Black real estate agent and his Black clients file lawsuit after being handcuffed by police

[Jedi Guy]

63. Once he refused to exit the vehicle, he did commit a crime.

Again, as decided in Pennsylvania v. Mimms, if a police officer orders you to exit the vehicle for a weapons pat-down, that is a lawful order and you must comply. It may begin as a request, but if refused, it will then become an order. Failure to obey is either resisting or obstructing an officer, depending on the verbiage in local laws. Note that he was charged with "Obstructing Official Business." That's the result of declining to exit the vehicle when given a lawful order to do so.

As I've said, I 100% agree with you that the officers could have handled it better. A supervisor may have been able to talk through the situation. Had he refused to comply with a supervisor, the same thing would have happened, though. You don't get to ignore lawful orders because "I don't wanna." Plenty of people make that choice and the same thing happens.

The best course of action if you feel a cop's request/order is unreasonable is to follow it anyway and then fight it out later in court. Refusing to comply on the scene is not going to end well. Any lawyer will tell you the exact same thing.