by Dish Staff
Dan Savage passes along the disturbing video above:
A man was sitting in a public place waiting to pick his kids up from school. He wasn’t breaking any laws. A shop owner asked him to move—which the shop owner had no right to do—and the man got up and moved. He was then stopped by a cop who asked him his name. He refused to give his name. “I know my rights,” the man said to the cop. And he did know his rights: he was under no obligation to identify himself to her. “Minnesota does not currently have a ‘stop and identify’ statute in place” that would give police the right to arrest someone for [not] identifying himself,” RawStory points out. The cop, unfortunately, didn’t know his rights.
Conor is rightly outraged:
The City Pages explains what happened after the arrest. “The man was charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, and obstructing the legal process,” they write, “but those charges were later dropped. On Twitter, the St. Paul PD’s public information officers said no formal complaint has been filed in connection with the incident.” A police administrator who sees that video, which Lollie’s attorney brought to court, should not require a formal complaint from the victim to discipline the officers involved and acknowledge that they engaged in inept policing!
Yet the police department–which held on to Lollie’s phone, with the video on it, for 6 months–is defending the officers.
The Dish 