Sorry, But I think Jonah Goldberg has it right:

In other words, he wasn’t arrested for asking hard questions or for his “dissent.” He was escorted from the mic for going on too long, as per the rules of the event, and for generally being a pest. He was arrested for resisting the officers. It seems an important distinction. The fact that the kid thought it was wrong for the cops to pull him away from the microphone is pretty much irrelevant. Lots of folks think it’s wrong for the cops to apprehend them. That’s why we have judges and lawyers to work all that stuff out. When he started resisting the cops, what were the cops supposed to do? Should they have said “Oh, you don’t want to be arrested? Gosh we didn’t realize. You’re free to go.”

It does seem arguable that better cops could have talked him away from the microphone without all the fuss or carried him all the way out of the room so he wouldn’t have an audience to martyr himself in front of. And, they do seem to have been too quick to taser the guy. Then again it’s hard to tell what was happening in the close quarters. All in all, I have a hard time seeing this as anything but a minor campus incident. He was asked to stop talking after he had his allotted time, he wouldn’t. He was asked to leave, he wouldn’t. He was told to come quietly, he wouldn’t. He was told to stop resisting, he wouldn’t. He was told that if he didn’t stop resisting, he would be tasered. He was tasered. I don’t see any profound “issues” stemming from the whole thing.

Bill: The video you’ve posted, hosted by YouTube but apparently from CNN in some fashion, has the best angle of any of the three I’ve seen. You can clearly see that they have cuffed his right wrist, but not his left wrist, when he rolls back onto his side and is lifting his left arm, still struggling against the hold. He’s ignoring their instruction to roll back onto his stomach and squirming and cursing. A few seconds earlier, he’d gotten his arms free and was thrashing them around wildly (although that can be seen better from one of the other videos). The guy was just resisting arrest — not by punching, but by doing everything else short of that. He’s neither Henry David Thoreau nor Gahndi, and I’m surprised you’ve let him make you think we was.

By ‘resisting arrest’, Beldar, you are begging the question that he should have been arrested in the first place. Pace Jonah Goldberg, it would seem that the cops escalated this thing very rapidly.

After reading all the information I could find on this guy, including some of his “columns,” and the information provided about the speaking forum and the events leading up to the young man’s arrest:

1. The police, and by proxy, the forum and the University, were justified entirely in removing him, by force if necessary, from the room. He had as much right to behave as he did as he would in setting off a smoke bomb.

2. The tasering, while horrible, was the result of persisent and deliberate provocation. In hindisght (with all its advantages), the police simply should have removed him and barred him from reenetering, but were mostly likely within their brief to subdue him.

3. Tasers should be restricted to use on violent offenders as a last resort prior to actual use of deadly force. This man was not violent. He was just a jerk.

the taser was used by lazy cops. Com’on it is 3:1 and could have been hogtied with no need for the taser. If you don’t believe that statement, then tell me that you believe the perp would have gotten away in days prior to the taser.

Rodney King.

As an aside, chewing up everyone else’s time with a long speech on your own topic, boring the bejesus out of everyone present when you’re supposed to be asking a question, is standard journalistic practice. Somehow I can’t see the police comporting themselves in a similar fashion toward someone with press credentials, and yet those credentials have no magical legal significance privileging the possessor against such treatment.

Yes. But you have to have the “credentials” to begin with — and it’s a press conference.

But why discriminate?

By all means, let all 6 billion of us weigh in with our opinions before anything can proceed. Better still, let’s have a global debate on the internet. Thereby, existing policy becomes dogma, change is impossible, and we have the perfect theological state.

But you have to have the “credentials” to begin with

It seems to me that an open mike, and an invitation to speak from John Kerry were credentials enough. Violation of “the rules” is not violation of the law.

Look, you guys really don’t want to start arguing the law with me — much less “calling bulls**t” — because you’re in over your held.

Bill, the page you linked to is put together by someone, I know not who, who doesn’t know the first thing about doing modern legal research or writing. If you took something like that to a modern judge, he would immediately draw a two-word, and very unflattering, conclusion: “Incompetent crackpot.” That’s substantially worse than trying to practice law out of the Wikipedia.

But here’s an example of the current law in Texas, for example, which is what I’m most familiar with, and which is fairly typical of most state’s laws in this regard. It’s from Texas Penal Code § 9.31( c), and it’s altogether straightforward (emphasis mine):

The use of force to resist an arrest or search is justified:

(1) if, before the actor offers any resistance, the peace officer (or person acting at his direction) uses or attempts to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest or search; and

(2) when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the peace officer’s (or other person’s) use or attempted use of greater force than necessary.

This relies upon an objective standard, as determined later by a jury, of what force is “necessary to make the arrest or search” — not the subjective impressions of the suspect.

More importantly, if the suspect himself offers any resistance first, his potential self-defense privilege against the arresting officer vanishes. That exactly fits my paraphrase earlier: You’re not privileged to use force and violence against police officers to resist arrest. But here’s a modern case interpreting it. In Evans v. State, 876 S.W.2d 459, 464-65 (Tex. App. — Texarkana 1994, no pet’n), here’s what the defendant claimed:

Evans contends that the evidence demonstrates that Officer Sonsel attempted to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest. He specifically points to three instances of conduct by the officer: (1) Sonsel placed his hand on his pistol, (2) Sonsel called for back-up, and (3) Sonsel made the first aggressive move by attempting to pin Evans’s arm behind his back. He also points to the fact that he repeatedly asked the officer if he was going to shoot him as evidence of a reasonable belief that the force used in defending himself was necessary.

Here’s how the appellate court treated it, in agreeing with the trial court that the jury need not even be instructed about the possibility that Evan’s aggravated assault while resisting arrest was justified on grounds of self-defense (emphasis mine; citations omitted):

The first two instances of evidence relied on by Evans — the touching of the weapon and calling for back-up — do not constitute the use or attempted use of force. The fact that the officer pulled Evans’s arm behind his back does not constitute excessive force because Evans had repeatedly told the officer that he would not allow himself to be arrested and was attempting to leave the officer’s presence and enter the house. The reasonableness of Evans’s belief that force was necessary is relevant only when he has established that Sonsel used or attempted to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest.

No evidence exists in the record to support the conclusion that Sonsel used greater force than necessary to affect the arrest. The trial court did not err in rejecting the self-defense instruction.

By the same token, the University of Florida officers’ initial taking of Meyer’s arm to escort him out of the room — which was more than likely before a decision had been made to arrest Meyer (as opposed to merely ejecting him) does not constitute the use of “force.” Meyer’s resistance to that, however, does destroy his opportunity to argue self-defense for his continuing resistance later, and justifies a more aggressive removal effort (dragging, then literally picking up Meyer). Meyer’s resistance to that became a crime justifying arrest in its own right, regardless of whether they had previously intended to arrest him for criminal trespass or disorderly conduct or the like.

But you want it even closer to my paraphrase? Okay, here it is, from Garner v. State, 858 S.W.2d 656, 661 (Tex. App. — Fort Worth 1993, pet’n ref’d), also based on the same section of the Texas Penal Code.

Appellant also argues that he was justified in resisting arrest because the record contains evidence of excessive force being used during the arrest. The general rule is that the use of force to resist arrest is not justified, even if the arrest is illegal. An exception to the rule exists when the peace officer uses or attempts to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest or search. In that situation, the actor may use only the degree of force immediately necessary to protect himself against the peace officer’s use of greater force than necessary.

I would bet a steak dinner and a bottle of wine with a real cork in it that Florida has essentially the same statutory and case-law provisions.

Still waiting, re the handcuffs. C’mon, be honest about what’s in the video. Because the fact that Meyer was violently and successfully resisting the handcuffing with every muscle in his body was what justified the next escalation by the officers — that being, as they warned him, to the Taser shock.

Sigh. I have a long, detailed, and link-filled comment citing some real law that’s caught up in your spam filter.

Thanks. But if he knows his stuff, he’ll agree with me. :-)

I think this guy will be convicted of resisting arrest. He’ll do some jail time. He’ll try to sue, and if he manages to find a lawyer (which is likely, given that he’s about to become a Hard Left anti-hero and he is, after all, in Florida), his suit will promptly be tossed on the basis of collateral estoppel (i.e., that his conviction conclusively establishes that the officers had cause for the force they used to subdue him as he was resisting arrest).

Bill, your being a libertarian doesn’t change whether he was or wasn’t cuffed before he was Tasered. C’mon, man. Watch the video again, and make the honest retraction. It went right cuff (2:53 of the video, you can hear the click), then further struggle and attempt to roll on his side and back, keeping his arms apart so they couldn’t cuff him (up to 3:11), including the explicit warnings, and only then the Taser shock — after which he quit resisting and was on his feet and on his way out of the building within a matter of a few further seconds, neither stunned nor uncoordinated, and certainly not gagged.

I’ll quit pestering you here, and restrict my further comments about the case to my own bandwidth, but thanks for the civil reception. You and I actually agree about a lot of principles — we just disagree over whether this … individual … has properly triggered any of them.

Bill, your being a libertarian doesn’t change whether he was or wasn’t cuffed before he was Tasered.

Beldar, I know you’d like to get home to supper, but one correction: my dismay isn’t over the tasering in the process of cuffing, although I think that was an improper use of force for the situation. It is over the police laying hands on him in the first place.

Anyway, you’re right. this is going on a bit too long. Always a pleasure to see you, though.

Clayton: Thanks!

Bill: Maybe I haven’t been clear. Here’s what I think you need to correct in your original post, because there’s lots of misinformation on this point floating around out there (boldface mine):

[U]nless you consider stupid political questions asked in a forum where questions were requested and Meyer was recognized to speak as being the sort of disturbance meriting the application of repeated painful electric shocks to a guy already handcuffed and held on the floor by a trio of beefy cops, then you ought to think Michelle is on the wrong side of this issue.

And hey, I have dinner at the keyboard most nights!

Fixed.

At whose behest was this jerk being ejected?

The most important question. If it was the owners, managers or renters of the building or space they do have the right to tell anyone to leave. Even if some twobit politician wants him to stay. If they were telling him to leave on behalf of some one having control of the premises he could be arrested and charged with trespass after notice. If I am hosting an event and someone violates the rules I laid down beforehand they will be told to sit down shut up or get the hell out. Then I bring out the rubber hoses. The ass was preventing others from asking their questions.

Beldar is wrong - #8 Sept. 18, 1:03:57 p.m. Let’s look at what Beldar claims:
“don’t know how you can say he was ‘not violent.’ It took three officers to keep him pinned to the floor, and they still couldn’t get him on his stomach with his wrists close enough together to get him cuffed. Before that (especially in one of the other videos), you can see him flailing about with his arms with all his strength”
This is patently absurd. Struggling to prevent others from fixing one in restraints is not in itself “violent.” I’m not talking “law,” I’m talking facts of human interaction. Had Andrew Meyer wanted to hurt an officer, he could easily have done so, because as Beldar says, our student was tall, well-built, strong. He did NOT appear to hurt or try to hurt or intend harm to any of the officers. They couldn’t pin him to the floor because it was patently obvious to him they had no right to do so. He used his strength and flexibility, like a wrestler being pinned, to prevent a successful pinning. But he didn’t apply counteroffensive tactics as a wrestler would who is totally focused on preventing his opponent’s succeeding against him. I believe Meyer was strong enough to have broken free from the three officers initially holding him down, had he been TOTALLY UNCONCERNED whether any of them might be hurt in the process. This is why, I believe, he remained on the ground and spoke civilly – despite all the officers on top of him – as a respectful human being, “Don’t tase me, bro.” I doubt he’d have called the person “bro” as he did had he carried an aggressive hostility of intent toward the officer.
Beldar’s hypotheticals are laughable signs of Beldar’s having already decided or dreamed he saw the guy was violent: “if one of those windmills had caught an officer in the windpipe, that could indeed have been a serious injury. There’s no doubt whatsoever that there was a serious risk of either Meyer, one of the officers, or some combination of them at least breaking a rib or an arm or a leg, or ripping a tendon or shredding some cartilage.” I beg to differ. Meyer seemed to me to have vigorously expressed his protest against being taken down by the officers at the same time conscientiously avoiding inflicting harm in his attempts to resist. In other words, he seemed to me to have anticipated such possibilities as Beldar hypothetically proffers as suggestive evidence of Meyer’s posing a danger to self and others, but modulated his “thrashings” to prevent harm to his captors. (Anyone who’s worked with domestic violence perpetrators knows how finely a person can modulate their coercive or forceful actions, and Meyer wasn’t even using his strength to intimidate or hurt, but was attempting to simply preserve the integrity of space around his body, which the police arbitrarily chose to invade.
Beldar’s flimsy use of the phrase “out of control” also doesn’t stand, as noted further below.
Beldar then concedes of the student one thing then contradicts himself in the next moment: “He wasn’t using his fists, but the guy’s over 6 feet and looks like he’s about 180 pounds or so, and he was using his entire strength to resist arrest.” Perhaps there’s a reason he didn’t use his fists, eh? Had he in fact “used his entire strength to resist arrest,” he’d have knocked the cops down and run. He did neither of these things. He simply tried to shake their hands loose from gripping him – a quite natural thing to do when suddenly and unexpectedly being assaulted, especially by more than one assailant, be they uniformed or in civilian clothes.
As for the spin Beldar put on the event, “The female cop he was yanking around against must have been all of 5′0′ and 130 lbs. dripping wet,” my understanding of what happened was that SHE, along with fellow cops, was grabbing him and yanking him away from the microphone and from the public eye and ear.
As for Beldar’s claim, “The guy’s completely out of control, unresponsive to any attempts to reason with him,” this is specious rhetoric meant to prejudice readers who didn’t see the video. Had he been “completely out of control,” he indeed would have broken somebody’s nose or ribs, to say the least. I have worked with psychiatric patients who do have moments of “losing it,” and it usually takes six hefty staff members to subdue them, and as often as not, no matter how much flailing they do, such diagnosed “psychotics” don’t try to injure the staff so much as they try simply to escape their grasp. Nor was there any “reasoning” with Meyer by the cops. They just arbitrarily decided to yank his mike after he’d had it 90 seconds. There is something icy cold about Beldar’s capacity to rationalize police brutality and put a spin on it that makes the police seem like unjustly victimized do-gooders, when in fact they clearly were violating this citizen’s Bill of Rights-articulated inalienable rights. To say “he’s a menace to himself and everyone around him” is blatantly prejudicial and absurd. He menaced no one, despite the fact he was clearly capable of doing serious harm to every one of the officers who put hands on him. He was in fact quite civil, considering the hostile attack perpetrated on him by the police, who also were rather restrained (at least they didn’t club him) until Mr. Taser relied on high-tech instead of human intelligence to resolve the conflict, a conflict which in fact the police started.
There was no sign from either audience or the guest speaker that this person was either “disruptive or out of control” at the microphone. He was simply and honestly passionate – and courageous in bringing such a set of tough questions to the speaker. And Sen. Kerry later said it was a pity a good discussion was interrupted like that. Those justifying the police response – which wasn’t a “response” at all, but rather an aggressive and uncalled-for reaction – seem averse to discomfiting dialogue, and hide this shallow embarrassment at fierce dialogue with pseudo-legalistic rhetoric about duties to obey law officers, as if a cop were a priest who speaks for God or humanity more legitimately than a lone citizen at a public event daring to speak hard words in a crowd of people both sympathetic and hostile to his viewpoints. To my mind, Meyer, only 21, was courageous and should have been applauded for his questions, but instead a number of people in the crowd applauded when the cops manhandled him – which I found almost as shocking as Kerry’s passively standing at the stage, watching the entire disgraceful smearing of our flag and nation by these authoritarian cops.
As for Beldar’s last insinuation: “And you want some cop to suffer a broken nose or torn-up knee before they’re allowed to put some (temporary, very localized, but very intense) hurt on the guy?” Actually, no. I don’t want a cop to suffer, nor do I want a freethinking citizen to suffer at a stupid cop’s hands. But if I had to choose which one deserves being hurt, if there is ever such a thing as deserving to be physically hurt, I’d say it’s the one who initiates an attack. In this case it was cops. I think the aggressive assailant is the one who merits a “brief localized pain,” if either party does. And it was the cops who, if either party does, merit the label “assailant.” This further argues for Meyer’s decency of intention, since he clearly restrained himself from reacting violently to the police people’s repressive force against him. That he was struggling is NOT synonymous with violence, though this distinction escapes our lawyerly Beldar’s notice.

Dylan #32 is right. Cops started the disruption, and laws exist to serve society, not vice versa, which is why we have appeals courts, because every judge worth his salt knows he or she can get it wrong even with the best intentions and a huge law library and staff. I fear Beldar is waving his attorney diploma around a bit too haughtily, as if to cow lesser-literate mortals into submission by virtue of his lawyerspeak capacities, rather than to persuade us of his reasonableness with regard to very human concerns. His lawyerese smacks of discipline with little love in it and a bit too much of the societally-sanctioned self-satisfaction of the excessively certain authority figure “with law on his side.” Ironically, he talks as if his being on the side of “the law” (as if “the law” were some sacrosanct stone monolith rather than an evolving and necessarily malleable process of paper shuffling) were more important than being on the side of the most ethical thing to do. Hmmm, what do your law books say to say about that, Beldar? Or are police manuals more important than human beings, and order more important than justice?

From another lawyer. Beldar is right. You cannot resist arrest - period. You get a hearing later to determine the facts (was the arrest lawful, etc.) but you must comply with the officer’s orders. Any other rule would be a invitation to anarchy - with every prospective arrestee free to decide whether the officer’s actions are lawful. Take a guess at what percentage of arrestees would think their arrest was improper (most- I would guess). Anyway, I do not think that anyone can argue that the officer’s commands here were not lawful or that the idiot was complying with them.

Bill, sure you can resist arrest. But, just realize that the police can use force and pain to make you compliant (only what is reasonably necessary to get the job done under the circumstances - what was done here seemed reasonable to me). And, if the officers were giving lawful orders you will be charged and prosecuted with resisting arrest.

Clayton, you may not want such a rule, but apparently there is one, and it seems to have served us well for the most part. While from time-to-time the police may commit perjury, it is even more difficult now, evidenced by the plethora of video, even of this one event.

A few references to resisting arrest have popped up on the net over the Meyer incident. Perhaps Beldar can comment.

—
It is well established under California law that even “an outright refusal to cooperate with police officers cannot create adequate grounds for [police] intrusion” without more. People v. Bower, 24 Cal. 3d 638, 649 (1979).

“An illegal arrest is an assault and battery. The person so attempted to be restrained of his liberty has the same right to use force in defending himself as he would in repelling any other assault and battery.” State v. Robinson, 145 ME. 77, 72 ATL. 260

“Citizens may resist unlawful arrest to the point of taking an arresting officer’s life if necessary.” Plummer v. State, 136 Ind. 306.

“The offense of resisting arrest, both at common law and under statute, presupposes a lawful arrest. It is axiomatic (self-evident) that every person has the right to resist an unlawful arrest. In such case the person attempting the arrest stands in the position of a wrongdoer and may be resisted by the use of force, as in self-defense.” State v. Mobley 240 N.C. 476, 83 S.E. 2d 100,102 (1954).
—

My questions of Beldar:
Does not Meyer have the right to resist if he is not being lawfully arrested?
In order to be lawfully arrested, does he not have to have the crime for which he is being arrested stated to him?
Does he not have to be given a momentary opportunity to comply? (He is not given this; he is handled first, I have watched many of the videos. Isn’t this assault?)
Lastly, maybe most importantly, are the citations I make above to be disregarded, and if so, why?
I have many more from various states, but not Florida. I even have quotes from a UK site on English Common Law, where resisting arrest is permitted if the arrest is not lawful. Doesn’t our law, particularly the contextual tone of our law, come from English Common Law?
Aren’t Meyer’s Fourth Ammendment rights violated here? Why?

If that’s where you’re coming from, SteveM, then I think you misunderstood what I wrote. Then again, looking it over, it wasn’t a model of clarity; it would have been better as “I would not want such different rule….”

I want to emphasize, doesn’t he have to be arrested *for* something? Don’t the police *have to tell him what* it is that he’s being arrested for? Doesn’t it have to be a crime, and one for which there is a statute? Doesn’t he have to be given a chance to comply? Otherwise, aren’t the police just asaulting him? It seems there are legal precedents that *do* give him the right to protect himself if the arrest is not lawful. This is meaningless unless there is some provision for a citizen to make a determination at the time of arrest. What nullifies this precedent, what constitutes lawful/unlawful arrest?

Yawn.

Wouldn’t a legitimate arrest be for something? If so a person could make a determination to resist if the officer can’t or won’t state the crime for which the arrest is made. Otherwise you have:

Officer: You’re under arrest.
Person: What am I being charged with?
Officer: Don’t give me a hard time and you won’t get hurt. I’ll think of something on the way to the station.

Wouln’t there have to be a *statute* to make the action of the person a crime? A person could make a determination to resist if there was no such crime. Otherwise you have:

Officer: You’re under arrest.
Person: What am I being charged with?
Officer: Felonious Instrumentality.
Person: Felonious Instrumentality? What’s that?
Officer: Come along quietly or I’ll charge you with Felonious Maleficent Instrumentality… And you’ll get hurt.

So, *what are the components of a lawful arrest*, and were those present when Andrew Meyer was dealt with by the police? Without some definitions, and limitations on the police based on those definitions, the police can do what they want and make it up as they go. The Consitution and Bill of Rights don’t tolerate that, and citations in my first post show that the courts also say there are circumstances where a person can say “no”. All the rights and freedoms we’re supposed to have really only boil down to being able to say “no” in situations like Meyers’.

I second Nemo.

I don’t. If the thread bores you, change the farking channel. nemo has put a few readers around here to sleep, too. But I doubt he’d react kindly to somebody plopping down in the middle of one such to utter the piercing and extremely useful commentary, “Yawn.”

As for you, genes, I find somewhat boring your habit of annotating damned near every post that appears at DP, sometimes with thoughts so opaque they’d better serve as light shields on the surface of the sun.

I’ll try to do better.

Bill you have noted this before, it is hard to figure out what will set off a long discussion like the one above. I for one do appreciate your open door policy, it does draw a lot of flies but occasionally it produces pure gold.

But I doubt he’d react kindly to somebody plopping down in the middle of one such to utter the piercing and extremely useful commentary, “Yawn.”

Sure I would. One of our most useful commenters just did. But I didn’t mean the “yawn” to end discussion; I was just expressing an opinion about this mite. He bores me.

The issue doesn’t, but it’s been discussed, and repeated, so many times, that I thought I’d yawn.

And if anyone thinks they can write 2800 word (not 40,000, genes) essays on the Fed without people yawning, go ahead. I assume I’ll bore the tears out of some, if not most, readers.

For those who believe that the security guards should have left him alone, what should the others who were waiting in line have done to get their turn?

Wait for it. That’s what grown-ups (who aren’t cops) do.

Does it occur to you that there is a difference between security guards and police?

Whether he was resisting arrest is irrelevant. He should never been arrested, he should not have been “escorted” out of the forum, he should not even have been even touched by the police? The police had “rules of engagement” which did not comply with the law. He was doing nothing wrong. Police cannot escort you wherever they want, they can’t even touch you. (And if there is a law somewhere, then we have found the billionth and one occurrence where the silly profession of law does not correspond with morality).

Using 1.5min of a 2 min for a heated question after cutting in line is not illegal. The police had no grounds to even touch him, it is tantamount to assault, or in the very least, escorting someone from a coffee shop for emotionally telling your order to the barista. Annoying? Yes. Illegal? No way.