General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Starbucks thing... [View all]EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)This incident didn't begin with the "lawful order."
For example, why do you assume the men did not obey a "lawful order?" The order was only lawful if it was based on the law - in this case, the laws regarding trespassing.
Do you know for sure that the men were actually trespassing? Do you know for sure that the police made any attempt to determine whether the men were actually trespassing? In fact, by all accounts, they did not.
For example, we know the store either did not have a policy restricting seating to paying customers, or if it did, it was not regularly enforced since other people were sitting in the shop who had not purchased anything and everything they were not asked to leave or arrested.
Given that, it is unlikely the men were trespassing. So, if the police ordered them to leave on the ground that they were trespassing, that was not a lawful order.
And, as I noted, even if the police believed, based only on what the manager told them, that the men were trespassing, why did they not order EVERYONE who was trespassing to leave the restaurant? The fact that only two people were told to leave likely makes the order arbitrary and capricious and, therefore, likely unlawful.
It is not appropriate for the police to just show up, accept without question what one person says and then arrest people based on that. If they are going to use the power and might of their badges and guns to arrest someone based on a store policy, they are required to do more than just take the manager's word for it - especially when other people in the place were adamantly swearing to them that this was NOT the policy. They had a duty to ascertain exactly what the policy was, that a law had been broken and that required more than just a manager simply pointing at two black guys and telling them "get them out of here." And even beyond that, they had the discretion NOT to make an arrest, even if they felt an order had not been followed. They are thinking individuals with lots of discretion, not robots or Nazis who just have to follow orders.
I think you illustrate the problem with these kinds of things. You start the clock running not where the problem first emanated but with the supposed "wrongdoing" of the two black men, failing to take into account the circumstances that led to it, giving the benefit of the doubt to the manager and cops and accepting at face value without any scrutiny or skepticism everything they said and did.
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