses the use of body cameras and dashcams to record interactions between police and the public. He counsels, "you don't have to submit to an illegal stop or search. You can refuse consent to search your car or home if there's no warrant."

And yet he demands unresisting submission to police without argument or even legal protest. Just how do you "refuse consent to search your car or home" without running afoul of the no-nos Dutta warns may get you "shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground"?

Remember, this is a thoughtful police officer, with a PhD., who teaches criminal justice.

[SoConPubbie]

We’ll see who is incxorrect when/if you go head to head with an LEO over this. Let me know how it works out for ya.

Boy am I glad the founders didn't take your approach, that power, or armed force makes someone right.

[Robert Teesdale]

"LE aren’t Olympian gods, even though they have the ego of one."

Hubris and nemesis are inseperable.