"You just destroyed my window, officer"

[Grace62]

Black wrote:
I'm not convinced there's a profit motive or that snatching undocumented immigrants off the street is a significant motive here. Where I live they set up operations like this to effectively cordon off a gang territory when shootings/killings have been going back and forth for a few days. Usually they call them "seat belt checks."
Legality aside, I appreciate any activist effort to try to preserve our constitutional rights.

There's a long history of behavior by Escondido police that has absolutely nothing to do with crime other than illegal immigration. Escondido has maybe 3 or 4 murders a year, and fairly low property crime. What they do have is a majority population that is Latino. ICE agents ride in police cars on patrol there, something that doesn't happen in most cities. They use these "sobriety checkpoints" to find illegal aliens and to impound cars, it's been going on for years, and I'm glad to see this get some daylight.

Here's more info...
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/jul/14/esc...n-agents-/

[Ca Bob]

The idea that having an accent automatically constitutes an antiauthoritarian challenge to police power is silly, and indicates a projection of inner fantasies and (dare we say it) racial attitudes. People have accents because of their early language acquisition.

If the refusal to play the checkpoint game has a political purpose, and that purpose involves ethnic tensions, I can believe it, but I don't see or hear any posturing or arrogance on the part of the driver or the passenger. The police are acting like police, which means in practice that they don't have a lot of legal flexibility in this kind of situation, and aren't going to show much of a sense of humor either.

For all we know, several of the police at the checkpoint might be latino, just as they might be of Viet Namese extraction a little further north.

By the way, the Los Angeles Police Department has just announced a new policy where it will not automatically impound cars from those without legal operating permits. It is somewhat controversial, to say the least.

[Grace62]

Any Spanish speakers here? At the beginning of the video, the guys are planning, in Spanish, what they plan to say to the police. It's clearly a set-up.
It'll be interesting to see if the DA presses charges against this driver, I'm guessing he probably will not. Doesn't look good for his police force. They wouldn't answer the guy's simple question about why he was being stopped, but instead said "you know why."
Breaking the window after 3 minutes? It's also not the law that you have to roll down the window all the way, so the police have a problem there too.

[Black]

Grace62 wrote:
Any Spanish speakers here? At the beginning of the video, the guys are planning, in Spanish, what they plan to say to the police.

I'm immersed in Spanish language and Latin-American culture pretty much all day.

They're speaking spanglish-- he says twice "so, se me dice" which means "so, if they say to me . . ." ("so" should really be "pues" . . .)

I don't get the impression either would be able to carry on a whole conversation in Spanish.

[kj]

I can't see what point they actually make. They ask for his license, which is sop for any contact you have with a law officer, and they refuse to cooperate. I believe you guys as far as what you say the point is, but I don't get how the video illustrates any kind of unfairness. Stupid. kj.

[Mac1337]

Ca Bob wrote:
I don't see or hear any posturing or arrogance on the part of the driver or the passenger.

You sure you saw the same video I saw? No attitude, no posturing? Who among us would demand that a police officer give you his name and badge number? For what?

[Grace62]

Here's the problem for the police.

"When the driver encounters the police officer at the checkpoint, he greets the officer. The driver's side window is lowered about 2 inches. Here is the conversation that follows:

Navarrete: "How are you doing?"

Officer: "Can you roll down your window?"

Navarrete: "I can hear you just fine."

Officer: "I want you to roll the window down."

Navarrete: "Why is that, sir?"

Officer: "Because I'm going to break it if you don't open it."
(there is no law that says you have to roll down the window all the way in a traffic stop)

Navarrete: "Go ahead."

Officer "I'm sorry?"

Navarrete: "Go ahead."

Officer: "Go ahead and break it?"

Navarrete: "It's up to you.

Am I being detained or am I free to go?"

Officer: "You are not free to go."

Navarrete: "So am I being detained?"

Officer: "You are being detained."

Attorneys for the two men said they plan to argue in court that they were illegally detained because they had complied with what they were told to do, up to the point where the officer said they were detained.

Isaac Blumberg, an attorney representing Alfaro, said the window was rolled down enough to have a conversation.

"I contend that they did comply," Blumberg said.

The officers at the checkpoint did not ask the driver to show his driver's license until after both men were detained, Blumberg said.

[Grace62]

Dakota wrote:
[quote=Ca Bob]
I don't see or hear any posturing or arrogance on the part of the driver or the passenger.

You sure you saw the same video I saw? No attitude, no posturing? Who among us would demand that a police officer give you his name and badge number? For what?
I'm curious as to where you came across this video. It's not in the national news and I doubt you were reading San Diego local news. It is in the ACLU-type and Latino advocacy website worlds, but I doubt you were there either.
Freeper?

[$tevie]

It's absurd to say that the men in the car had a "We are hispanics and we dare you lay a finger on us" attitude.

It was a deliberate plan to have a confrontation which explains the men's attitude, not their ethnicity. It also means that both sides are on shaky ground in my mind, since you shouldn't start something that you aren't willing to finish.

They did go to that location intending to force the police officer's hand. If you do that you should expect to have a confrontation. If in fact the police had shrugged and said "Ah, forget about it, we're sorry we bothered you", then their mission would have been kind of pointless, would it not?

[Mac1337]

Grace62 wrote:
[quote=Dakota]
[quote=Ca Bob]
I don't see or hear any posturing or arrogance on the part of the driver or the passenger.

You sure you saw the same video I saw? No attitude, no posturing? Who among us would demand that a police officer give you his name and badge number? For what?
I'm curious as to where you came across this video. It's not in the national news and I doubt you were reading San Diego local news. It is in the ACLU-type and Latino advocacy website worlds, but I doubt you were there either.
Freeper?
I saw it on the network that all of you tell me not to watch. Good thing I didn't listen.