People in Austin were outraged recently when Amanda Jo Stephen was arrested for jaywalking – a crime that ultimately required four officers and left Stephen sitting cuffed and crying on the ground in front of onlookers. The video is below. However, it was the response of Austin police chief Art Acevedo made this even more bizarre and disturbing.
When people objected to the treatment this woman and over-reaction of his officers, Acevedo responded that “In other cities there’s cops who are actually committing sexual assaults on duty, so I thank God that this is what passes for a controversy in Austin, Texas.” At best, that sounds like a flippant dismissal of abuse and at worse almost sounded like Stephen was lucky to get away without a gang rape by officers.
Acevedo was inundated with calls and later apologized for the “poor analogy” and insisted that “I attempted to place the arrest into context by bringing attention to the fact that law enforcement deals with many acts of serious misconduct.”
The problem with the apology is that it still misses part of the problem. Putting aside the basis for this arrest, everyday and casual abuses are a major problem of police misconduct. This woman was left cuffed and sitting on the ground in public and then arrested and charged. Four officers participated in the arrest. Arbitrary and over-the-top police enforcement that creates fear of police and a sense of impunity for officers. Then when a chief of police shrugs it off as still better than a rape, it sends a chilling message to citizens and the wrong signal to officers. It is much much worse than a “poor analogy” in my view.
By the way, the original Acevedo interview contained other comments from the Chief in dismissing objections from cities. Stephen was charged with “failure to identify” and “failure to obey a pedestrian control device.” Acevedo says that his officers were merely trying to change the behavior of citizens and issued seven citations that day to reduce traffic deaths. He then noted that she was handcuffed after telling the officer not to touch her and “All that young lady had to do when she was asked for her information was to provide it by law. Instead of doing that, she decided to throw [herself] to the ground – officers didn’t sit her down – and she did the limp routine.” He indicated that she got off easy: “Thank you lord that it’s a controversy in Austin, Texas that we actually have the audacity to touch somebody by the arm and tell them ‘oh my goodness, Austin Police, we’re trying to get your attention.’ Quite frankly, she wasn’t charged with resisting, and she was lucky I wasn’t the arresting officer because I wouldn’t have been quite as generous.” Generous. Well, it appears that she got the nice Austin officers. It seems that she should be counting her lucky stars that she was not raped by officers in other cities or ran into the Chief of Police as a jaywalker.
Source: Daily Texan
Kudos: DavidM
Those police are drunk with the power that simply touching them is considered an assault.
Follow….
This is crazy….. The COP deserves a new employment opportunity…. They may use this rouse of jaywalking as the reason…. But the are really looking for under aged drinkers…. 24th street is over by the upper scale living and bars…..
I suspect he is making a snide reference to San Diego, where we have had close to half a dozen officers charged with multiple counts ranging from simply groping female arestees, to exposing themselves, to offering to release them in exchange for sexual favors. Not a pretty picture.
Just look at the fat ugly pig standing over the poor woman.What a perfect example of what is wrong with American police
Disgusting. Frightening. The Chief claiming that women should be relieved it’s not a rape, just an arrest is absolutely chilling. I’ve been told something similar several times when in a debate about women’s issues in the US. Basically, “what are you complaining about? Be thankful you live in a civilized country, you could be living in Afghanistan”. It appears that we all must lower our expectations of what constitutes civility, in these people’s minds, so they can continue abusing others, because they aren’t as vile as ” them”….yet.
QUOTE ““I attempted to place the arrest into context by bringing attention to the fact that law enforcement deals with many acts of serious misconduct.”
Is he talking about jaywalking, or manhandling people in a arrest for jaywalking??!?
Or perhaps referring back to cops that rape or sexually assault….??
Or is he talking about the murderers & felons that are out on the streets, while they arrest jaywalkers?
The chief is a mystery….
Thank you David:
You are right about the woman’s pleas. Regular people have a sense of what is right and wrong. Even those who commit crimes knowingly at least recognize they have some form of fault in it. But when those such as this woman cry out like this it is more than them being not guilty, it is because they believe that it was an injustice that shouldn’t be tolerated. Interestingly the opposite is true as well. Many times I have had incidents where I arrested a guy that was undeniably guilty of a crime. He would protest about how BS the situation was and all, nothing really serious. Then after driving in the dark for about ten minutes on the way to the jail, he would be sleeping like a baby in the back seat. They knew they were had for what they did so for the moment the accepted it and nodded off.
There are times as you asked where speed enforcement is needed because people can become carried away. A highway that went through my area was a long open road and there were problems on Fridays and Sundays with speeders going way over the limit. So the state patrol would go out there and hammer them for a few weeks and the speeding would go down. One emphasis I worked the speeders were so bad I wasn’t stopping anything under 80 mph. That stretch of highway had a lot of wrecks over the years and high speed was one factor. One good thing about this was to put a lot of traffic stops over a long stretch of area. This gave more of an illusion of police presence than really was the case. When people saw this they started up with their cell phone / smart phone social media chats warning everyone how thick the patrols were and warned others not to speed or they would get caught, creating what’s called a “halo effect.” It didn’t matter so much as how many tickets were written, but how many cars were stopped, even if warnings were given, the message got across just thesame.
But quite frankly I got tired of writing infractions for people (ordinary traffic tickets) because I ended up feeling sorry for them. I still scratched out a ticket for no insurance or handicapped parking violation without any reservation. But to me writing someone for ten over or not signaling just caused the driver more trouble with their insurance and the costs than it was of benefit. I’d still pull them over but unless they were committing some crime I just gave a warning unless it was something really blatent or an accident resulted. Crimes were a different story.
Tickets as revenue sources are a touchy issue. I don’t have a problem in general with the fines from one or two tickets written during a shift but those traffic cameras generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines that some gov’t contractor shares and results in a windfall for a city I have a huge problem with that. These have been installed in some communities and the public became very upset with them. Some cities later banned their use after public pressure.
Darren, I agree with your assessment of traffic camera tickets. The voters in Houston got rid of them because they were simply there as revenue generation. I got a ticket for making a right turn at a red light AFTER I had come to a stop. I later learned that the cameras gave tickets if you did not stop for a minimum of four seconds. They did a survey, and over 85% of the tickets were given for right turn on red, NOT for running a turning red light, which was the ostensible reason for them in the first place. The law does not require a four second delay, and so these tickets were in violation of the law.
I got a speeding ticket once, and the trooper asked me if there was a reason for my going so fast. I replied I had a couple of Whataburgers that were hot and I needed to get home sooner rather than later. We both laughed at that, but I still got a ticket and we had a pleasant chat. He made getting a ticket almost enjoyable and his name was Smith as well. Must be something about that name that makes for good cops.
“She did the limp routine”
Police Chief complained about that, but had she NOT done the limp routine, she would have been charged with resisting arrest.
Typical stupid “We are right and you are wrong no matter what you do” mentality.
It is obviously time for the chief to go. The attitude he shows is that he and his officers get off on using their power to reduce a woman to tears, and getting her in their power. The rape analogy is quite appropriate since they say that rape is more about power than sex, so I can see why he thought of that. That his officers did not rape her is hardly to their credit since he and they like doing this kind of thing. Such folks are called sadists, NOT POLICE!
Oh, and I forgot to add one thing.
In police culture Jaywalking is considered the stereotypical stupid law that no real cop would ever write someone for. Phrases such as “He’d write his own mother for jaywalking” and “Typical FNG looking for a jaywalker to write” are used to deride other officers considered to be hardnosed and over-zealous.
But to arrest someone over a jaywalking incident? That is totally over the top. It would be a long time before those guys will not be laughed about at coffee breaks.
It’s us versus them.
David
First, thank you for bringing this artricle to everyone’s attention earlier. I have to wonder if at some point this chief went home, unbuckled his equipment belt, removed his vest, then laid back on his bed and thought…
Why couldn’t those fools just gave her a warning?
It is times like this when a police administrator or the arresting officer needs to do some serious personal reflection on what just happened. There is no sense in going down paths that led to these types of outcomes. Hopefully they will learn the value of not doing things like this again.
Maybe this woman can get a dismissal of the charges.
Hi Darren.
I always enjoy your sense of calm rational reaction to these types of stories. I wish all police officers were like you.
I was greatly affected by the woman’s sense of injustice in what had befallen her. Her cries of not having done anything wrong. Her screaming. These communicate to me a violation of a fundamental right of freedom. It calls into question the very idea of the existence of a jaywalking infraction. If a jaywalking infraction can lead to this, then I say get rid of that law. The law is more dangerous than the potential danger of jaywalking.
I sometimes wonder about speeding laws in the same vein, although with speeding laws, there certainly is a safety issue that is well documented. The problem is that enforcement seems to be more of a revenue stream and creates the image of police officers as harassing citizens. People don’t think, “look at all those crazy people speeding on highway; somebody needs to make them slow down.” No, most people are on the lookout for the officers trying to catch speeders. Many even pay for devices to detect their radars. What most citizens are afraid of are not the speeders but the police officers making speeders slow down. Something is wrong with this picture for a nation that prides itself as being the land of the free.
Based upon their behavior, here’s a new look for their police cars:
http://message.snopes.com/photos/signs/graphics/kern.jpg
The attitude of police chief Art Acevedo certainly flows down through his department creating this gestapo style police force that now exists. He needs to go. Whatever happened to the motto protect and serve? He asserts that they issued seven citations that day to reduce traffic deaths? Is he making this up, or is there actual traffic data showing how many deaths in that area were caused by jaywalking.
When I see stuff like this, it tells me the police force has too much money and too much time on their hands.
Well said, Justice Holmes.
Imbecils
This is exactly what I have been talking about for a while here and for years when I was with the department that stupid stuff like this jaywalking incident ends up mushrooming out of control. And the chief did his part with a personal stupid stuff statement about the rapes and look where it got him; made a laughing stock on a national level.
The sad part of this incident was this woman ended up booked in jail because these officers let something chippy, such as a jaywalking violation, get out of hand.
I have to agree with Professor Turley. How slow must a day be that 1) you have to arrest someone who is jaywalking and 2) four guys need to arrive to help out.
Rookies around the world: Read this article and do the opposite of what you see the police doing here.
“Acevedo says that his officers were merely trying to change the behavior of citizens and issued seven citations that day to reduce traffic deaths.”
Saviors. Downright heroic.
I have to admit I was surprised that the police officers did not commit a sexual assault. in fact, when I initially read the story I expected that very follow up account. Considering the flippant attitude of the police chief to rape it seems that such conduct would have been treated with the same “who cares attitude”. The behavior of police officers in this and other instances confirms the fear average humans have of the police. No longer can when feel safe in the presence of a police officer. A group of police officers can be positively terrifying. It seems that no matter how abusive and over the top a police officers behavior is, there is always an excuse. Citizens are now targets of criminals and the police who used to be there to protect them. It is a sad and sorry situation.
The war on jaywalkers.