posted
Okay. So I just read this story about a pregnant woman being subdued with a stun gun. She did not complain of injury, but the FBI is investigating a potential civil rights violation.
According to the article, she came into the police station asking them to take custody of her son, but then refused to answer questions and tried to leave. It was at this point the officer used force, including a stun gun when she continued to struggle, to subdue her.
It is my understanding that a citizen has a right to not answer questions, before or after arrest, and that a citizen further has a right to leave unless he or she is under arrest or otherwise in police custody and has been informed of such. So, from what I know of the facts here, her rights WERE violated because she should have been free to leave and to not answer questions.
The officer claims he thought the child was in danger. But he could see no bruises, had not witnessed any maltreatment, etc. Wouldn't the correct course of action be to let the woman leave and call child services reporting that she had come in asking them to take custody but then left and that he was concerned about her frame of mind and that she might harm the child, or whatever?
It seems to me that perhaps the force wasn't excessive (she never told him she was pregnant) since she did struggle and resist after being warned that continuing to do so would result in use of the stun gun, but what he did definitely wasn't right in the first place.
Is my understanding here flawed?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:It seems to me that perhaps the force wasn't excessive (she never told him she was pregnant) since she did struggle and resist after being warned that continuing to do so would result in use of the stun gun, but what he did definitely wasn't right in the first place.
I don't know. Throwing your kid to government social services certainly constitutes maltreatment in my book, if there's no reason for it (i.e. the mother is debilitatively ill, mentally unstable, etc. etc.). And if one such factor is in play, it's conceivably important that they be able to interview her for the child's welfare.
Simple example: allergies. How is the state to be safely responsible for the child's medical care if they don't know what medications might send the kid into shock?
Complex example: mother fears abusive father will steal kid from her. How is the state to protect the child if they don't know things like that? This is an especially reasonable fear since she said she was "tired of playing games" with the guy's father. Is the father violent? Will he be violent towards her in response to this? Or, in the other direction, did he have custody of this child, and it was kidnapped?
I think it's a lot to expect of a cop to be given a kid and have the mother vanish. He was probably thinking that the kid was in danger, she was in danger, something bad like that...and perhaps worried about his liability as well.
I do know that citizens don't have the right to refuse to answer questions, just that they have the right to refuse answering some questions. I have the right to refuse to tell law-enforcement or the courts about how I planned to rob a bank. I don't have the right to refuse to tell law-enforcement or the courts about how I saw my brother robbing a bank.
But to be honest, beyond the abstract concern for the rights of all citizens, I'm not very concerned about the mother's rights, not when they're put up against the rights of the child.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I'm pretty sure that given that he thought the child was in danger, he was not allowed to let her take the child.
Imagine if instead of a cop in a police station, it was a doctor in an ER who had believed the child to be in danger. They cannot let the parent leave, especially with the child - they must hold them for CFS and/or the cops. Security would probably have to be called.
It seems to me that the questions are:
did he have good cause to believe the child was in danger?
did he use a reasonable level of force to restrain her?
quote:I don't have the right to refuse to tell law-enforcement or the courts about how I saw my brother robbing a bank.
It would be nice if Dagonee could verify this, but I believe that you do have the right to refuse to tell law-enforcement or the courts about how you saw your brother robbing a bank unless you are subpoened to testify to a court or grand jury. In my understanding, if a law-enforcement officer walks up to you on the street and asks you a question, any question, you have the right to refuse to answer.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:I think it's a lot to expect of a cop to be given a kid and have the mother vanish.
It was my understanding that she tried to leave with the kid, the kid had no visible injuries, and she had not mistreated him in the cop's presence. Neither had she demonstrated substantial mental instability or threatened herself or others.
And I agree with Rabbit. I think you have the right to refuse to say anything unless you are subpoenaed to answer questions for the court (in which case you can only refuse if it incriminates you, or in some cases your spouse, or you will be in contempt of court.) LEOs do not have the power of the courts behind them to compel testimony unless they have a subpoena.
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posted
rivka, the thing is, given the information in the article (which may be incomplete) I think he did NOT have substantial reason to believe the child was in danger. There is a pretty strict standard for what warrants immediate removal of the child/detention of the parent, and what only warrants a call for further investigation, as I'm sure you are aware. I do not believe he met the standard for immediate removal of the child, and that is why the civil rights infringement investigation is going on.
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posted
Ah, at first I didn't see that there's a video of it on the top left corner of the page. They ought to make that a little more obvious.
I don't think we have enough information to make a complete judgment, but to my eyes, it seems that the officer is using excessive force.
Clearly she doesn't pose any danger to him, is knocking her down and kneeling on her back necessary first of all? Further, once he has her subdued, I don't see how it's justifiable to tase her in the neck at that point.
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posted
The article says she "kept struggling after being warned that continuing to do so would result in being tased."
(I haven't watched the video, I didn't see that either.)
I am not arguing that he used excessive force; indeed, I don't know whether he did or not but I think when you're warned to stop struggling by an officer it's best to do so, whether he's in the right to touch you or not.
All I know is if an officer refused to let me leave the station that I had walked into of my own accord, without admitting to a crime, for not answering questions without arresting or otherwise officially placing me in custody before he tried to stop me from leaving, the department (and city, and press) WOULD be hearing a complaint from me, not some anonymous man on my behalf.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:rivka, the thing is, given the information in the article (which may be incomplete) I think he did NOT have substantial reason to believe the child was in danger.
I sure as hell do. I don't know the legalities involved (and as for answering questions, subpoenas are what I was referring to), but I think, "I wanna give my kid up b/c I'm tired of playing games with his dad," is a big bright red flag.
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quote:It would be nice if Dagonee could verify this, but I believe that you do have the right to refuse to tell law-enforcement or the courts about how you saw your brother robbing a bank unless you are subpoened to testify to a court or grand jury. In my understanding, if a law-enforcement officer walks up to you on the street and asks you a question, any question, you have the right to refuse to answer.
This is generally true - until a subpoena is served, you are usually under no obligation to provide information. In general, both the prosecution and criminal defendants are entitled to any person's testimony, but only by subpoena. In the cases where either is not entitled to such testimony (this is called "privilege"), there are procedures to have a subpoena quashed. It is only after losing a motion to quash (or not making one) that possible punishment for not testifying comes into play.
There are some very limited exceptions where failure to answer police questions might be a crime, but I don't feel confident in listing them without a lot more research than I can put into this.
You don't have the right to lie to the police, although not all lies to the police are criminal acts.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Here is the problem, since this happened just a few miles from where I live.
Ohio has one of those laws where a Mother can drop of an infant with no questions asked. However, this law does not apply, from what I understand, to kids over 1 year old, which this child was. The officer was not allowed to keep the kid.
If the officer had let her leave with the child, one she obviously did not want, and the child later turned up dead the press and others would have torn the police dept. to shreds.
Some have said "Well the officer should have called CPS and sent them to go get the kid." But if the lady did not give out any info, how would CPS find where the kid lived?
The officer was in a no win situation. He did not know she was pregnant, he tried to follow the usual procedure. When you go in to abandon your kid, you should expect to answer some questions.
posted
There are more details of the arrest scene here, if the scanned reports are indeed the police incident reports.
According to those documents, the woman kept saying "she did not want the child anymore," but refused to give her own identification information so that the status of the child (i.e., whether the decision to turn him over was properly hers) could be verified. As msquared noted, the child could not have been tracked down without such information if he had been removed again out of the police station.
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Edited to add: If it is true that a child was brought to a police station and repeatedly confirmed that he was "not wanted anymore," and that the individual was in an agitated state, I would want that child to be kept in safe custody until the details could be sorted out. I still don't think I have enough information to have a sound opinion on whether the woman should have been detained if taser force was required, but if she was struggling with the police officers after they removed the child from her (and again, it seems to me that that removal was justified and in fact required by the situation), then there might be reason for detainment there, depending on what exactly happened.
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quote:Further, once he has her subdued, I don't see how it's justifiable to tase her in the neck at that point.
She wasn't subdued at that point.
quote: So, from what I know of the facts here, her rights WERE violated because she should have been free to leave and to not answer questions.
Analyzing these incidents from a legal perspective is very technical. According to the police report, the first act that implicated constitutional rights was when Officer Wilmer grabbed her arm. This is either a "stop" or a "seizure" - most likely a stop, since the stated purpose was to see her ID.
Stops must be justified by "reasonable suspicion" that a crime is occurring or has occurred. The force used must be reasonable. Here, grabbing her arm was almost certainly reasonable force, so the question is whether reasonable suspicion existed.
Here's what we know: 1) the woman had a 1 year old child (presumably incapable of providing useful information to the police) that she did not want, and 2) the woman wanted to turn over the child so that she could stop playing games with the father.
At that point, there's reasonable suspicion of custodial interference. The officer is entitled to make a stop to investigate and see if that suspicion will ripen into probable cause. Proper investigative steps include determining her identification, determining her relationship to the child, and determining the father's identity.
There's a second reason to justify grabbing her arm, and that is that there is probable cause that the child will be endangered if she remains in the custody of a person who does not want her. Such probable cause exists not only because of the woman's statement that she didn't want the child, but also because she tried to give the child up.
This almost certainly justifies seizing the child in order to protect her and seizing the mother to facilitate that.
It's also possible, depending on state law, that leaving the child without a name (in effect permanently abandoning her) was a criminal act. Therefore, the police had probable cause to arrest her for attempting to commit that act.
If grabbing her arm was justified, then the escalation is based on her resisting. I'd have to watch the video several times to form an opinion on that.
The key thing, though, is that the police had significant justification for attempting to detain this woman.
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posted
Seems to me that the policy of detaining or arresting the mother (though I can understand the reasons) would be more dangerous for children in general. Rather than take the extra step to leave them to a "safe" place like a police station, people desperate enough to abandon their children might leave them elsewhere where they wouldn't risk arrest.
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posted
That's possible, but there's also the problem of the other parent - or if the one doing the drop off is the child's parent at all.
I agree that the child's safety is the most important thing, but I think a real harm is committed to both the child and the other parent if one parent turns the child over to CPS. Of course, this depends on the situation and whether the other parent is abusing the child - other harms being done to the child might outweigh the harm I'm speaking of here.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I know. There are a lot of reasons why the police would need to at least detain someone for questioning. If just think that it has consequences beyond the particular child. Policies to insure the best protection for a specific child in custody could non specifically harm other children who will never be in custody and thus aren't the specific concern of the police.
In my imagination, I think that people who turn to the police in a situation like this are likely to be desperate rather than evil. I wouldn't think that evil people would instinctively go to the police. Does that make sense? I would, in general, rather that desperate people felt safe going to the police for help.
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