A former Virginia police officer, who is accused of pepper-spraying and handcuffing a U.S. Army lieutenant, should not be criminally charged, but should be investigated.
www.foxnews.com
I'd like to see the video before weighing in too heavily but this much is for sure...if he was pulling him over for no license plate and the vehicle did indeed have a license plate, the officer did not have Probable Cause (PC) to make the stop. No probable cause means you can't make the stop.
It also mentions window tint. That issues varies by state but sometimes that means that the tint itself is not PC. I
THINK it is PC in Virginia but I'm not certain. That said, if it does reach the level of PC in Virginia, the officer would need a "tint meter" on scene to justify his suspicion and then he would need to write him a ticket or give him a warning to back it up. If the tint wasn't illegal, the traffic stop must end upon said revelation unless other issues were unsettled which I will touch upon below.
Moving on, I'd need to know why the officer felt like he needed the driver to exit the vehicle. The author of the article didn't plainly state it but it sounds like the officers believed that the driver was attempting to elude police. That would explain why they had their weapons drawn and why they would want him out of the vehicle. But, and this is VERY important, he was not charged with Eluding so that is out. You can't claim he was eluding and then not charge him with it. That makes your actions during the stop unjustified.
For officer safety, you can make someone get out of their vehicle but if you use any force in doing so, you damn well better be able to articulate why it was necessary to a) get him out and b) had to use force.
Also, the expression "you fixin' to ride the lightning" has nothing to do with black people and the electric chair. It was a reference to his taser which applies 40k to 60k volts of electricity at low amperage. He should have stated, "sir, if you don't comply, I will tase you." But still...the authors conclusions are ridiculous and not based on reality.
Side note, the movie "The Green Mile" was not about a black man getting the electric chair. LOL, the guy who wrote this article needs to buy a clue.
Without seeing the incident on video I would hesitate to draw a conclusion but clearly there were some serious mistakes made by the officers. Basic things that they should have known.
