For Immediate Release: January 9, 2020
Trouble Understanding Police Orders Constitutes Resistance, Justifies Use of Excessive Force (Taser, Chokehold) Rules Oklahoma Federal Court
MUSKOGEE, Okla. — An Oklahoma federal court has refused to hold police responsible for brutalizing an African-American man who, despite complying with police orders during an arrest, was subjected to excessive force and brutality, including being thrown to the ground, tasered, and placed in a chokehold that rendered him unconscious and required his hospitalization for three days.
In granting the police officers’ motion to dismiss a Fourth Amendment lawsuit filed by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute on behalf of Jeriel Edwards, the court ruled that Edwards’ confusion and trouble understanding police directions constituted “resistance” that justified the force used by the four police officers involved in the violent arrest. Institute attorneys argued that, as shown by dash cam video of the arrest, Edwards was peaceful, did not defy police orders, and did nothing to provoke the clearly unreasonable and excessive force employed by the police.
Affiliate attorney Andrea Worden is assisting in the defense of Edwards’ Fourth Amendment rights.
“If you ask police what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “The problem is what to do when compliance is not enough. How can you maintain the illusion of freedom when daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or merely exist?”
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