someone sent me this video on Friday and asked me what my take was

now since it's blowing up on twitter I guess I'll do a quick thread on it https://twitter.com/JulianCastro/status/1380732800714878976

now, i am pretty sympathetic to how this plays out, so i'm going to go through this first from the civilian perspective, and then the police perspective, to kinda explain why I think this played out like it did

because frankly, not all the takes on this are good

so, civilian perspective:

you're driving at night and you hear sirens behind you. you're not speeding and don't have warrants, and maybe are a bit confused as to what's going on, but you keep driving and look for some place to turn into that's well lit.

it doesn't take too long, not a full block, but you stop in a gas station and wait for the officer to approach the door and tell you what's going on, because you're playing it out in your head and don't understand why you've been stopped.

so you check your rearview mirror and you see the cops who have stopped have pulled out their firearms, and so now you're probably freaking out, a little bit of an adrenaline spike.

that's the set up

now the police perspective:

you're patrolling your area and you see an SUV with no license plate. you run sirens and they refuse to pull over for almost a mile, instead pulling into a gas station. they don' turn off the engine and just sit there. the windows are tinted and so/

/a bunch of red flags are getting thrown up, so you pull out your firearm and give commands back from your vehicle, b/c this is pretty high-risk situation for a traffic stop

that's their set up

a few more details before we go further: the driver, Lt Nazario, did have a paper tag, but it was improperly secured to the back windshield, which itself was even tinted and not visible to the police.

as for the claim nazario was "eluding the police" I actually am curious how/

/this holds up - was it a 30 second drive to the gas station? were there other turn offs? how long did it take?

i can't find the dashcam footage before this so if anyone has it let me know, that's a fairly big factor.

now, what happens next is the police start yelling commands, "roll down the window/show me your hands" stuff.

and probably most importantly, they give 20 (I counted) commands to exit the video

Nazario doesn't exit the vehicle

so just to recap - you don't pull over right away, don't have a tag, have an illegal tint, and now refuse to leave your vehicle after TWENTY commands to do so across several minutes of time.

can't really fault the police too much, and frankly, *AT THIS POINT IN TIME* there/

/is nothing the police have really done wrong. personally, i'd prefer they keep a calmer tone, "keep your hands out the window, grab the handle and open the door" or whatever, but really i don't see how

AT THIS POINT IN TIME

anyone can complain

if you do think that they have made some egregious error in conduct, reply to this tweet and let me know, but i'm really curious what else they're supposed to have done in this situation.

now we proceed with the video

the two officers have approached the car and/

/at this point, the backing officer has taken out his mace and threatened to use it.

at this point, 7 more commands to get out of the car are given.

Lt Nazario tells them he just wants to talk about what is going on, and also tells the officers that he doesn't/

/have to get out of the car for a traffic violation

well, that's just bullshit

Pennsylvania v Mimms 1977, SCOTUS decision

for any traffic violation, if the police ask you to get out of the car, you have to get out of the car.

he has now refused 27 lawful orders to get out

finally, the backing officer has given up reasoning. he sprays the OC spray into the guy's face a few times, and 9 more commands to get out of the car are given, before the backing officer manages to open the car door himself

and also as a quick sidenote, here's the take on the whole "I served this country and you're treating me like this?" comment, from someone actively serving the US Marine Corps:

now, I know some of you are going to immediately respond to this just saying I'm a racist, despite race not even being a single identifiable factor or cause of literally anything that happened in this encounter, but I'm now going to post another video/

/which, as soon as I saw this video, I immediately thought of.

on June 29, 2020, in Tulsa OK David Ware got pulled over a an illegal turn. he didn't have his insurance or license on him, and he was asked to get out of the vehicle so it could be towed

he was asked over 40 times, and he refused over 40 times. David appeared to be submissive, but just didn't want to leave his car. he started crying, said the cops were violating his rights, he didn't have to leave the car

then, when the cops tried to get him out/

/he managed to grab a gun from beneath this seat, shot both police officers, and then executed Lieutenant Craig Johnson who was lying on the ground https://tulsaworld.com/video/news/tulsa-police-video-shows-shooting-of-two-officers/video_18b6fff0-4d05-56cf-82d1-4b88d6ccdfb8.html

it does not matter if the person doesn't seem violent.

it does not matter if the person is crying or acting submissive

traffic stops are high-risk as is, and when combined with tinted windows and someone refusing to exit their vehicle, they can become deadly in seconds

when the police ask you to exit your vehicle: do it.

but

i can't really be all that upset with Lt. Nazario. in the clip when he says "i don't want to reach for my seatbelt"

it's not hard to tell what he's thinking

he's thinking the cops are looking for a reason to shoot him

and frankly, i can't blame him for thinking that.

there is a much bigger problem going on.

there was a public poll done, asking people "How many unarmed black men do you believe were killed in 2019?"

here's the responses:

appx 53% of "very liberal" and 38% of "liberal" respondents thought the number was 1000+

even about 25% of moderates put it in that ball park.

20% of very liberal respondents thought it was 10,000 or more

the real number via WashingtonPost database statistics:

12

Lt Nazario is thinking that the police are going to kill him because that's widespread public perception thanks to media coverage

meanwhile the police are getting worked up because he won't exit his vehicle and they've seen dozens upon dozens of videos in training/

/of fellow officers getting executed by people who are keeping weapons in their car at traffic stops

this is how a possible traffic citation becomes a struggle where both parties think they're seconds away from death

i know many people think that the police were still too harsh, but especially after the David Ware shooting and researching just how dangerous traffic stops are, i'm fairly sympathetic

also Nazario refusing to get out of his car after being asked nearly 40 times is/

/something I haven't heard many people come up with any valid excuse for

lastly, and i'm still waiting for literally any evidence of this, can anyone tell me why we've decided this was police racism?

at any point in this video does his race get brought up?

I get that's kinda just what we do now, we see that one person is white and one is black and there's conflict, ergo racism

but i'd still kinda like, you know, some minimum level of evidence that there was any sort of racial animus in what happened here

Also further comments on the commands in this subthread https://twitter.com/bluerepublik/status/1381016727526518796

I’m also curious what the *solution* is to this

If there’s a vehicle with tinted windows/no visible tag, are police *not allowed* to draw weapons to stay back from now on?

If someone says “nah I’m never leaving the car” without giving ID, do we just say “oh well bye”

I mean at the end of the day - let’s talk policy. What are you telling recruits in the academy you’re supposed to do here different?

I’m fine with more clear instructions on “unlock the car, then reach out the window and open the door from the outside” but we know/

/that at the beginning Nazario had a 30 second window where 6 commands to get out of the car were given, where his hands were NOT in sight, and he made no attempt to unbuckle or do anything, AND he later said “I don’t have to get out of the car for a traffic violation”

At the end of the day, what do you do with someone who refuses to get out of their car after over 30 commands?

I do think the backer was inappropriate in what he said and was too aggressive but that’s not the core problem here by a long shot, and none of this is evidence/

/that these police were evil vicious racists

In fact when they pulled their guns before the window rolled down, because of the window tint and they couldn’t run tags, it’s *impossible* for them to have known Nazario’s race

It’s just a weird fucking narrative

No, I do not like how the backer acted. He was too aggressive and said inappropriate bullshit. That in no way negates everything else I’ve been saying, multiple things can be true at once people