[Music] all right looks like i was busy smoking my cigar not adding myself to the stream here thanks for joining me i'm john bryan thecivilrightslawyer.com for those of you who haven't watched any of my videos before i'm a civil rights lawyer in west virginia and i do all sorts of stuff um you know you know i i started off really doing a lot of lawsuits against police officers excessive force unreasonable search and seizure things of that nature i branched off into politics uh suing our governor all sorts of different things anyways i really enjoy making videos about this sort of stuff and about the constitution um last my last video got deemed important enough by youtube to absolutely nuke it while it was still going live so you have to ask yourself if big tech if our big tech overlords don't want you to hear what i have to say do you want to hear it that's a rhetorical question of course now saturday what and really what i'm going to get in here to and people have asked me about this is this virginia police video that's been all over social media so i'm going to get to that i'll give my analysis on that and i think i have some good analysis on that but before that and more importantly the the most important thing i need to get to is while it's still fresh in my mind this wonderful presentation that i saw in the constitution from this saturday and i i'm not going to do it word for word but i i got to at the independent party convention that i was honored to be a speaker out on saturday i got to watch a presentation from a princeton law professor named robert p george very very well known constitutional scholar and he gave this really wonderful fantastic speech about the constitution but more importantly the way it's designed and people misunderstand the constitution it's so fantastic because it was designed by our founders to protect liberty and to preserve well how did i frame that to protect liberty but also no to preserve liberty but also to protect against tyranny or vice versa i don't know it was it was freaking something like that but it has to do with the way it was structured and why it was structured that way so i'm gonna go over that while it's still fresh in my head because absolutely every man woman and child in america ought to know that and they should have been taught that from their public school teachers much less their college professors and their law professors and and i've never quite heard it stated this way before and so i wanted to well it was still fresh in my mind go over that and he when you hear it explained in that way it all sort of comes together and and it you also understand why we're in such a precarious position right now with everything that's going on and then i'll get to that that police video and we can hash through that and get into the weeds on what happened and what didn't happen what my opinion is on this encounter that happened with the police over in virginia and i believe that if you're on youtube anyways i'd link to the the long version of that video which i have available to to go over and we'll look at that um i want to begin with a quote here from thomas paine from a common from common sense 1776. freedom hath hunted around the globe asia and africa have long expelled her europe regards her like a stranger and england hath given her warning to depart oh receive the fugitive and prepare in time and asylum for mankind thomas payne 1776. now i really again really enjoyed mr uh professor or dr george's uh talk from saturday and i got the chance to ask him about that which shall not be named on youtube apparently and you know i was a i was a little bit disappointed that he didn't have something more specific to say in response to that and i'll get to that in a different video but just man just on the constitution in particular what a fantastic professor to have and i typed as fast as my arthritic fingers could type to sort of get down all the things he had to say and i don't know if he'd actually given this speech before somewhere so so uh you know i'll get into some of you know this is basically what he had to say and he's you know explaining this to to people at a political party convention but he's describing how we got our constitution and why it's so important so that they would know when they're formulating their policies for their their platforms that they'd you know they could make the most of of his time with him so in the beginning you know against all odds we were up against the greatest military on earth and despite that our founding fathers the american revolutionaries prevailed they faced at that time the greatest question what type of government now that we've won shall we establish will it be a monarchy and after all up until that time monarchies had a good record you know england most powerful successful country in the world at that point had a monarchy they had had good kings who ruled in the interest of all the people and they had had bad kings who ruled in the in their own self-interest or in the interest of some small faction or their clan or their group of people which is the problem with monarchies and aristotle had also mentioned much earlier obviously that a good ruler is one who ruled in the interest of all the people and for the common good not just one section of people or in their own self-interest so why choose a republic rather than a parliamentary monarchy you know at that time and still today except for us the history of republics was a history of failures going all the way back to the ancient period you had these city-states which had established republics and they always began with good hopes and these hopes were always dashed so the historical track record for republics we're not good um dr george mentioned that if if you look at the federalist papers that james madison wrote federalist number 10 he reflected in there on why republics had always failed and he identified the problem with what he termed different factions who were all these different little groups operating in their own self-interest rather than making decisions for the common good and when we're when uh republics fail here's the big problem and this would have been the big danger to our founding fathers is that when republics fail history had shown them that they fail epically they don't just you know waddle off into the sunset with declining statistics but rather they turn into really awful tyrannical dictatorships that's what history had shown whereas with a monarchy arguably it could be more stable there were you know over hundreds and hundreds of years there were some good kings some good monarchies in england and then you know there were some bad ones but arguably they were fewer so there it wasn't an obvious choice and i think that is something that that really a lot of people miss and at the same time after following the american revolution we had a great choice the founders had a great choice in a potential first monarchy in america and that was george washington you know they had stumbled upon somebody here who was really the perfect man for the job so the revolution itself was wasn't really about rebelling against monarchy itself it was against tyranny and that was because king george iii had developed into this tyrant it wasn't just the fact that he was a king and the way the parliament was set up with the house of lords and all that it was about king george iii being a tyrant and the the manner in which he was ruling so it may have been possible that we start off our monarchy here in america with a good tyrant with with the george washington somebody who had proven several times that he did not even want power that he did not want to be a king and the other thing they knew that they wanted to avoid was any so-called democracy our founding fathers did not view quote democracy as a good thing democracy really was a bad thing that was equated by our founding fathers as really mob rule and that was something to be avoided and hence that is why they went with the republic is because you have elements of a pure democracy but it's measured there are safeguards in place all right so republic is a self-government the people participate in their government through their representatives at least that's how it used to work both on a federal level and a state level and we'll get to that you know the the the current problems that we're having but that's the whole idea even though there was no good track record is that the people had their their representatives and they spoke through their representatives so it wasn't this direct mob rule which was to be avoided nor was it a monarchy where you could have somebody become a tyrant if you look a little four more forward in history when you get to abraham lincoln you know he at the gattersberg gettysburg address quoted the declaration of independence and he said that with god's help this nation will undergo a rebirth of freedom and government for the people by the people and of the people and it shall not perish from the earth maybe i'm paraphrasing a little bit but those are important you know do we have a government for the people yeah arguably every government is for the people is it not do we have a government of the people and do we have a government by the people and that is where the difference is that's where the difference is because even an authoritarian government is a government for the people now um what's distinctive about a republican form of government is that there's no doubt that that is a government by the people not just for the people but a government by the people so our founders engaged in an experiment an experimental new type of government that wasn't happening anywhere else and only in history had had been tried but failed and experiments by definition can fail in the past they failed and collapsed into tyranny so even abraham lincoln recognized in the civil war that it wasn't just about the united states that it was about freedom in general he recognized that if the united states fails it wasn't just this attempt that a republic failed it's that there would never be another one it was not just about preserving the united states but it was about preserving freedom because it would never be tried again after the united states tried it and got that far lincoln knew that it wasn't only a republican at risk but that freedom in general the idea of this sort of a government it would not be tried he tried again at least in the foreseeable foreseeable future dr george also made the point that you know the tyrannical regimes that do exist around the world right now like to co-op the terms of democracy and republic and use those for their own benefit to try to trick their own subjects into believing that they live in a place where they have liberty and they're not tyrants for instance the people's republic of china and it's not it's not a republic um other examples now see how did we get to the constitution so the first thing that we tried was the articles of confederation and you probably did hear about the articles of confederation in your in your high school textbooks and whatnot the problem with the the problem with the articles of confederation is that they were too weak they were not adequate to the needs of our new nation the constitution addressed those weaknesses the constitution if you read the federalist papers it was proposed to address and prevent tyranny and this was interesting dr george mentioned this so he teaches the the you know the brightest young students at princeton and one of the first things he asked him in his constitutional interpretation class he said was all right all right [Music] now how is the constitution of the united states designed to protect liberty and prevent tyranny he asked his class this question and naturally the answers go something like this well we have the bill of rights which has all of these enumerated rights in them the freedom of speech freedom of religion the right to keep and bear arms and and so on and therefore you have these rights preserved which prevent tyranny and they preserve liberty that's their answer and a lot of people a lot of bright people would give that answer but that answer is wrong that answer is wrong it's not the bill of rights that prevents tyranny that protects liberty it's the actual way that the constitution is designed now yes there is a bill of rights with all these amendments that were added to it shortly after ratification and yeah it's true that we do have a supreme court that will interpret those bill of rights to protect citizens individual liberties and of course that's that's something that we use every day now but at the time that's not actually the protection that was built into the constitution that's not the way our founders designed it in fact the supreme court was set up in article 3 of the constitution but it wasn't set up for that purpose so in fact it wasn't until marbury versus madison the famous supreme court case in 1803 that the court itself developed this concept of judicial review where they could declare things to be unconstitutional that's not something that was built in to the constitution itself so what is the right answer what is it about the way our founders wrote the constitution argued about it and eventually agreed on it that protects liberty and prevents tyranny well the answer is is that the way it was structured is still structured limits governmental power it inherently limits governmental power particularly at the national level so other other governments at the time were all central all centrally uh they're all central governments so there was no concept of you all right you have different states you know 13 different states or even 15 50 different states that all have their separate concept of sovereignty and then they all kind of coalesce together and so you have a federal government and then you have these state governments that's not something that existed that's not something that was tried and the whole concept of it was meant to protect us and to prevent it from developing into tyranny so government was limited at the national level and it was also divided between the state level and the federal level so the way it works the way it's set up and it's very simple the federal government may legitimately exercise only those powers that the constitution delegates to the federal government even if it would be a really easy or efficient or great thing for the federal government to exercise more power than that it may not do it not according to our constitution the federal government does not have that power and again that's a dramatic difference from the powers of the day in either england or france those were central government powers where the plenary authority in any of those countries was centralized for instance for here it would be in dc and we're sort of we've sort of gotten to that but our government our constitution was designed in exactly the opposite way power was distributed at different levels and then it was separated with limitations placed on the different branches so the founders said no we don't want the government that's furthest from the people to have this plenary power it does need to have powers but those need to be limited and the states by contrast will be the governments of general jurisdiction that will have the plenary power the police powers and the powers that are not delegated not given to the federal government so in europe that again that wasn't a thing you didn't have these state governments they might exist but they're derivative of their central governments they didn't have any sort of sovereignty the u.s constitution was exactly the opposite and for a reason now even with the national government within the national government it also has limitations so it's divided into the three different branches of executive branch legislative branch and judicial branch article one delegates all legislative authority to congress article two invest all executive power and the president of the united states and then you have the judicial branch now the judicial branch itself divides the power between the executive and the legislative to decide who the judges are so the president the executive branch gets to appoint the judge but the senate a component of the legislative branch has to confirm it so while the judiciary could be very powerful and there were some arguments about how powerful the judiciary would be the power to create those judges was divided between the other two branches so really was an ingenious way of not just dividing power but you know why are they dividing power because you get the you get power in the hands of a small group of people or one component of the government or one person then power corrupts and tyranny is what you get and there's a pile of quotes from our founding fathers to that effect so the key to defending liberty and preventing tyranny is avoiding any any sort of unchecked power so whether or not one believes that the constitution says that this or implies that the supreme court has the final say on all constitutional questions and can bind or restrain the other branches of government and that's the way that we've turned out here it's clear that the main work of the constitution is to preserve liberty and to protect against tyranny just in the the way that it's inherently structured dividing and limiting and separating power and scalia for instance and it's not just the words it's not just the words because scalia for instance used to talk about how the constitution of the soviet union is absolutely wonderful on paper it sounds great but the words are meaningless the words don't do anything and our founders knew that they could write whatever they wanted but words themselves really mean nothing so the way that you protect liberty the way you protect liberty is by not allowing anybody to get too much power so it was all an experiment and the experiment has survived a long time it's had its ups and downs but it's still there but what's taught and what's really believed is that the only check on government power is the supreme court is the judiciary via the bill of rights and we forget the actual truth that what really protects us is the way that our constitution is set up that the federal government is only allowed to have these certain powers and that the states are the authorities of general jurisdiction there are the plenary powers the the states are sovereign and that allows the federal government from gaining too much power and then the states you know retain control over everything else and then the states obviously have to interact with each other and then that's where the federal government comes back in and the supreme court so it's all just this really loose connection of these different power bases that if done correctly they're all pulling against each other at all times not just side to side but up and down and if everything's working properly it may not be efficient but it does what it protects the people protects their liberty and it prevents any tyrant from coming to power or any small group of tyrants from coming to power because presidents have tried to grab power presidents of both parties have tried to overstep their authority through the years and they've been successful at it and the courts have done the same thing so you've had presidents increasing the strength of the executive branch and look where we're at today you've had the courts legislating from the bench increasing their power look where we're at today and who's not who's who is where is this power come from who has lost power that's the legislative branch congress has lost power not because it didn't want to congress has been knee-deep in giving away their power every chance every opportunity but that's not right because the constitution does not allow for the legislative branch to give its power away and this has been happening not just on the federal level but the state level now immigration for an example congress the legislative branch doesn't want to deal with immigration presidents have issued executive orders and that's happening now trying to create legislation to deal with immigration issues and congress has allowed it now um dr george did use an example of obama now obama originally said that you know i can't create legislation on the immigration issue through executive order it has to be done through congress then what did he do two years later or so he turned around and he issued an executive order on immigration that should have come from congress and it was allowed to have happened then you had trump issuing executive orders that should have gone through congress and now you have joe biden you know putting them all to shame issuing more executive orders than any president ever has in reality who who's who's got shafted here because in a republic we the people are not directly exercising our mob rule we're not directly a democracy we're a republic we get to pick our representatives and then they're the voice of us the people so we are losing our voice and we've handed over our government largely to the executive branch where you have nameless bureaucrats in the bowels of the giant bureaucracy in washington dc who you don't know their name you've never voted for them they're the ones creating all these rules for example our congress critters here in in west virginia such as uh you know alex mooney was the example given alex mooney or even joe manchin in the senate or capitol in the senate or carol miller my congress congressperson do they have any idea all these different rules that were required to comply with as small businesses or even large businesses day in and day out say all these these uh these tax rules you know all of this stuff do they have any i did they have a part in that can we blame them for all of those rules they had nothing to do with it is the fact because it's it's all been done within these huge agencies in the executive branch so we've been completely unrepresented and all of these rules that are affecting our daily lives and our businesses we've completely lost our voice because they've gone around the design of our constitution and they've given so much of the legislative power to the executive branch and now that's where we're at for instance in the area of gun rights and we're dealing with the atf or as biden would call it the atv with aft who's deciding you know what what uh accessories we can and cannot add to firearms for instance creating as the as the sixth circuit said the other day was legislation you know they're they're creating legislation from the the executive branch and it's applying in the same way to us and it's it's you know congress hasn't voted on any of these things so both republicans and democrats have refused to face these issues they've abdicated their power and they're content to leave it that way so what are the two sides now you know conservatives have to conserve something they have to conserve something to be conservatives so are they conserving the founding principles liberals where do they get their name what does the word the classical word liberal even mean what does it stand for liberty civil liberty freedom of speech all those things are under assault look at cancel culture people being punished by what is constitutionally protected speech we all should be embracing we liberties we all should be liberal in the classical meaning of the word we all should be protecting the weak among us that's what equal protection is all about so we the people we peasants we're squabbling between ourselves as to you know whether we're conservative or liberal and the government's been laughing all the way to the bank because both the republicans and the democrats and the so-called conservatives and the so-called liberals in the federal government and in every state have have warped the original design of our founding fathers so we just have this giant behemoth of an executive branch on every level that governs our lives and it was the design of our constitution that really identifies who we are as a nation and this is was something i thought was fantastic that dr george uh said is that why you know what is the concept of american exceptionalism why why is it okay in a wonderful thing to be proud to be an american why is it a good thing you know the concept of american exceptionalism well every other country in the world up until that date and really still today what what defined them so you know china or or ireland or england or france all of these countries how are they originally defined they were defined by borders or or soil or blood it was where you were born so there's been a lot of misunderstandings it's american exceptionalism is not about that well americans are better it's not about that it it means that we as a nation we understand that it's not just about geography or soil or blood we're not united around those things but we're a group of different people from soil across the world with blood from across the world ethnicities from across the world who have all come together based upon not soil or blood but about upon ideas lots of different religions we're united on a a set of beliefs essentially and these are the principles that were espoused in the declaration of independence and that can't be disassociated with the constitution and call it the american dream or whatever you want but it's the fact that people are willing to take their stuff and up and leave wherever they were from and come to america where anybody from anywhere could work hard embrace the the principles that are found in our declaration our constitution bear the burdens come here lawfully embrace our principles and work hard that anybody anybody can be successful here can can thrive and it's not that same way elsewhere you have a larger task in front of you if you want to become japanese for instance whereas to become an american all you have to do is sign on to the creed that binds us is americans and generations of americans have done that from the time of the mayflower from to waves of immigrants that came from germany ireland india china and really all over the world so many people you know they came here could barely speak english but they they believed in the idea or they used to and now you have people like ilhan omar who hates these ideas and came here for you know who knows why but the whole idea of us being a melting pot it was all embracing this idea of work hard and you can you you can achieve the american dream and the the idea that um you know we wanted to preserve liberty and prevent tyranny and regardless of whether they were here from the beginning like i said the mayflower or in the 20th century these generations of immigrants bled and fought hard to preserve it and now we're worried about packing the supreme court we're worried about is the supreme court going to protect our rights and prevent tyranny going forward in the future and here's the whole point is what everybody has ignored and what the schools have failed to teach is that it's not just the supreme court they have their function but it's respecting the principles of separation of powers in a federalism that are inherent in the structure of our constitution that is what really protects us and that's what we're letting slip through our fingers the you know the principle of the doctrine of separation of powers that the legislative branch creates laws that the executive branch enforces it that's been completely completely thrown out the window we're allowing the executive branch to gain this overwhelming amount of power and then what are we doing we're doing exactly what our founding fathers didn't want to happen we're allowing too much power to be held by just one branch and particularly a branch that's run by just one man therefore we have if you have a tyrant as president and we've we've we've given half of the legislative power to the executive branch you'll you allow that tyrant to then overwhelm the legislative branch it was supposed to be our our voice that's not the design of our founding fathers they're supposed to be pulling on each other at all times and maintaining this loose and and inefficient um you know freedom that is the only way to preserve our freedom not giving it all to the executive branch nor to the judicial branch we've given them so much power but it's also in the principles of federalism the idea that you have all these different states that have their own general plenary power and that the federal government can't just do whatever whatever it wants to the states it has specific enumerated powers which it can do but it can't just do anything and some a lot of that has been watered down you know with the the the was it the 17th amendment and uh and and other things but we've gotten away from that and we need to get back to that the principles of federalism where states where states have have have have their place is designed to protect us and look what's happened we focus just on the supreme court and we've allowed the federal government to just grow and grow and grow and grow and we've been doing it in our states which are you know their own many republics so many generations of americans bought onto to these ideas and wanted to be a part of it for a reason and it is exceptional it's not a myth and we shouldn't give it up again we're not united by blood or soil or ethnicity or anything like that but we're united because we're a government of the people not just for the people but also by the people and as abraham lincoln said we shouldn't let it perish from the earth so that is the the basic talk that that dr george gave on sunday and and i thought it was just just fantastic because we tend to focus on the supreme court you know the the government's growing and growing and enlarging it's it's power and all we can do is just depend on the judiciary and appoint judges who are constitutionalists and all this that the other thing but in the end you know they're they're creating things that weren't even written anywhere such as the the right to privacy and the right to have an abortion when you can have one and when you can't and we're we're not even obeying the central tenets of of our form of government which is this the constitution that has separation of powers and the principles of federalism up and down side to side those are our protections and those are what we're ignoring and we're allowed we're allowing to just go completely in the trash can see i'm looking at some of the some of the uh comments here on thoth yeah the investors and corporations are buying up all the land that's the other thing and i missed that part of the speech uh the corporations i mean really now we're creating a a another branch of like a fourth branch of government and that's the corporations because the you know the the courts have said that well you know they you have no civil rights as against corporations just as against the government so what happens when the government's acting through corporations like google or apple and you can't sue them for violating your civil rights so you're out of luck and so that's just you know that's another thing we need to get back to the principles of federalism and the principles of separation of powers the 14th amendment is where constitutional destruction began roger we must be willing to fight for the rights of those that we do not necessarily agree with absolutely toby henderson listen if this place is all lost and why are we all here let's make our own destiny well you know hopefully hopefully we can still we can still correct things at the ballot box but you know it's pretty scary that you know this congress now and this president is trying to permanently memorialize or enshrine the voting changes that took place during 2020 allegedly because it was just too dangerous for everybody to go in person to vote now they're trying to make it normal where where people can just vote by mail or or you know one group can go collect everybody's votes and all deliver them because the classic problem in politics was is that you know yeah you have x number of people but they don't all necessarily show up at the polls well that's a game changer for these these organizations that have the manpower and the the grassroots power the the people on the troops on the ground to just go literally collect votes from people without having to bust them there or even physically get them there so i mean it could be a lot of fraud in there or could just be could just be a lot of a lot of just grassroots collecting of people's votes that you know of people who never would actually show up in person yeah you have to be asleep to believe in the american dream today um chris i appreciate that yes hit hit like if you if you hit like if you like the constitution how about that i mean it this is a message for for both sides for the people of both sides it's the government that has been stealing our power and that will continue to steal our power of both the republicans and the democrats and that's probably why this this speech was being given to the independent party tabi's daddy statism is a religion absolutely both sides are owned by special interests and corporations bill gates well lost their bill gates bought a bunch of farmland each individual has the potential to be my savior because it's just you and i this is how the world really works kurt ray talk about god and watch them run that was a i really enjoyed the the all of the the presentations on saturday and there there was i mean there was a lot about that and i think jenna ellis's presentation went a lot into that and you know i think there's a there's there's a effective argument to be made and i think it has to be made that you can't uncouple the declaration of independence from the constitution and you know god is mentioned in the declaration of independence and god did you know religion and morality did play a part in the the foundation of our country and if you completely take that out whether your religious or not you know this judeo-christian set of of of basic morality if you take that out and nothing is evil nothing is good then it it's very difficult if not impossible to to really have a a republic such as we have so i think the it's it's a aggressive atheism that's being forced onto our government you know by the supreme court really that's not in our constitution such as you know separation of church and state that that's not something that was in the constitution that came from the supreme court um that is that really wasn't a part of it it was supposed to be you know based on a religious people a religious foundation again that sort of i mean sort of it's not really relevant to the the main problem which is is that whether you're religious or not or whether you're an atheist it's hard to argue with the fact that we've forgotten the principles of federalism and the principles of or in the doctrine of separation of powers and those are our true protections do we really want to depend on who the supreme court justices are and whether they can be packed by a president as to protecting ourselves against tyrants no we really don't the the best plan was put in place by our founders you know who said i think it was benjamin franklin who said well now you have your republic if you can keep it and we've we're really doing a crappy job of keeping it because we're worth we're really not following the rules that they gave us all right so i mean that that that's pretty that's pretty much the the basic ideas that i i wanted to wanted to rant about on the constitution and it's that let's stop focusing on the supreme court so much and let's look at whether we're following federalism and you know the the concepts of separation well they're not concepts separation of powers and we're not or not at all now let me go to this this other issue that we have here and that's this this video that's been making its its rounds that i heard about beginning first thing this morning that everybody's seen apparently from virginia about these two cops in virginia that pulled over this guy he was a black guy in a army uniform i believe he was a lieutenant some sort of officer wearing his uniform and he was pulled over on a traffic violation apparently took too long to pull over according to the cops and everybody had cameras he had a he had a camera in his car and there were body cams and maybe there were more cameras so apparently there's there's been a lot of debate on this and this since this happened in virginia this is within the fourth circuit which is the circuit that i'm in so i've looked at a lot of of law on this so i i do have some opinions on this so so let's get into this issue all right so here's the video hopefully this works all right all right this is the longer version that i found vehicle off put your hands onto what so that's kind of where it starts driver roll the window down felony traffic stop put your hands out the window put your hands out the window turn the vehicle off put your hands out the window i can't tell put your hands out the window i turn the vehicle off put your hands out the window he's not complying okay so you heard him say felony traffic stop so here's what i understand happened this guy was driving a new car that he had just bought and it had temporary tags like one of these paper tags and so that's why they were going to initiate a traffic stop i got this cigar thing on me all right he had temporary tags that's why they initiated the traffic stop so a minor traffic violation but apparently the guy doesn't doesn't just pull over right there he goes like a mile and a half supposedly and he i think wants to pull over somewhere that he thinks is safe with other people around because he's expecting there to be trouble so in in going the distance that he did this is the sort of stop that resulted is you have there was two cops involved they jump out pull out their firearms and you heard him radio in that he was going to do a felony traffic stop and they're going to order him out of the car but as you start to see he has a camera inside his car so there's a lot of video information that you have here um i'm trying to pay attention to comments as well does virginia have now i'm not a virginia lawyer hang on does virginia have you know something where you can call police and announce that you tend to drive somewhere safe i don't know i mean certainly if you have a cell phone you could presumably anywhere call 9-1-1 and saying let's say look there's there's a police car behind me they're pulling me over but i want to drive to you know an area that i believe is sufficiently safe or sufficiently lighted i mean one can do that i don't know if he did that here the as far as how far he drove and some of the arguing that i saw on the internet i saw somebody made a map so i'll go ahead and put that up well let me get rid of the comment first so here's how far he drove and i think a cop put this together trying to argue that everything was hunky-dory so about a mile and a half from point to point and this particular cop had mentioned all right he could have stopped here he could have stopped there he could have stopped there he could have stopped there he could have stopped there and he didn't stop there eventually stops at this gas station but hey you do have to admit that where he stopped appears to have great lighting has that going for it i'll go back to this put your hands out the window so you can kind of see the license plate there i guess that's a paper plate it does look like a brand new car i think this is the younger cop on the left you're seeing his body cam right here put your hands out the window what's a felony trafficking he's not comply that's a good question here so there he is how many occupants are in the vehicle what's going on how many occupants are in your vehicles and get out i don't know i don't know that he's happy they stopped him and i don't know that he was looking for them to stop him because he had just bought this car and was headed to get gas i understand it what's going on [Applause] i have not committed any crimes so did you hear that man i don't like the cigar so he said get out of the car and he said i'm honestly afraid to and then the older bald cop and some mighty fine police work says yeah you should be i think it was him you said that yeah you should be all right well i doubt that that was a good idea so why should be why should he be afraid to get out of the car so if he's afraid to get out of the car and he's told you should be well arguably that should make him further you know additionally afraid so so uh let's keep going here at this point right now i'm all right let me back it up real quick they say get out of the car he doesn't get out of the car he's got his seat belts on he's put he's put both hands out the window does he touch he grabs his hand now what does he hope to accomplish with that because clearly the guy's got his seat belt on and the door is closed what's he going to accomplish with grabbing his hand so he can see where both hands are the guy doesn't appear to be doing anything that constitutes an immediate threat to anybody's safety he's just not getting out of the car but he does have a seat belt on and um he's he's at least showing his hands so he grabs with his left hand he grabs a guy's left arm and tells him to get out of carpet how's he supposed to do that get your hands off me get your hands off me please get your hands down all right not a problem he said he's pulling something out uh all right theory sprays [Applause] i'm trying to breathe [Applause] seat belt and got completely ventilated please they actually pepper sprayed his dog as well now clearly well i wouldn't say clearly looking from i don't know if this was just a new vehicle that had had a dash cam in it and that's awesome if there's new vehicles that have that capability or if he had put one in it but it you know it i think there's a an argument to be made that he he at least was open to the possibility that he might have an encounter like this now what that means i don't know do i think he was riding around looking for something like this to happen i don't see any indication of that other than the fact that he did have some sort of of camera which is which is completely completely fine and the fact that he didn't just completely do what they say get out of the car um you know he he tried to try to invoke you know what he believed to be his rights let me continue here um straight onto the ground all right can you please talk to me about what's going on he can't see clearly he's got his hands up or where they can see him he's obviously not a threat to anybody he's not threatening them he's not engaging in any sort of violence the best they could say he's doing is sort of passively resisting and that he's not getting on the ground supposedly and so they're going to forcibly take him to the ground i think that's an important fact here let's look back at one thing i i might i think might also be important let's look at the time at the the time that he was sprayed so he'd already been sprayed here all right he'd already been sprayed all right that's when he got sprayed out the window watch it [Music] [Applause] all right i think that's the important part we don't have to watch much more of that but i think that's the important part here so let me ask you just based on based on what you've seen there i mean what do you all think and what you're obviously people are pretty outraged about this but one thing that i thought was interesting is that i've seen a lot of cops defending this and describing that the you know this is an overreaction that this is you know an example of of police leadership not defending their officers and that police work is like making sausage that you know it doesn't look pretty necessarily but but that's how the job is and you could be you know murdered at any moment as a police officer and and you know they're complying with the training this that and the other so there's been a lot of back and forth on the on the interwebs that i've seen about this case so i i have my own opinion here but i was just wondering what i mean what do you all who seem to be very well informed what do you think about what you've seen so far bob everyone's wrong in this incident um wwe drama he had a gun that's not explained i didn't hear that he had a gun on him but at any in any event they they didn't um i don't think there's any indication to these officers if he did have a gun that that they were aware of that all right justify the violence because the color of his skin you think the cop saw his skin color through the dark tinted window now you know this is as i've explained many times this isn't you know there are skin color related incidents but i don't this doesn't have to be based on skin believe me it happens to people of every color in every ethnicity and in west virginia people are primarily white it happens to the white people all the time this is more of a policing you know government versus citizen that happens every day across this country it's not just police officers and their personalities it's about the government you know there's always going to be good people bad people and everything in between and every line of work but you have to always keep in mind that you're not just dealing with an individual police officer and whatever prejudices he has or doesn't have you're dealing with an agent of the government and it doesn't necessarily matter you're dealing with a government versus a citizen if they're unwilling to treat a military person like this just think of how they would treat the rest of us i don't think it mattered to them that that he was in the military one way or the other that's how they're gonna th this is how they're treating anybody who doesn't in their mind respect their authority dunphy the gun was in his center console that's why he didn't want to undo his seatbelt i actually had a case one time where i represented a retired west virginia state trooper who had a similar similar incident but he was sitting in traffic at a fourth of july parade and he's get he's told to do something and he doesn't do it quickly enough and then officer says something to him he says something back next thing you know he's gonna have to respect this guy's authority he's told to pull over and get out of his car he didn't do anything wrong and again he was a retired state trooper he knew his rights and so he said you know no and uh same sort of thing the guy the cop reaches his hand and his door tries to open the door and part of the thing going on was is he did have a concealed weapon pistol down in his door and as the cop pulls the door open the pistol falls out onto the floor and then all hell broke loose because you know when when cops see a gun all of a sudden it's it's you know you better get behind some cover and they end up pulling this guy out and using force on them and you can imagine how that went we filed a federal lawsuit eventually settled it but funny one of the one of the defenses one of their defenses were that well we couldn't have committed excessive force on the man because he had a gun and where we see a gun you know excessive or uh deadly forces justified and i said no no no no no even if assuming arguing though that deadly force was justified at the exact time that you saw a gun that was you know theoretically within his reach it wasn't justified like a minute and a half later after you would pull them out of his truck and are now beating the hell out of him and the gun's not even in the picture and the court the federal court agreed and said that no those are two different incidents even if you even if you could have shot him dead when he had a gun in his hand when he's pulled out of his truck and now you're beating on him that no longer would justify even if it did at one time the level of force that you're using so force is always judged by the moment in which it's used so if you have if you have a change in the facts if there was a gun but there's no longer a gun then that doesn't justify it so if there was a gun in the console that maybe explains why he didn't want to reach down for the seat belt i don't know if the officers didn't see it it's most likely not coming into evidence at all i don't know i've ever watched any further down the video i guess they're just getting out cleaning up his eyes and all that so for instance i saw that there's another video by a popular i don't know if he's a former cop youtuber and maybe we could understand better understand that point of view before i really give mine on what i think is important here what the law is let's take a look at his all right there we go i think officer tatum what's going on ladies and gentlemen gentlemen and ladies this is somewhat of a an impromptu live stream um because i want to explain this incident that occurred between a lieutenant in the united states military um i think his rank is second lieutenant and two uh police officers who are working in patrol and that interaction i want to explain it with body worn camera footage and we're going to go over everything that you need to know about this case um so you can be informed first first and foremost um i don't mean to be a dead horse but i was right um this gentleman who was an active duty military personnel obviously a second lieutenant in the military he's a leader in the military his rank is higher than these police officers are ranked when you look at a lieutenant versus a patrol officer and he in my personal opinion uh knew better than what he was doing and his actions led to uh the police interaction that he had and it resulted in him not losing his life which is a positive thing out here saying that the police officers are wrong but b tatum is fixing to get you set up the right way and we're going to talk about it so before we get into that video i want to preface um this video with an occurrence and an example of why police officers all right now what was he gonna do here i know he's gonna do because i saw this video and what he's going to do is part of the problem here i think because if you look at the law enforcement training what they do to these guys is they're showing they show them these awful videos of cops getting shot to death and murdered and they pounded into their head look this can happen to you at any second at any traffic stop like you could be killed any second and not go home to your wife and kids so they scare the hell out of him now that's what he's about to do to everyone watching is i'm not going to watch it i'm not going to replay it but he's showing one of these awful videos of these guys being killed i presume and what what does it have to do with this case nothing he's making the point that look you have to understand that this this is the risk that we take in this job and we don't know if this guy's about to murder us but you know what that you can't justify or not justify the video we just watched based on watching some other video that was recorded years earlier it might be important for context and i understand it but you can't justify it okay and those those you know the that i mean those are videos that really people should watch before they decide whether or not they want to become a police officer and take the risk of being an agent of the government where you pull over people in the hopes that you catch somebody who has a murder warrant on them i mean that that's the job that you signed up for that does nothing to justify you being at a you know paranoid level 9.7 ready to completely you know shoot to death any innocent person just because you're super jumpy so that's what that's what he's going to say so let me go ahead and fast forward because i don't really i mean i don't want to see that video or whatever videos he shows i want to hear what his his analysis is that in your mind as we watch this next video this is the video everybody's crying about when it comes when it comes to this lieutenant all right so he shows it shows what happened here things are going to be escalated keep watching get out of the car you can't i can't understand keep rolling keep rolling because he's going to say some more important stuff as i was telling him you know you know i've never told over two areas before and i mean look i've never looked out the window so i'm gonna leave guns blazing immediately a mile and a half i want anybody i want anybody for y'all for this let me get off of this life so that that's what really looks like to me so far really the only the only defenses to this thing is is that look being a police officer is a dangerous job you could be killed at any time and yeah this guy was being initially pulled over for some sort of minor traffic violation but he didn't pull over right away he went a mile and a half and according to this guy he did so because he wanted to pull into a a lighted place that he felt was safe but he didn't he went a mile and a half i don't believe there was any allegation that he was speeding to get there or leading them on any sort of chase he was just hadn't pulled over until he got to the spot a mile and a half later so is that enough to justify what happened bruh bruh a well-lit area i get that but when we follow you that long all right what other arguments does he have here against everybody the military's the military's only place where double jeopardy exists legally because whenever we do them all right that guy apparently got fired like the real life version of you know the simpsons cop character and that was some already fine police work he ends up getting fired after this from my understanding the younger guy is still on the force i guess you could say but is in some hot water as i understand it by and large they were 100 right for what they did let me see if i can do this a different way because i cannot pull up the super chats on this forum but i'll try to do my best to do it in a second here so while i'm at it ask your questions super chat them if you like let me go through let me go through and find out if i can get this all right well what's the black beans another black man is being targeted by the police they're gonna hold on it's true it shouldn't have it shouldn't based on anything i've seen have anything to do with race and that's that's the big problem here i've been shouting at for a long time is that the the whole systematic racism stuff i mean that's just a red herring that's doing more more damage than good the the fact is is that this this sort of stuff is has to do with a lack of accountability and the the way you know police officers are trained to think that you know any innocent citizen that they choose to pull over for a traffic violation could murder them at any second and you know how how do fedex guys or ups ups guys go through their lives not just without shooting the dogs of homeowners but also with with not getting murdered any day and every day i mean they act like they're the only ones that have to encounter members of the public you know what anybody could be shot to death under the same theory at any point in any day hell especially lawyers you know there was a time i literally was trying to get a bulletproof vest not vest a bulletproof desk you know anybody can be killed by homicidal maniacs at any time that does not apply to the facts of this particular stop that either justify or not justify what happened so i want to hear the facts other than he took a mile and a half to stop any other facts god hit me and i actually actually like this guy man i like uh a lot of things he has to say i think he and i think but i think that the reason i think he's in the lawsuit is because his money involved well of course you know of course there's money involved you know why there's money involved because it's the citizens versus the government all right as a citizen as a citizen what what recourse do i have against my government if they violate my civil rights i can't get i can't fire that officer i can't put him in prison can't put him in jail i can't put him in a holding cell even and i can't go challenge him to a a viking duel the only remedy available to me is to sue him for money damages and that's because congress passed this statute called 42 usc 1983 that says whenever a government officer official or agent violates citizens civil rights then you have a lawsuit for money damages that is the only remedy available to us so yeah it's about money people are telling him sue you're going to get some money soon you get some money it ain't right or wrong sue you're gonna get some money that's what that's what it's all about well you only get money if you were right or they think that you can prove that you're right to a jury in the end and that is not easy to do believe me if you could just get money for any time you got pissed off with the police i would have retired already it's not easy it's very difficult to get money in my personal opinion i don't know that guy but that's what i see sean thank you so much for the super [ __ ] i bought tickets to see you at clemson last week but wasn't all right give me give me some better argument i would have a conversation with those officers the people in the military should have a conversation with this second lieutenant because what he did was was absolutely abhorrent that's besides the point you know what whether he should have acted differently he's not the government okay he's not the government now we hold government agents government officials to assert certain set of rules that they have to follow whether or not whether or not he was a sympathetic victim cannot justify them bending the rules they have to show what he did to justify their actions and that's what i want to hear about and no person in uniform should act this way especially exactly what their laws are and i don't know what the uh you know you know i can't think of the name of the thing but there's a there's a a time period in which you have to file charges against somebody or it uh balls than that let me just be blunt with you and so officers have been arrested fired indicted um the guy that killed the kwan mcdonald got indicted officer the shot watchers got in the back got indicted there was an officer that shot into a a car like a little uh a little compact car and end up not a compact car he shot into a coop and ended up hitting the kid in a in the back of the head in the back seat he had no reason to shoot into the car he got indicted i mean i mean showman got indicted the next probably the next day i mean he got fired just the next day he got indicted shortly afterwards so i don't know i don't understand what officers are talking about that are roll rolling and everybody's just supporting them i mean i mean people on the police department officers let alone let alone the public uh oh boy it's always well all's a mighty big word i've got a bunch of videos i could share with this guy i think he should come he should do a video with me and i'll go through some videos with him and see if he thinks that they're all bold but i don't know if he gives any other facts other than the mile and a half you know it's just it just depends on how you are i don't i'd never tell people i was a cop when i was a cop if i never gonna do it um as far as i'm concerned anyone who makes uh this a race issue is a racist 100 percent are found responsible for that person's death however they'll settle in court and they'll just pay money all right well i don't know if he gets to any any better arguments than that maybe if he does um someone could point it out to me and i'll go to the specific spot but um you know i i think that guy's i i think he's i think he's a good guy and he's clearly having an emotional reaction to this and i would agree with him on the point that it's wrong to make this about race unless there was some information or indication that these particular officers knew what his race was before they pulled them over it looked to me like it was dark outside obviously that was a a dark car with dark windows it seems unlikely that they could have told that this was a black guy and they just they just don't like black people so they're going to pull them over and give them a hard time i think it's more likely that they were doing what cops do and pull people over for traffic related stuff now as an aside you can't run through a toll without getting a camera ticket in the mail later why don't we just equip that technology on police cars all right you see somebody speeding boom you tell you took a picture from your police cruiser and they get this automatic ticket in the mail later and that way nobody there's no drama nobody is pulled over and you're definitely going home safely that night there's no shootout you're not murdered and there's no there are no mistakes made really i mean we have the technology to do that why don't we do that because the police industry has lobbied for the ability and received the ability to make what they call pre-tax stops so they they stop people for these traffic crimes not because they want to enforce the traffic crimes but because when they do that is a policy they that's how they find people who have warrants and what there's there's some statistic i'm sure that that any of the the uh law enforcement administrative types could tell you what the statistic is that they get like 80 or 90 of the people who have warrants you know murder or robbery or unpaid child support whatever it is they pull them over for some sort of traffic violation and then that's when they find out that they're wanted for something else and they arrest them so that is the way that they've chosen to do business which makes it much more dangerous to do their job and that was by their choice so that that's i mean if you want to put it in context so just really what what you have to do when we're talking about the constitution and and preventing and protecting liberty well what you got what you have to do is keep emotion out of it in my opinion you know this guy is having an having an emotional reaction i i don't think just to this case but to everything that's been going on with all of the accusations of racism that i would agree with the vast majority would agree with him that the vast majority of those really had nothing to do with race i don't think has to do i don't know if you would agree with me on this with the police state that we find ourselves in now where you have police officers across the country engaging in this policy of pretextual stops of pulling people over for these traffic violations when in the back of their mind they susp you know what maybe that guy could be running drugs and maybe we'll find a bunch of drugs in his suv or maybe he has a warrant for being a homicidal maniac serial killer and then you know that would really be you know a a great bust i mean that's the the backdrop of what's going on here and perhaps why a lot of these cops are so jumpy i mean when is the the meter made like so jumpy and afraid for his or her life when they're writing traffic or parking tickets every day i mean they're not really they're not really it's because they've created this situation where they're out looking for traffic violations just to sort of snoop on people to just get their id and see if they've got any warrants see if they can smell any marijuana or see something illegal in their cars or shining the flashlight in there i mean that's really what's going on here so as far as the the other side of the argument um it looks like the the best justification that i've heard them put forward is it took him a mile and a half to stop so let's break that down took him a mile and a half to stop so i'll bring that picture back up all right total distance 1.5 miles so the light started at the edge of town to your right and he passes all these different potential places he could have stopped eventually stopping all the way over here at the other end now if he's pulled over for a undisputedly pulled over for just his license plate violation i don't know if he didn't have a license plate at all or just had the the the temporary tag whatever we have to assume that was a traffic violation so extremely minor that's got to be undisputed extremely minor reasonable suspicion that that form the basis of the original stop and that's important in judging what happens next so in order to justify what actually happened they really need to raise the severity of this traffic violation stop to what this young cop said over the radio at the very beginning of the video and that is well we have a felony traffic stop well wait a minute what the hell is a felony traffic stop i think somebody said that in the comment that's sort of a misnomer because none of these traffic violations are a felony what could the felony be well i i would presume that he's talking about like fleeing from an officer so it's because he didn't stop in 1.5 miles now he's fleeing from an officer which is must be a felony so now we have instead of the severity of the crime being a minor traffic violation now it's a felony fling from officers so it doesn't automatically make that the case just because these particular officers subjectively believe that remember like it or not for better or worse the way the courts judge all of these encounters is with an objective standard it's not a subjective standard and that works both ways so while we might complain that officers are or they're led at least they're let off the hook because even though they're ignorant of the law they also at the same time can't say that you know well i subjectively believed that he had committed a felony therefore i get to use you know a felony stop sort of procedure and you know order him out of the car with his hands up and make him lay on the floor and that's sort of the thing they do with a felony stop so what is my opinion here i mean here's what it comes down to was there a legal stop was there was their legal stop yeah i mean they whatever the traffic that's an easy standard when you're driving a vehicle you have very little rights anymore all the police officer has to do to stop you is say that you committed some sort of traffic violation and there's hundreds and hundreds of them and i haven't heard any any contest that he hadn't committed traffic violations so all right you have a traffic stop now would it be reasonable to handle that traffic stop in the way that they did if it was just that traffic violation not not really they they need to raise the the the severity of it to something like they've tried to do but that's not the only factor that's not the only factor so reasonable suspicion is required for a stop clearly they had that now what happens if you're at a traffic stop you know and the officer orders you out of the car do you have to get out of the car i've talked about this before generally and it could vary you know in you know as per state as to as to what the the law is that's state law generally you know can they order you out of the car generally they can order you out of the car if it's even if it's just a minor traffic stop but again it's all reasonableness so let's assume that the stop was legal there was reasonable suspicion let's assume that the officers are allowed to order him out of the car and that's what they were doing so they probably did i think i don't think there could be much dispute that they had the right to order him out of the car under those circumstances if they have some legitimate reason to ask order him out of the car i think the question has to be the analysis has to be taken a step further because it wasn't just we're not just looking at all right well he got ordered out of his car and that's illegal ha ha got you no we're not talking about that we're talking about really the pepper spray i think that's what this comes down to his best his best argument for a civil rights violation here is going to be the the way that they pepper sprayed him i think it's going to be is going to be the the best claim that he has and that's going to be under the fourth amendment it's going to be an excessive force claim that's pretty much it i mean he's not going to be able to say all right that was a that was an illegal stop or or for tabby's daddy that was an unlawful stop because we you know that's not even on the table anymore you know whether whether it should be lawful or not cops are allowed to stop us for minor traffic violations and they can order us out of the car for a reasonable amount of time in a reasonable way you know just to complete the traffic stop for traffic stop purposes so if they can order them out of the car and he refuses to come out of the car we have to go further so remember watching the video he's got his seatbelt on and he's got his hands out of the car so it sounds like his argument is is that he was fearful for some reason and that is a legitimate claim these days and i don't know what his personal experience is or what whether this particular area or department had had problems but he says he wanted to pull over somewhere that was well lighted so all right so so he did that he did pull over he did stop his car place it in park he did show his hands and he he still had his seatbelt on tabby's dead yeah i'm a name i'm not a name i'm a man well what what is what is your name gunny wait the guy's driving down the road and then this well all right traffic stop he's driving down the road they put pull their lights on then he goes 1.5 miles allegedly and then pulls over so traffic stop say it's any traffic stop a cop orders you out of the car and he was just gonna you know he was just gonna hold you a reasonable amount of time and uh have you step out of the car for a second and he's able to articulate why he needs you to step out of the car and and uh you refused to do it and that that here's the thing if you're if you're a bystander that's different you have a lot more rights once you're in a car you have very few rights if they order you step out of the car and you don't do it then yeah they're they're probably going to be able to charge you with something you know maybe obstruction i don't know but it doesn't automatically mean that they can pepper spray you so that's what's important here and let's get into let's let's get into what i think is important and it's not emotion it's not whether or not he was even fleeing it's not whether or not the the uh there's racism or anything like that it all comes down to where is it it all comes down to uh the graham factors now what are the gram factors so if you're the the subject of a police stop or really i guess we should take it one step further if you're the subject of a police use of force how do you prove that the amount of force that was used on you was in violation of the law or excessive well the fourth amendment is where that falls under and that is basically unreasonable search and seizure so was it an unreasonable search and seizure in the manner in which he was seized he was sprayed in the face with pepper spray the way that you determine that is under the fourth amendment there's a supreme court case called graham versus connor now that has three elements to it and that's what you have to look at here not just really what whether it was a good idea to do what the driver did but it was it's three different elements so it's whether you're actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade it's the severity of the climate issue and it's whether the person poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or the safety of anybody else those are the important things so what those are the three factors so let's look at them one by one so one as i already kind of got into what is the severity of the crime it issued that he's alleged to have committed so if they pull over an alleged homicidal maniac alleged sorry when when the uh when the cop out in utah i think it was utah pulled over bundy in his little volkswagen beetle he didn't know it was bundy or maybe maybe he knew that there was a warrant i don't recall but all right you pull over you pull over the serial killer bundy you know who it is i mean you're not going to treat that like a regular traffic stop you're going to treat it in a certain way if you want to survive a higher level of force if it ends up being used would be justified against ted bundy then would be justified against your everyday granny being pulled over because she didn't put the new sticker on her license plate so what's going to be important here is what was the severity of the crime that he's this guy is alleged to have committed was it a traffic stop a minor traffic stop a minor or a minor traffic infraction or was it some felony police chase you know that is going to be an issue to be decided there's going to be two ways of looking at that he's going to be able to articulate why he was you know wanted to drive a little bit further down the road and pull over in a place that he felt he was safer and these officers clearly were upset by the fact that he did so and they're going to try to articulate this as being some sort of more serious felony and you know what maybe he ends up being i don't know what he was charged with if anything but it will be important as to whether or not he was charged with a felony if he wasn't charged with a felony nor convicted of a felony that's going to be a weak argument for them but that's really that's their entire case that i've heard so far so let's skip that and go to the next step was he actively resisting or evading arrest or by flight at the time that the use of force happened so we're looking at now all right he grabs the guy a guy's arm a couple times and then all of a sudden says all right that's that's how you want to handle this and he pulls out the pepper spray and he sprays him sprays him several times sorry that's our use of force at the time that he let's let's just say the pepper spray at the time that he sprayed him was there any active was there any active fleeing going on then no he had the vehicle in park he wasn't he wasn't trying to drive away he wasn't running away he was literally sitting there he had a seat belt on and he had both his hands out the window he was not actively trying to evade them at that time now was he actively resisting them well he wasn't if he was resisting you'd have to say it was a passive resistance it was a passive resistance arguably he wasn't getting out of the car when he was told to get out of the car because he thought he didn't have to so there was some level of what i would describe as passive resistance there now let's look at the the last factor and i think this is the most important factor when it comes to judging the level of force used so it's not just was there some force used because it would be some force to physically like grab the guy undo a seat belt take him out of the car there would be some level of force there if he's if he's not doing that so there would be some level of force but what about just going pretty much right to the pepper spray at that point was there an immediate threat to the officer's safety or to anybody else's safety and i think that's what this this is going to hinge on if there was no immediate threat then arguably there was no reason to just go right to the pepper spray looking at the video again he has both his hands visibly out of the window where they can be seen that really is the universal definition right of look i'm not a threat you see my hands i'm not an immediate threat to you or to anyone else there's no allegation that he's got a you know a bomb strapped to his chest there's no way that he would be an immediate threat now what what could the threats be how many people get shot to death behind the wheel of their car because they allegedly were going to run over somebody that's most likely a police officer a lot of people so we've heard over and over that the you know the deadly weapon is the vehicle itself well if he had put his hand on the drive the the shifter or the that probably had a like center console knob you know some of them i mean these things are changing in vehicles i don't know if he was going to put it in reverse or forward you know they could have some sort of argument that he was going to use his vehicle as a deadly weapon and run run them over all right there's no indication that he was doing that or attempting to do that now what if he had reached down into his center console somebody said he had a gun in his center console well that could have been justification for them in their minds to to shoot him maybe he was afraid he would be shot if if they lost sight of his hands because he was trying to get his seatbelt off i think the the there's the good argument here for the driver is is that he was most importantly whether or not he was passively resisting by not getting out of the car and or arguing with them he was at all times keeping his hands where they could see him and that is going to be an important fact in this case if it's litigated because it will be difficult to claim that he was an immediate threat to the officers or anyone else when he was at least complying with showing them his hands and and just demonstrating that he was not a threat to them so it they don't have that going for them so the the only real good defense is is that well he wasn't obeying their orders to get out of the car therefore their use of force continuing continuum or their training or their department policies said that they they get to step it up to the pepper spray or even a taser to get him out of the car now maybe that does happen all the time and that's what they don't want people seeing but here's the thing about this case this is in virginia it's in the fourth circuit so i'm very familiar with the case law in the fourth circuit and it immediately reminded me of some of the law out there because this you know they've dealt with all sorts of situations including situations like this so there's case law right now that i can i can point you to that i can go over that talks about people who are just like this guy may have been doing passively resisting and this comes up with all sorts of people mentally ill people who you know are hanging on to a light pole and don't want to leave they're told to leave the cops try to pull them off but they're hanging on for dear life does that mean that they can immediately be tased or shot no you they're still a judge of the amount of force that was used and knowing what the objective officer would have known whether or not that was reasonable the courts look at the severity of the crime that they were called for the whether or not the person was actively resisting or or trying to run away and whether or not the person posed a threat to them or anyone else so if you look at the case law in the fourth circuit so you look at the supreme court first of course and then if you're looking at what the federal civil rights laws are you look at your circuit second so this is in virginia this is the fourth circuit if you look at my handy map you can see what federal circuit you're in virginia west virginia north carolina and south carolina you're in the fourth circuit so you would look at fourth circuit case law to see what in the world the law is here and a little thing called qualified immunity comes up so what do we do with qualified immunity well we look at the case law we look at the circuit case law to see whether or not there's anything that was a good comparison to the conduct that was engaged in by the officers to put them on notice that engaging in that sort of conduct would have been a violation of civil rights or would have been excessive so you look at the case law and here there is some some case law on this sort of situation and i would describe that as passive resistance and there's a lot of taser case law on this and for the most part the federal courts have really hated tasers they they really really don't like cops using tasers and they've been misused in a lot of a lot of situations so there's a lot of taser cases out there there's less pepper spray cases now there's a lot of pepper spray cases in the prison context or in the the jail context and that's a little bit different and there's actually some really good cases that to use so this is in the fourth fourth amendment context so just a a guy on the street or a driver in a car now one of the the cases that that is is good to look at for this one particular is a 2016 case from the fourth circuit called the state of armstrong versus the village of pinehurst i believe that was was out of north carolina i'm not positive about that but that had to do with the the same sort of deal passive resistance and then a tase so that was a taser case but in the pinehurst case they actually went over all their prior cases that has that had similar situations so punching and pepper spray against people who had committed relatively minor crimes and were not actively resisting but may have been passively resisting so this could also apply to somebody who you know was being arrested arrested and you know it's like the stop resisting stop resisting scenario it's like all right they're not being violent they're not fighting they're not punching they're not kicking and they're not even running they're just arguably not putting their you know they're not letting the body be manipulated in the way that the officer wants the body manipulated so it could be it could be whether or not the person's secured so if a person was running they got tackled and they're now in handcuffs and then force is used on them or they're otherwise secured and forces used on them then you're going to have to justify using any higher level of force which they tend to include is tasers or pepper spray but it also if you look at the pinehurst case it it it it is very very much on point to this sort of situation and this might not apply in other circuits but i think this these officers could have a big problem with this case law that's sort of laid out in the the pinehurst case again that's the state of armstrong versus village of pinehurst and that's that's fourth circuit from 2016 if you want to read it and they go through all the graham factors let's see let me let me find uh the specific the specific sentence that i thought was interesting here see all right so in that case you know and it could come up that the officers thought that he was armed maybe all right despite the fact that he was showing them his hands and somebody had brought that up all right if he's armed that actually was mentioned by the court in the pinehurst case so if the officer had no other reason for actually believing that the subject was armed or had a weapon other than the fact that he refused to submit by allowing his body to be manipulated in a certain way or to give his hands then then you know that may not specifically be enough another thing that comes up is you know exacerbation of the situation by the police so the the police generally in the fourth there's fourth circuit case law in this that i've used before if the police escalate the situation you know if it's just a minor traffic stop and they escalated into this just violent altercation that plays a part so the simple fact that the officer decides to take what should be a simple situation where there's no yeah no need for a violent use of force and then they they ratchet that up to the level where you have you know a violent exchange where you know somebody might instinctively try to defend themselves that is that is relevant and that comes up so sometimes people will instinctively pull away you know if they get hit or they get struck get struck and and you know all of that is is uh all of those facts are to be taken into account to what they call the totality of the circumstances so again the it's always a reasonableness so it doesn't matter it doesn't matter really whether it doesn't matter what the driver's reasons were necessarily doesn't matter what the officer's thinking subjective thinking was it's all an objective test what did they see what would an objectively reasonable officer think as far as whether the guy was a threat etc you know would the reasonable officer believe that this guy sticking both his hands out the window not wanting to get out of his car saying he did nothing wrong would they think that that was you know a a threat to somebody's physical safety no probably not i'm still looking for the actual sentence that i i had here again this has come up a lot with mentally ill subjects who've been tased in the pinehurst case that i had mentioned in 2016 they actually granted qualified immunity in that case and they said but if it happens again police officers are on notice that you're not going to get qualified immunity so it's going to be tough to claim that you know there's not been any case sufficiently close like this and i had no idea that that this was wrong i'm just reading some of your some of your comments here johnny smith when some dude is twisting your arm off what else would you do well i mean that's why i'm saying i mean a lot of cops out there have no idea that there is law out there that says you know if you escalate violence unnecessarily as a police officer there is some justified resistance that they'll allow and whether that be instinctive reactions or or violence in in return you know it does it is sort of like a self-defense analysis okay so you know i i don't know if i answered all that many questions other than you know it it's going to come down to an analysis i mean did the police escalate unnecessarily i mean i think i i think the proof is in the pudding and that's in the end you're looking at a jury so a federal jury civil jury you're looking at eight people now out of that jury pool around norfolk i think that's going to be a favorable jury pool for a plaintiff for this plaintiff in particular in more ways than one um and uh you know that it's it's it's not gonna be a great jury pool for the police are they gonna be able to articulate why you know they really went you know so they got so dramatic in this case and they went right to the pepper spray and then also i forgot to mention i mean the comments i'm scared to get out yeah you should be scared and then he also said ride the lightning you're going to ride the lightning or something like that i mean those those are not helpful to to to the older bald officer at all i think the the other officer appears to be a young guy and he's obviously not faced that situation before you can tell he doesn't quite know what to do but it it's it's one of those you know what do i do most people don't challenge my authority if you have somebody challenging my authority what do i do now and you can see that he he sort of didn't he appeared not to really know but the older cop was gonna really make him show him what to do and make him respect his authority that didn't turn out well like i said the proof is in the pudding he got fired so he obviously didn't handle it well and the other cop is in some trouble too he didn't get fired so people are outraged the videos out there obviously mistakes were made on their part now the driver you know maybe he was looking maybe he maybe he was ready for a problem but you know what a lot of people have dash cams in their cars and and they weren't out looking for a problem but if they get pulled over you better believe they're turning the cameras on and you know there's nothing wrong with with flexing your rights and invoking your rights now he thought he was doing that here but he he really didn't have the right to just not get out of his car in my opinion um that that would be a losing case i mean there's there's there's umpteen cases out there and that that's going to be the law that they had the right to order them out of the car now can they justify the escalation of of you know all the the craziness that they you know they went through and then ultimately pepper spraying them just based on the fact that he you know it may be 25 or 30 miles an hour went an extra mile and a half before pulling over you know i don't think so i mean on an interstate that probably that might happen all the time now through this town where there were other places to pull over maybe not were those places actually sufficiently lit i don't know were there other witnesses around did he want to go some you know he pulled in somewhere where maybe they're you know you think there would be cameras at gas pumps um you know i think if i if i think if i'm a police officer i mean that's that's a you know handling it that way was was is a lose-lose i mean what other way could it have been handled even if the guy had a video and he was looking to get you in trouble i mean all you had to do was i don't know let him use violence before you you engaged in violence i mean try to get him out of the car well he grabbed his arm and but really pretty ineffectively or wait him out longer i don't know i mean certainly i think it was probably a tough situation to to be thrown into but that is the risk you take when you're gonna pull people over and try to run their background check see if they have any warrants and all that stuff that you're the one engaging in that behavior so you got to be prepared for for all sorts of situations windsor is a rural town yeah you're going to ride the lightning if you don't comply well a lot of these cases are all you know if you're not going to respect my authority you're going to pay the price for it and that's kind of you know what it looks like here and i think he sort of said that like all right you want to do it that way and you you you get away with that you know so often when it's not filmed or there are no witnesses and and you you think that that's just what the law is that you know when you tell someone to do something they do it or else fred johnson without a camera you have a disadvantage in fighting cops in court to a high degree as compared as if you film the encounters jim if you're driving slow with your flashers on you're not evading i don't know was he doing that i mean if if he actually did have his flashers on and was driving slowly i think that is i mean that would be pretty that would be pretty effective at defeating the the you know the raising of the severity of the crime element to to you know some sort of felony level as opposed to a basic traffic stop so there's cases in the fourth circuit that say you know traffic minor traffic violations while they can technically arrest you on them depending on the state state law and it's not a violation of the federal fourth amendment it doesn't justify a violent use of physical force without you know there being some sort of a risk to safety there and it in the fourth circuit also like i said look at the pinehurst case 2016 it also makes it clear that this is extended to tasers pepper spray and strikes like punching and if it's also if it's passive resistance let me find the actual wording of this i probably should have found this ahead of time all right for instance some of the taser cases um i mean there's just piles of of lawn and tasers it's excessive and unreasonable to use force it's an it's excessive and an unreasonable use of force for a police officer to repeatedly administer electrical shocks taser with a taser on an individual is no longer armed he's been brought to the ground has been restrained physically by several other officers and who's no longer resisting arrest so tasing and arrestee ceased being proportional force when the officer continued to use his taser after the arrestee did not pose a continuing threat to the officer's safety so that's i mean i think the most important element of where you have a taser or you have pepper spray is going to have to be the the threat part you know is the person a threat to your physical safety and the biggest thing that that point that popped out to me just watching the video was was that both his hands were out the window i mean if both his hands are out the window that's going to be hard to claim that he was a threat here's the actual language that i was talking about again armstrong versus pinehurst let's see while the questions whether an arrestee has been restrained and is complying with police directives are of course relevant to any inquiry at the extent into which the arrest deposes a continuing threat to the officer's safety they are not dispositive in other words we don't care a rule limiting taser use to situations involving a proportional safety threat does not countenance use in situations where an unrestrained arrestee though resistant presents no serious safety threat that's exactly this situation so he's not in custody yet he's not restrained and whether or not he is complying with what they're telling him to do and not in handcuffs yet if he poses no serious safety threat then they don't want tasers used and they go on to to to compare that to pepper spray as well the court uh held as discussed we have previously held that tasing suspects after they have been secured see the myers case in the bailey case and the punching or pepper spraying suspects in response to minimal non-violent resistance see the park case also the roland case and those are all four circuit cases that constitutes excessive force so i'll read that again as discussed we have previously held the tasing suspects after they have been secured and that punching or pepper spraying subjects in response to minimal non-violent resistance constitutes excessive force so if this guy the army lieutenant is engaging in minimal non-violent resistance then pepper spraying them tasing him or even punching him constitutes excessive force really is a matter of law as per the fourth circuit and that seems important here is there any argument that he was doing something more than non-violent resistance and you can see that what's important when you're fleshing out the law here with somebody who's the subject of a traffic stop or a pedestrian whatever somebody who's not a pretrial detainee and not a prisoner the most important thing here unless you have a really severe crime is going to be it's going to be whether or not there's this immediate threat to somebody's safety so is the the 1.5 mile distance to pull over especially if he has his hazards on or something is that going to be enough to really override that case law here in the fourth circuit i don't think so and that's why i think that this is the case that will settle and will settle pretty well because if it goes to a jury i think that they lose and i don't think there's any grant of qualified immunity here because like i just read that fits pretty well within the fourth circuit case law and you know i i looked for you know any of the other arguments that were out there from the cops and it seems like the only real argument is is that you know what he didn't pull over quickly enough and that raises it to a felony under you know in our opinion and therefore we get to do this felony stop we did the felony stop and he refused the directives that's pretty much it but that still all fits within the fourth circuit case law you know unless they can show that there's some reasonable objectively demonstrable fear that somebody's safety was hanging in the balance you know that's really what's necessary and and the lessons are i mean if you're a cop that doesn't want to you know become the subject of a of a court decision whether criminal or civil as a result of excessive force i think the lesson there is you know don't pepper spray or taste somebody or even punch somebody unless they're a threat to your safety or someone else's safety or you know you you cut ted bundy or just someone that's just otherwise known to be dangerous enough that that you need to up the level of force at that point i mean it's everything's a balancing test depending on the totality of the circumstances of every case but i mean it's pretty clear what the facts are here because we've got videos we've got body cam and also the video from inside the car and my opinion is is that the facts the facts you know while they don't show a civil rights violation as far as you know the stop itself or even asking him to get out of the car the the pepper spraying in the manner in which it occurred i think that's enough to show a excessive force civil rights violation and that's why i think they fired the cop who did the pepper spraying and why they'll also have a a decent settlement that pays out here in the ensuing civil case but again that's just my opinion and that you know what it had that has nothing to do with the the color of the guy's skin who is driving the car other than and and maybe the the guys on mine but that doesn't necessarily matter and it it doesn't have to always be couched in terms of skin color because i don't think it rarely has to do with skin color and you know what there are incidents where you know that can be demonstrated where you know one would want to pull over to a safe and place where there are witnesses and you know that might be that might pertain to skin color some i mean for for for certain people they maybe they maybe they've learned that lesson by by seeing what's happened to other people or they feel that way anyway they've maybe they've just watched you know maybe they've just heard statements from our president i mean hell the president united states is called you know whole cops racist generally so if you really believe that you've heard that then you know i think there's a a a credible potentially credible you know argument to be made that that's why you were you know driving you know a mile and a half further down the road now as somebody pointed out i mean ideally it would be nice to say that you called the dispatcher called 9-1-1 and let them know what you were doing all right well that that's my opinion on that case and then that's that's what i think you know the first part of what i got into that's what i think's uh important that in the constitution that we're completely missing and not from me that's from a speech that i heard heard this weekend and really enjoyed robert george but it really is something that we have to to focus on and make sure that we teach kids about and and other americans you know it's that we don't have to obsess about the supreme court and worry about them enforcing our civil rights which you know probably they're not going to do we need to understand the fact that our civil rights really our main civil rights or the structure of our constitution the principles of limited power and and the division of power and the whole idea is just to spread it around and to keep the and prevent the power accumulating in the hands of any one person like it's really done and in so doing we also as the people which is the point of a republic we retain a voice because we have representatives not just on the state level but the federal level and all legislation all legislation is coming through our representatives and that i think somebody said this weekend that the most important word in the entire constitution is that first word i think that was dr george you know the first word of the of the of the first article the first sentence the first paragraph all legislative power shall be held by congress and that's all that's not some that's not a little bit that's not most that's all the constitution doesn't give any of it to joe biden doesn't give any of it to the atf doesn't give any of it to the fbi and how far astray have we gotten to that our state constitutions generally all read the same way our state constitution in west virginia hasn't expressed separation of powers pretty much quotes the founding fathers it's great language but it's completely ignored completely ignored by politicians and by the judiciary who have been expanding their own powers so i appreciate you watching hell it's been two hours and 10 minutes and it's about that time so i'll see you again on um on wednesday at 6 30 p.m i'd like to get into a little of of what's happening with gun control legislation and where we're headed from here so i'll see you then appreciate thank you for watching go to civilrightslawyer.com and see some of the recent things that that i've been posting about i also get getting ready to file a really really interesting big huge case that you will want to follow and it has to do with one of the most most interesting and popular videos that i've posted on youtube so stay tuned here in the next couple of days because it's out it's outrageous it's a police case and it's absolutely outrageous you've never heard anything about it up until now it's been a complete complete secret but it's coming out soon and it's going to be an absolute bombshell or it it should be or else what are we doing here so until then i'll see you next time you