i came across this video that was posted to social media a couple days ago this happened in college station texas and what you'll see is a you know college cops you know from my own experience at the university of central florida i can recall i can recall these like reno 9-1-1 style bicycle cops with suppressed mp5s like busting into my fraternity house when we were just trying to drink some beers i saw them arrest my best friend when we literally got home from the library we were studying literally at the library they thought he was drinking he would they wouldn't let him take a breathalyzer and he would have blown a 0.00 they arrested him and later some other cop did let him blow and with 0.00 they let him go and that played sort of a role in the career that i was inspired to take anyways those are those are college police department cops so this is i think what we're dealing with here college station texas texas a m i believe that is but take a look at this like chip style motorcycle cop like take down this bicyclist oh um [Music] right got a [ __ ] down for what no i did not do this one of the crazy things about this video is that the officer ends up tasing this guy for not obeying his commands that he's giving him when it's the officer who's apparently trying to manipulate the guy's arm in a way that it's not designed to bend it doesn't even look like the guy's actually resisting it just looks like the officer is fumbling around and doesn't know how the elbows work and then they just tased the guy well this is in my opinion excessive force i mean it's kind of ridiculous the way he dumps the motorcycle but it also really it just takes a turn towards excessive forward towards i mean it is excessive force in my opinion and i think there's a lot of case law to support that now when a taser is used that implicates a lot of case law out there on tasers and some of this is different per circuit there is there's some minor differences in the language and the case law the federal case law on tasers so i primarily work with the fourth circuit and but even the fourth circuit cases talk about some of the law and the other circuits now there's a really good fourth circuit case if you're in maryland west virginia virginia north carolina south carolina on tasers and it's from 2016. well there's a couple of them but the state of armstrong versus pinehurst fourth circuit 2016. it goes all through this stuff there's a couple other good ones such as yates versus terry aurum versus reptin but they go into the fact that they they pretty much treat tasers like very close to to firearms it has to be a serious safety threat to the police officer or to some somebody else before they really use tasers you can't just use tasers because that's one tool of apprehending somebody now looking at the some of the case law here this is from the pioneers case that i'm talking about um just just listen to this and think about you know whether whether this should have been taught at the police academy that this officer went to and and again we're not in texas this is fourth circuit but very similar uh language and it's all governed by the the supreme court case of graham versus conor you look at the three factors we've gone over that a million times but here we go we've explained that deploying a taser is a serious use of force that it's designed to inflict a painful and frightening blow for these reasons it may be only deployed when a police officer is confronted with an exigency which is an emergency that creates an immediate safety risk and it's reasonably likely to be cured by using the taser is that what we saw in the video i don't think so the subject of the seizure does not create such a risk simply because he's doing something that can be characterized as resistance so stop resisting stop resisting or he wasn't putting his arm behind his back even assuming that the elbow did bend in that way or the wrist did bend in that way but the subject does not create this big safety risk simply because he's doing something that can be characterized as resistance technically even when that resistance includes physically preventing the officer from manipulating his body i.e arm and the way that the officer wants the objective facts when viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff in the lawsuit shows that he was neither a dangerous felon see the video i just made on the fleeing felon rule so he's not a dangerous felon he's just some college kid on a bicycle it looks like no serious flight risk no immediate threat to the officer's safety or to anyone else's safety and thus that would establish that the use of a taser constituted excessive force in violation of the guy's fourth amendment rights that's from yates versus terry fourth circuit 2016. some other really really important taser case law out there that i've kept track of through the years here we go force that imposes serious consequences requiring circuit oh god this is hard one significant circumscription force that imposes serious consequences requires significant circumscription yeah try teaching that at the police academy our precedent consequently makes clear that tasers are proportional force only when deployed in response to a situation in which a reasonable officer would perceive some immediate danger that can be mitigated by using the taser it's excessive and unreasonable use of force for a police officer repeatedly to administer electric shocks with a taser on an individual who no longer is armed or who has been brought to the ground has been restrained physically by several other officers and who's no longer actively resisting arrest and that's sort of what we had here he was brought to the ground by by officer chips and then we had another officer come and so he wasn't going anywhere they had him they were just trying to get his arm behind his back so they could handcuff him but they were doing it incorrectly and then boom they just tased him but it wasn't a safety threat doesn't appear to be on the video and there's two officers there and not a fleeing felon sort of situation immediate danger is the key to the court's distinction tasing and arrestee ceased being a proportional use of force when the officer continued to use his taser after the arrestee did not pose a continuing threat to the officer's safety the court also said we've previously held the tasing suspects after they've been secured in response to minimal non-violent resistance constitutes excessive force now that's the pinehurst case that i talked about from the fourth circuit one last thing doesn't rule out the possibility that taser use could be justified in some situations where an arrestee's non-compliance could be described as non-violent such a situation would require the existence of facts from which an officer could reasonably conclude that the resistance presents some immediate danger despite its non-violent character and that's actually a 10th circuit case from 2007 casey versus city of federal heights so the key to all of these cases is there has to be some substantial safety threat not necessarily that justifies firearms or the use of deadly force clearly is excessive force that's caught in this video if this had happened in west virginia hell i'd i'd want to follow you tomorrow that that should be a good case i don't know what it was that they were after with the kid but i'm sure it's very very very minor or else we would have already heard about it and then you know so just the way they took them down the taser the fact that it's caught on video and i think it's going to get a reaction from a jury at some point that's going to be a case that they want to settle just my opinion obviously [Music] foreign