UPDATE: High school kid arrested for walking home while black

So many people here immediately jump to shitting on the police without knowing anything. I agree there are some major fucking issues with the police, but you can’t attribute those characteristics to every police officer and department. I study criminal justice and nothing besides how aggressive the officers were in detaining the man and the charges scream abuse. These officers are responding to a wellness check of a man seen stumbling in the road. He never once turns to talk to the police face to face, which most likely would have ended the situation immediately. Seeing someones facial expression and eyes can immediately put an officer at ease and confirm the person is not on drugs, which they are most likely assuming based on the callers description of events. It is literally inherent to the police to assume a crime has taken place, is taking place, or someone is in distress. Can you argue he was racially targeted, maybe. I can’t say for certain this is how the officers would have reacted if the man was white, but by not stopping to face the officers you are making yourself suspicious and it’s behaviors like that officers are trained to look for. A myriad of arguments can be made as to how they responded to the situation, but detaining him is not an issue. Maybe how they went about it is, but they had the right to detain him. The charges brought against are also perfectly legal, however quite unethical and the chief rightfully dropped the charges. There is talk about you having the right not to reveal information, and yes you do, and you are fucking stupid if you think it will get the police off your back. It is inherent to the police to simultaneously protect your civil rights while also violating them. It is one of the major controversies of policing and is something that will never go away. It is required to get policing done. Not divulging information just makes you look suspicious and even if your innocent they are going to arrest you for non compliance and get the information out of you through other official means. So for the love of god don’t take these people’s advice of invoking the fifth amendment and save yourselves the time if the police ever question you. Obviously this is for general information like name, age, etc. You aren’t incriminating yourself with that information unless they are looking for your specific age and name, so the fight amendment argument is a moot point. Obviously use it if they are accusing of a specific crime.

TLDR: the officers were right to detain him, how they went about detaining him can be argued. The charges were legal but ethically bullshit and rightfully dropped. Giving your name and age is okay,

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