Vermont teen accuses police of sexual assault after arrest

[Lee-Lee]

So the chief of police directly responded to her post on social media with facts of the arrest and body cam footage of her actions and behavior and the arrest.

https://m.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/cop-on-the-tweet-chiefs-social-media-posts-draw-criticism/Content?oid=6582615

People are upset accusing the police chief of "intimidation", but I'm glad to see a chief who is responding to false accusations directly. It seems to be the in thing to some people to invent stories of police misconduct and abuse, and that's a trend that is bad for everyone. It builds distrust based on lies, and it makes it harder to go after real cases of abuse when you have to deal with a bunch of BS ones that have to be investigated too.

People who make false allegations of police misconduct should be called out and exposed for their lies in the same manner that they spread them, in my book. That's the only way to counter the spread of the lies in the community when people start them. If your going to attack the integrity and honor of a department and individual officers with lies you deserve every bit of shame and embarrassment that comes with actual proof of what happened being released when it doesn't match your claims. There should be no double standard where you get to spread false allegations unfettered but the department can't respond in kind and must limit where they respond.

It is not "intimidation" to simply release the truth and facts, backed by video evidence.

You can see the body cam footage here for yourself and be the judge.

https://m.

&feature=youtu.be

I love body cameras. If your a good cop they do nothing but protect you from false allegations, make investigations of allegations much faster to weed out the BS from the legit, and make it much easier to get a conviction on cases like this one.

Honestly, I would have pepper sprayed her. But I find male officers tend to be more restrained on use of force on females than I was as a female officer. At the point your are wrestling with me and kicking at me I am not going to risk an injury to myself to avoid discomfort on your part, so get ready to feel the burn....

[Blue_Adept]

1. So much freakin' privilege with this kid

[Lee-Lee]

2. So she thought anyway.

[oberliner]

3. RW-ers are relentlessly attacking this kid now on twitter and elsewhere

Including the usual degrading comments and death threats.

Also doesn't help her cause that she is a LW Bernie supporter.

[Lee-Lee]

5. It's hard to have a shred of sympathy for her

She made accusations that coudl have destroyed the careers and lives of the officers, or at a minimum caused them suspensions and months of hassle and stress, had their not been body cam footage.

[oberliner]

6. She does not deserve death threats and rape threats

And comments about how ugly she is.

[Lee-Lee]

9. She doesn't

But I'm still not going to have any sympathy.

Her accusations if not countered would have lead to the same kind of comments and threats against the officers, so she's getting what she tried to give and cause to be given to them.

[oberliner]

11. This is a kid who just graduated high school

Getting aggressively harassed on social media in a vile and disgusting manner by Trump bots.

[Kingofalldems]

33. Again you just repeated the RW comments.

[oberliner]

35. None of the comments have been repeated

Just a condemnation of them.

[mythology]

4. If releasing the body cam footage is such a good thing

Why do the police resist releasing it in so many cases? It can't be a one way street that the footage is released just when it exonerates the cop. It should also be released when the cop is in the wrong, but instead they fight that tooth and nail.

For example look at how long it took to get the video in the Laquan McDonald shooting. Of course that was also made more difficult since the cops were intentionally disabling their cameras. And yet it took 3 years for a few officers to get arrested for helping cover up murder, including going so far as to actively erase footage that proved the cop was guilty of murder and all the other cops were guilty of aiding and abetting said murder.

Congrats, you found an example where the cops weren't scum. Now what about all the other examples?

[Lee-Lee]

8. I'm all for body cam footage to be public record

There are some legit cases where you need to delay releasing. For example if cases where there may be multiple witnesses and you need time to interview all involved, including the officers and suspects, you want to hold it until the interviews are done because it's a proven fact that people will change they testimony as an eyewitness if they see footage to better match what they think the footage shows.

The only times it shouldn't be public record if when there is sentive stuff, for example if the police were responding to you just after you had been sexually assaulted you don't want footage of you having to describe the assault out online.

The thing is the vast majority of complaints of misconduct are just like this, totally unfounded. But departments have traditionally been restrained and it taken action against false accusations or made public statements like this. That you imply this is the rare circumstance instead of the opposite show how your own impression of reality is affected by the media you consume.

[RKP5637]

7. This officer had incredible patience! n/t

[Lee-Lee]

10. If you want to see patience

I wouldn't have been nearly as patient.

[RKP5637]

12. Incredible! n/t

[linuxman]

31. My god. That officer has the patience of a saint.

You can tell he's dealt with these nut-jobs before.

"I have all the rights of a citizen but I'm not subject to the laws that citizens are"

Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that?

[brush]

30. The officer showed restraint with the white girl. Wonder what would happened if it was a black guy?

So many of them have no patience whatsoever when race is introduced into the situation (see Philando Castile video or Walter Scott or Alton Sterling and on and on and on).

Certainly something to think about.

[RKP5637]

40. Yep! n/t

[aikoaiko]

13. Ok, I'll play devils advocate.

1. The tape is edited.
2. The cop is escalating the encounter
3. The tape does not show resisting arrest as the officer claims, but it does show the officer manhandling her.
4. The tape does not show her kicking him as the officer claims.
5. The tape does not show what happened after she was stuffed in the car.

It looks like another cop doing his best to escalate a situation while interacting with a noncompliant and unhappy civilian that got out of hand.

[Lee-Lee]

14. For all those answers:

1: Full video not edited for time

https://m.

2: The cop was not escalating the matter. When the woman was jumping toward him and acting erratically while making statements about running away she escalated things and gave officers more than enough justification to cuff her at that point. Actually, when she grabbed the bong off the roof of the car and tossed it inside the car that alone was her escalating it and more than enough reason to put her in cuffs for the duration of the stop right there for interference with the officers performing their duties in the stop. They actually showed pretty good restraint in not cuffing her much earlier.

3: it clearly shows she is resisting arrest. Do you see how long it takes them to get her cuffed? Cuffing a person who is not resisting takes a few seconds. It takes much longer because she is resisting. Do you see how she's moving all around? That attempting to make it hard to cuff her, not part of the cuffing- that is resisting. Do you see how she refuses to get into the police car and has to be forced into the car? That's resisting.

Claims her actions were not resisting are clearly not backed up by the video. When someone isn't resisting you can cuff them in 10 seconds and get them in the car in 20. She clearly was resisting both.

4: The angle of the footage doesn't show if she is kicking or not. But given that her behavior there and the fact that the video shows her allegations to all be false so far and the officers to be consistent with the video I'll side with the ones proven to have been honest so far. Maybe they will release the dash cam too for a wider view.

5: Dash cam will have at least an audio recording of what happened in the car, some
Have rearward facing video. Hopefully it's released soon.

The cops were not trying at all to escalate it. They in fact could have cuffed and arrested her well before they did. When she was trying to argue they didn't engage in the argument to further enrage or encourage it but just said they were not going to argue. They left her uncuffed until she started jumping at them while making threats to run from them. There was only one party trying to escalate it, her, and the cops reacted appropriately and withgreat restraint.

[oberliner]

15. The comments on that YouTube video are disgusting

Calling her a b***, c***, and saying she should be shot, raped, etc.

This is a kid who is just out of high school.

[Lee-Lee]

25. You just described the comments of virtually every YouTube video with a female in it

The comments section on YouTube has become one of the most disgust displays of the worst of humanity online.

[oberliner]

36. Agreed

It's awful.

[Kingofalldems]

32. And you post them here.

[oberliner]

34. No, I have not posted any of them here

What are you talking about?

[Kingofalldems]

37. The gist of them. Come now, I get it.

[oberliner]

38. Exactly

I made a point not to post the comments and only present the gist of them to get a sense of their unpleasantness. If you actually look at them, they are truly vile and profane.

[aikoaiko]

26. More Devils Advocacy

1. The video you claim is unedited is actually edited. This is a good example of police foul play to claim a tape is unedited when it is.

2. He escalates the situation by asking repetitive questions trying to irritate her and cause her to make "harmful statements". In fact, after the first gap in video between when she hands him her ID and she's standing outside asking for her parents number, he radios in that she's making "harmful statements" which is "documentation" which will help justify more escalation and using force against her. Making a joke about calling 911 instead of parents number is not really a harmful statement.

3. It her bong and she's not arrested at the time, she can do what she wants with it. He doesn't say it is confiscated under the law. She did not attack him and did not run away. She asked if he was concerned that he thought so. Just asking questions like the police do.

What I see is her trying to retrieve her property and the officer manhandling her before saying she is under arrest for resisting arrest. Of course he never said why he was arresting her in the first place which one would have to do in order to then resist arrest.

We see her moving around, but this could be caused by the officer and she does claim that he is bending her wrist painfully which is unseen on video , but torturing arrestees with wrist locks will cause movement which justifies more force by escalatory cops.

4. Maybe we will see more video. Of course, claiming he is being kicked is "documentation" for using more force.

5. I suppose if the Chief wanted to exonerate the officer he could have produced patrol car video already.

Ok I won't do DA any more because I think the situation is mostly caused by the girl, but let's face it the cops could have just checked on them by waking them up and said have a nice nap. Remember he assumes they are passed out when they could just be sleeping.

In far too many videos, police keep poking people until the civilians make a mistake in irritation. Then the hammer drops. That needs to stop.


My main point is that videos are often edited, contain references to unseen things, and can be interpreted differently.

ETA: After the Walter Scott murder by police I won't give police the benefit the doubt or even video that is ambiguous.

[Lee-Lee]

28. More replies

1: it only workers to be edited to elimite parts not relevant to her actions. Maybe not, but since it's public record if they actually did selective editing I'm sure some news source of her lawyers will get the full one and it will bite them in the ass. Since the PD knows this I doubt they would dig that hole.

2: Asking questions, even repetitive, isn't escalating anything. When someone refuses to answer you keep asking. It's also a common technique to ask the same question in different ways or many times to see if someone is being deceptive. While a person is detained the officers job is to investigate what is happening and questions are a valid part of that. Calling that a form of escalation is absurd.

3: No, when you are being detained you are not free to do whatever you want. You can't interfere with the officers work of investigating and that includes move or remove or destroy items he has laid out. It's her bong, but it's part of the criminal investigation at that point and she can't just do whatever she wants with it.

She didn't just "ask if he was concerned" about her running, she did so while jumping at him and making arm/hand gestures at that at a minimum were meant to be antagonistic, if not intended to be threatening. If you didn't see that I suggest rewatching the video with glasses.

4 and 5: I hope we see more.

[DanTex]

16. Watching the video, obviously the girl is way out of line.

And it looks to me like the police officer did everything right.

I have some questions out of curiosity if anyone is familiar with the law. First of all, under what circumstances are the police allowed to come to your car and start asking you questions? I guess three teenagers passed out with the engine running in a parking lot is enough, that makes sense. But I'm wondering what the basic standard is.

Also, apparently there was both alcohol and weed in the car. Isn't that a crime already? The cop says she was arrested for disorderly behavior and assaulting a police officer, and yeah, she did those two things. But it seems that even before that she could have been arrested for pot possession and also some form of DUI (I think being in the drivers seat with the engine on is enough for DUI).

[oberliner]

17. The officer gave her a "notice for diversion"

More info:

http://vtcourtdiversion.org/youth-substance-abuse-safety-program/faq/#1

That was before things escalated - then she was charged with the offenses indicated.

[Lee-Lee]

18. Yeah he pretty well cut her a break and she reacted like this

In response.

[oberliner]

20. Teenagers often show poor judgment

As was clearly evident in this situation.

[DanTex]

19. Thanks for the info.

Interesting that actually consuming alcohol under 21 is against the law in VT. My impression was that it was generally not against the law for minors to consume, only to sell it to minors.

The other thing about that law is that you could basically go to any college campus on any weekend night and charge half the people there for it.

[oberliner]

21. Yes, that's true

Also, a cop could conceivable pull over just about any driver on the interstate since they basically all drive over the speed limit.

[Lee-Lee]

24. Alcohol consumption or possession under 21 is illegal in most states

It was pushed that way by the Congress using the threat of withholding federal highway funds to states that didn't raise the age in the 1980's.

[Agschmid]

22. Private parking lot, public safety check.

Totally within the scope of their job. That area "Lakeside" in Burlington isn't one of the best, although with some new building by Champlain College, Lake Champlain Chocolates, and Zero Gravity brewery it's gotten better.

[Lee-Lee]

23. It will vary some state to state

But when in public you can be approached at at time just like anyone can approach you. You are not obligated to answer and can leave any time.

Now, to detain a person from leavingis a higher standard. If an officer approaches you requires you to stay, or pulls you over and prevents you from leaving, while he or she investigates to determine if a crime has taken place they must meet the standard called Reasonable Suspicion. RS is more than just a hunch and you have to be able to articulate what you observed or knew that would lead a "reasonable person" to suspect a crime may have occurred or be occurring.

To arrest requires probable cause, a much higher standard than RS. You use RS to detain a person and allow you to investigate to see if probable cause exists. For example a car weaving in and out of the lane is reasonable suspicion a person is driving under the influence. You use that RS to stop them and detain them to investigate with observations, field sobriety tests and/or a portable breathalyzer to determine if probable cause exists to arrest.

3 people passed out in a car is way past the threshold for reasonable suspicion.

[DanTex]

27. Thanks for the answer.

Kind of reminds me of an episode from a while back. A friend and I were on a long road trip, and there was a big thunderstorm and the lightning was amazing so we decide to pull over and eat something and just watch the lightning for a bit from the side of the road.

And then at one point a cop came up to us and asked what we were doing. I guess it was kind of weird two people randomly pulled over to watch lightning, but we explained it to him. He asked if we were drinking and we said no, and he was polite and everything was fine.

I was happy to answer his questions and all, but it got me thinking whether or not I was obligated to.

[Alea]

29. yep

[tenderfoot]

39. LOL