Photo via cristian gingoe/YouTube
January 19, 2021, 2:56 pm
A video showing a police officer getting read the riot act from someone who knows the law on stopping and searching people is going viral on Reddit. Though it was placed in the popular “Public Freakout” forum, the man behind the camera remains fairly calm as he fires off question after question at the officer, systematically exposing the illegality of his stopping and questioning a random Black guy.
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After less than a minute of this rapid-fire public shaming, the officer lets the man he stopped go and sheepishly shuffles off to his car.
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“What crime was committed?” asks the bystander. “Who did they say was watching? Who they said that did it? Who you looking for? What’s the person’s name? What’s the description of the person, officer?”
The point of all these questions is, of course, that stopping and questioning people at random without a clearly-stated reason for doing so is illegal. Many police officers do this anyway, relying on the fact that many everyday Americans don’t know their own rights.
The officer in the video eventually manages to mutter that he had no suspicion, that the Black man he stopped was not being detained and was free to go, at which point the non-suspect immediately takes off. The man behind the camera gets the cop’s badge number and lets him know that he will be reporting the illegal action to the officer’s precinct.
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But he’s not done teaching the policeman a lesson in what he should already know.
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“Don’t ask nobody their name and their ID, that’s illegal,” he says before the officer asks if everyone is good. “Yeah everybody always good out here. We only good when you’re not out here manipulating people. Have a nice day, stop scanning people’s names. Find some real criminals, because next time it might cost you your job.”
As the officer slinks off back to his car, the bold bystander asks him if he even knows what “ultra vires” law is, which refers to anything that is beyond the authority of a governing body.
It’s the rapid-fire questioning and schooling of the cop caught with his hand in the legal cookie jar that makes the video so great, but it’s also an important lesson for anyone watching. Multiple Reddit commenters shared their stories of giving personal, private information to police officers because they weren’t aware that the questioning was illegal if there was no reason to suspect them of a crime.
“Yeah I had no idea an officer can’t just ask for ID and your information for no reason,” said one commenter. “It happened to me once when I was sitting in my car behind my job.”
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“Later the police officer who does security at my job on weekends said I was really dumb for giving all the information up because I was doing nothing wrong and it was on private property.”
Many others have praised the man who took the video of himself confronting the officer, in spite of possible danger to himself, and hope that others will follow his example.
“That man filming is a true hero, the world needs more people like him,” says the “Dukeofjive.”
*First Published: January 19, 2021, 2:56 pm
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