Obeying The Law !

 Many people would have been shocked to see a news item on the nightly television news that showed police manhandling a woman and attempting to drag her out of her car.  She was resisting and in the outcome she was handcuffed and sat on the ground beside her car.

It seems the police thought the arm designed to hold a driver's phone obscured her vision of the road ahead and intended to investigate.  They asked to see her drivers license, and she refused.  They asked her to step out of the car, and again she refused.   She claimed to feel frightened because the police were armed.

This whole affair has certainly enraged the civil liberties crowd.  It certainly looked like a " rough arrest " and some will question the wisdom of physically dragging a resisting young women from behind the wheel, but the police have every right to demand to see a drivers license.  It is an offence to drive a car without having that license in your possession.

This young woman will probably claim she had a " panic attack ".  It was not revealed whether she actually did have a valid drivers license, but that refusal to produce it required the police to determine her identity and address so the issue of a fine could proceed.  They had the right to arrest her and take her to a police station until that could be determined.

Perhaps it was the end of a long shift and the policed involved were tired and crabby.  Individual officers have varying degrees of tolerance and some would persist longer in getting her cooperation, but it is the job of the police to enforce the law and this refusal of a reasonable request would arouse suspicion that perhaps the car carried drugs.

There is a definite limit on how long officers will stand and argue with a suspect refusing to obey their obligations under the law, and arrest is the obvious outcome.  If a person arrested resists that arrest, they .are usually charged with " assaulting police officers. "   It is not unusual for the suspect and the officers to sustain injuries during the resulting struggle.

In this struggle depicted on the news there were no obvious injuries.  Certainly a loss of dignity and it would have been an unpleasant experience for the young woman involved, but it could have been avoided had she simply produced her driving license when it was requested.  That is not optional.  That is a requirement that is made clear when a driving license is first obtained.

That news story is something many women will view with repugnance.  It is disconcerting to see a woman being manhandle forcibly under any circumstances and yet this was not in any way attributed to skin colour or ethnity.  It was the outcome to a refusal to produce a driving license when a  very reasonable and legal such request was made.

In this instance, the person who was so roughly arrested was a blonde haired white woman, but had her skin been black or brown, or had she been wearing a head scarf that identified her as Muslim it could have produced street marches and demonstrations which would have lasted for days.

Something that would have been completely avoided had she produced her license, as she was required to do by law !