Teenage Kid Knows Texas Law Better Than Cop

Good on this boy's parents for teaching him his rights, and good on both these boys for having the courage to resist the bullying tactics of this policeman and record their interaction with this police employee.  I like how there is a silent stand off at about the 2 minute mark when the police officer doesn't know how to respond, and this young hero is just waiting for the cop to make his next move.  The cop's best comeback is, "Why are you nervous?"  Cops like to act that just because someone gets nervous that it must be because they have committed a crime.  But it's only natural for most people to get a pump of adrenaline when they are confronted by a person with a gun who acts like they have authority over them and regularly uses violence against peaceful people.  I actually think the young man was remarkable composed, thoughtful, and well spoken.

The boy is correct that he doesn't have to provide any identification.  The cop just made up a reason to pull him over that wasn't even legitimate.  He said the cars registration was expired.  The registration has to be renewed yearly on cars in Texas, and when you register you get a sticker on your windshield that shows the date.  Since it is night time and the sticker is small, I'm sure the officer is lying about seeing it was expired and just made that up as a reason to stop someone he was looking to harass.

The State doesn't write laws in a way that is always easy to understand or fun to read, but this is what Texas law says about being required to provide ID to cops:

The Texas Failure to Identify law is fairly simple. Why don’t police get it? It states: 

(a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally refuses to give his name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has lawfully arrested the person and requested the information.
(b) A person commits an offense if he intentionally gives a false or fictitious name, residence address, or date of birth to a peace officer who has:
(1) lawfully arrested the person;
(2) lawfully detained the person; or
(3) requested the information from a person that the peace officer has good cause to believe is a witness to a criminal offense.

The teen was not legally detained, nor arrested, therefore, according to state law he did not have to produce ID.

League City police being naughty

While I was out running last week, I was able to catch a few naughty police employees on camera.

This photo is from a nearby park.  Police often sit like this in their cars so they can chat with each other without getting out in the heat.  These men are employed to protect our lives and property, and could use their time patrolling neighborhoods to find criminals, or to scare criminals away before they can commit crimes like theft from homes and vehicles.  Instead, they are using their time to sit in this parking lot where nothing good is accomplished.  If the police were accountable to their employer like a normal employee is, this behavior would not be tolerated.  But police work for the government, and government employees are rarely held accountable for their mistakes or doing their job poorly, especially the police.  Police are often treated as heroes for doing their job, and every excuse is made to forgive their bad behavior.

Next, I came upon two young men who were being threatened by another police employee.  I heard the policeman raising his voice and threatening one of the young men, so I stopped to take video.



The cop was giving the young man a ticket for driving 35 mph in a school zone with a 20 mph speed limit.  The police would say this is for this is for the safety of the children, but there were no children walking home from school at that time.  But the police never pass up an opportunity to issue such an expensive ticket to drivers.  The young man was calmly trying to talk to the cop about the speeding ticket, which angered the policeman.  The police don't like people to challenge the authority they believe they have over us, and expect people to cower before their presence.  Any time someone does something that challenges the authority of the police, no matter how insignificantly, the police can become abusive and dangerous.  I hope that my presence there filming the interaction was enough to calm the policeman down.  It was at about that time that you can see him waving at me in the video, so I know that he was aware of me shortly after becoming hostile. 

In the end, the policeman wrote the young man a ticket for speeding, and declined to write him far less expensive tickets for not having a license to drive a motorcycle and not having a helmet.  Sometimes police do this to try and appear like they are nice guys, but it may also have been because he was being filmed and was embarrassed at having yelled at the young man.  But the officer would not let the young men ride the moped home.  He expected them to walk about 5 miles in the heat to get to their home.

Luckily, I was finishing my run and only about 1/2 mile from home, so I was able to run and get my truck and take them and their moped to their house.  It is important for us to help each other when the police are harrassing our friends, neighbors, family, and even strangers, first by filming the interactions, but in any other way we can also.