Are plain clothes police officers allowed to use force to make an arrest? Disclaimer: I'm not related to this case in any way shape or form, I'm just a citizen trying to look at this without bias. Recently there was an issue in Massachusettes where a group of skaters were asked to leave the premises, a police officer confiscated a board from one of the skaters, but the skaters said they were leaving, they just wanted the board back. Obviously, the skaters are in the wrong for skating on public/city property (and grabbing the board from the officer), but I don't think a trespassing charge like that should outweigh possible misconduct of a group of officers. During the disagreement, another skater went to rip the board out of the officers hand and run off, at which point a non-uniformed cop stepped in and tackled the skater. While going down, the officer and skater exchanged blows, when asked by the court, the skater said he wouldn't have punched him had he known it was a cop. So instead of getting an assault/battery charge, he now is trying to be pressed with assault/battery of a police officer (albeit, non-uniformed, non-identifiable). However the new has been putting a focus on the use of force in the case. Considering, while the first tackle was going down, another individual was seen in the video cussing out the officers and walking away. At which point, you hear an officer yell grab him and the skater runs off, to get tackled by another officer. My main question here is, how can a non-uniformed/non-identified cop try to stick an assault/battery of an officer charge on someone, if the only people at the scene who know he is an officer, are the other officers. I used to skate, but am trying to look at this unbiased, as I've seen plenty of citizens try to step in and be vigilantes, so the thought that the one skater believed he was being tackled by a random bystander doesn't seem super far-fetched. Attached is the news article of the incident, which includes a break-down video of the altercation.
Police officers are authorized to use force regardless of what they are wearing, to effect an arrest. One issue will be whether the defendants should know that they were under arrest, but there is no requirement to utter particular phrases when dealing with a combative lawbreaker. There will be an internal investigation at some level to determine whether the officers violated any department policy, and no doubt the video and testimony of those in the are would be relevant. There probably is some policy to the effect that you have to distinguish yourself from a street vigilante (you have to state your authority), though I can't find any specific online publicly-available department rules. There is no law that requires an officer to say that he is one, or to show his badge, before starting an arrest.
Based on the question, this was not perjury; if the officer did not review the footage, the fact that his testimony was in error indicates a mistake, nothing more. To even consider a perjury charge, the prosecuting authorities would need evidence that the officer knew the testimony was wrong when he gave it. You do not indicate the jurisdiction, so nobody can say whether an appeal would lie (since new evidence has come to light), whether the conviction could be quashed for procedural failure (if multiple requests for evidence were really not received) or whether a complaint could be made against the prosecutor, the defence lawyer, or even the judge. But no case has ever been strengthened by brandishing about words like 'perjury' without being able to substantiate them.
I think it would depend on how a jury viewed the "challenge" to her audience. The general rule for self-defense in Texas is that the person needs to reasonably believe that force is immediately necessary to protect herself from someone else's use of force. I think a jury would find it reasonable to believe that someone forcefully attempting to steal your gun was planning to use it against you. More importantly, the law generally presumes that that belief is reasonable if the person is being robbed, assuming that she isn't otherwise engaged in criminal activity. Since openly carrying an AR-15 is -- as far as I know -- legal in Texas, I think she'd probably be fine. But: The law also says that the use of force is not justified when a person consents to the other person's use of force, or if the person has provoked the other person. So now you have the question of whether the student's challenge constitutes a provocation or consent to the use of force. I think you can make a decent argument for provocation, which means that "the defendant did some act or used some words intended to and calculated to bring on the difficulty in order to have a pretext for inflicting injury." Neal v. State, No. 12-14-00158-CR, 2016 WL 1446138, at *11 (Tex. App. Apr. 13, 2016). You might also make out a decent argument for consent, which doesn't necessarily seem to require that the parties exactly spell out the rules of engagement, just that there is some kind of agreement between the two parties. In one case, for instance, a defendant tried to argue that a fight had gone beyond the rules because one party used a chokehold and knocked the other out. But the court said that the only actual rule agreed to was that there would be no weapons used. Padilla v. State, No. 03-07-00513-CR, 2008 WL 5423139, at *2 (Tex. App. Dec. 31, 2008). That makes me think that as long as there's consent to some kind of fight, you don't necessarily need rules, though you do need to abide by them if you agree to them. So what's the scope of consent in this case? If we say that she's agreed to the use of force by challenging people to take something from her, and she hasn't said how you can do it, can you do it by any means you choose? I don't think a court would let someone shoot her to get it, but maybe they would be allowed to pry it out of her hands. So all of that is a long way of saying that this is a tricky question, and that any decision would probably depend a lot on the specific facts of who she was talking to, what exactly she was saying, how she was carrying the gun, and so on.
can really anyone in Germany call the police on others without proof of anything? Anyone anywhere can call the police without proof of anything as long as they have a phone. The question is, what will the police do about it. Police in Germany are more professional and less corrupt than in many countries in the world (e.g. they are much less corrupt than police in much of the United States or police in Southern Italy or Mexico, or in much of the &quot;third-world&quot;). Most German police are unlikely to exercise their power unless they are genuinely deceived into thinking that you committed an actual crime. But, German cops are human too. Some German cops are bad cops and even good cops aren't perfect truth detectors or bias free. and if so what are my rights? There has to be some evidence to arrest you or prosecute you, but testimony from people who claim to be eye witnesses is a form of evidence and proof. People are routinely convicted of crimes (everywhere in the world) based solely upon the testimony of other people with no additional proof. This is usually a good rule. As a society we don't want the criminal justice system to let people who commit crimes that are witnessed by lots of truthful witnesses and testified to, to go free just because there is no non-testimonial evidence. But because people lie (or are simply mistaken about the truth) sometimes, it isn't a perfect way of determining who is guilty and who is innocent. You also have the right to lodge a complaint of criminal defamation with the police in Germany and in Germany hundreds of thousands of such cases are prosecuted by police every year. Making false accusations against you (or even just insulting you in an extremely offense manner) as they did is a minor crime in Germany. and the person I mentioned had 2 of his employees with him but I am sure and I know for a fact they are on his side and I had no witnesses with me so how can I prove I am innocent? if they agreed on making up a story against me? The possibility that people will be wrongfully arrested and wrongfully convicted of crimes because people lie and authorities believe the people who are lying is a constant risk. The best you can do is to tell your story consistently and honestly and hope that you are believed. But it is impossible to eliminate the risk that people will lie and be believed and that you will suffer the consequences, even if you are doing everything right. In the long run, you may want to avoid people who you think would lie and make false accusations around you, and to have the presence of either friendly witnesses and/or audio/visual recording at times when you are in their presence. You may also, as a long run strategy try to figure out if there was anything you could have done to prevent them from being out to get you so badly that they would make false accusations against you. While I don't want to blame the victim, and often enough, especially for example, if you are a foreigner or otherwise different in a homogeneous community some people are doing to hate you for no reason, sometimes their real motivation may be a failure to follow social norms that are not actually illegal, or a misunderstand that could be cleared up.
The only time cops are violating the law for cowardice is when they fail to intervene in misconduct by another cop, see, e.g., here at page 10 (two police carry out a blatantly unlawful arrest, but there is also liability for the two other junior officers watch and do nothing about their superiors' misconduct), or when an arrested or incarcerated person has been placed in peril by the cop, see, e.g., here (police arrest woman and put her in a squad car on train tracks and fail to try to rescue her when a train is about to and then does smash into the squad car where she is helplessly handcuffed and locked in). This said, cops are routinely disciplined or fired for cowardice as an employment matter (see, e.g., here where a policeman who fails to rush in to stop a school shooting in progress was &quot;suspended in the immediate aftermath of the attack and later resigned&quot; and also here in a similar case). But, they are rarely disciplined or fired for being too aggressive even if it crosses the legal line unless the facts are unequivocally clear.
The non-cougher committed an unjustified assault, and could be arrested or sued for his actions. The actions were clearly not the minimal level of force needed to prevent continued assault or to effect an arrest (the dude who entered and coughed clearly is guilty of assault). This is regardless of covid. Instead, the other guy decided to beat on the first punk. The courts might retaliate against the cougher by fining him or sending him to prison: that is what the law is all about (putting the use of force under the control of laws, not individual emotion). It would be legal to use some degree of force to arrest the guy, and it would be legal to use some degree of force to prevent the guy from continuing with his assault. The puncher was not engaged in self-defense, because there was no credible continuing threat and his response was way over the top. The particular response here, vigilante justice, was disproportionate, and not justified by the circumstances. A police officer might have arrested both of them, had one been present (but police have discretion, so he might have gone with the &quot;you started it&quot; theory). Legally, they were both wrong.
If you consent, the evidence can almost certainly be used against you. Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429 (1991) (&quot;Even when officers have no basis for suspecting a particular individual, they may generally ask questions of that individual, ask to examine the individual's identification, and request consent to search.&quot;) If you refuse consent, it is not clear whether the evidence can be used against you, as we don't know why the officer is asking to frisk you. A stop-and-frisk must be supported by a reasonable and articulable suspicion that you have just committed or are about to commit a crime, and that you are at that moment armed and dangerous. If they reasonably suspect you have just committed a crime but do not reasonably suspect you are armed and dangerous, the police may stop you, but they may not search you. That point is worth emphasizing because several other answers are incorrectly assuming otherwise. For one example, in Thomas v. Dillard, 818 F.3d 864 (9th Cir. 2016), the police responded to a report of domestic violence. Based on their reasonable and articulable suspicion that the suspect had committed that crime, the police stopped and frisked him. Because they had could reasonably explain why they thought he had committed a crime, but could not reasonably explain why they thought he was armed and dangerous, the court said the stop was legal, but the frisk was not: Whereas the purpose of a Terry stop is to further the interests of crime prevention and detection, a Terry frisk is justified by the concern for the safety of the officer and others in proximity. Accordingly, whereas a Terry stop is justified by reasonable suspicion that criminal activity may be afoot, a frisk of a person for weapons requires reasonable suspicion that a suspect is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others. A lawful frisk does not always flow from a justified stop. Rather, each element, the stop and the frisk, must be analyzed separately; the reasonableness of each must be independently determined. Even then, the search is basically limited to a minimally intrusive patdown to ensure you don't have any weapons on you, and the officer is generally not permitted to actually search inside pockets or the like, though the search may escalate based on what the officer is able to feel during the patdown. Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366, 375–76 (1993) (&quot;If a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect's outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, ... its warrantless seizure would be justified by the same practical considerations that inhere in the plain-view context.&quot;) The refusal to respond generally operates as a refusal to consent. The police are therefore free to conduct whatever search they could have conducted without your consent. If they have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that you're carrying a gun, they can probably frisk you to see if that's the case. If they have a warrant to search your pockets, they can search your pockets. If they don't have any of that, they need to keep their hands to themselves.
You should file a complaint with the police. If you complain to the police then they might do something. If you don't complain then they certainly won't. Are food trucks licensed? You might try complaining to the license authority. However go to the police first because the licence authority are unlikely to do anything without a police complaint. Even being just another statistic helps increase the pressure for action on the wider issue of racism in society. If all else fails you can just post the incident on YouTube and see what happens. Its an unreliable method of enforcement and can backfire, but it has been known for international embarrassment to kick reluctant authorities into action.