Excessive force

“ Under this head we comprehend not only assassinations, and robberies committed by the populace, but by grandees and magistrates; whose example acts with more force, and at a greater distance, destroying the ideas of justice and duty among the subjects, and substituting that of the right of the strongest, equally dangerous to those who exercise it, and to those who suffer. ”

“ But there is also an intermediate class of people upon whom the possibility of having to appear in a police court, and the strong sense of shame attached to such appearances, is an active restraining force, tending to limit, and, in cases where the proper conditions exist, gradually to narrow, the sphere of violence. ”

“ Whatever law deviates from this principle will always meet with a resistance, which will destroy it in the end; for the smallest force, continually applied, will overcome the most violent motion communicated to bodies. ”

“ Inside our own nation the law-abiding man does not have to arm himself against the lawless simply because there is some armed force—the police, the sheriff's posse, the national guard, the regulars—which can be called out to enforce the laws. ”

“ So true is it that violence invariably leads to violence, and that an abuse of force is sooner or later followed by reprisals which, although they are to be deplored, cannot be altogether condemned, since, if they are without excuse, they, at least, have their explanation in an immutable law common to all nations and all epochs! ”

“ If a man disobeys me I either let it pass or shoot him out of hand, according to circumstances. If I were to strike a man or order him under arrest, the entire force would either mutiny or disband. Si señor, my llaneros are wild fellows. ”

“ Rely upon it, for every crime which is brought to light, and made the subject of commitment and trial by the institution of a police force, ten previously existed, undetected and unpunished, before men were driven to the flebile remedium, the ultimum malum, of taxing themselves for the establishment of a force to repress them. ”

“ However we may deplore and condemn the employment of violence and brute force in the prosecution of any national object, whether a glorious or infamous revolution, the history of our country and the signs of our times warn us against concluding that its days are past. ”

“ The question is asked, will you bring a mob upon us? In answer to that, we assure all concerned, that we will be among the first to put down anything like an illegal force being used against any man or set of men. ”

“ Where a known felony is attempted upon the person, be it to rob or murder, here the party assaulted may repel force with force, and even his own servant, then attendant on him, or any other person present, may interpose for preventing mischief, and if death ensue, the party so interposing will be justified. ”

“ An intent to oppose by force any officer of justice on his way to, in, or returning from the execution of the duty of arresting, keeping in custody, or imprisoning any person whom he is lawfully entitled to arrest, keep in custody, or imprison, or the duty of keeping the peace or dispersing an unlawful assembly, provided that the offender has notice that the person killed is such an officer so employed. ”

“ Whoever shall offer resistance to any capture or arrest for violating any of the provisions of these laws shall be punished, not only for the original offence for which he was arrested, but also for resisting an officer. ”

“ Everyone knows that threats of bodily harm may be made by a mere show of force, without violence of language or breach of the peace, and that mere numbers may intimidate. The real question is, ‘Does the conduct under existing facts amount to intimidation?’ Twenty-five or fifty pickets may, when a single picket probably would not. ”

“ That word I understand to mean any restraint of the person by force. In Buller’s Nisi Prius, p. 22, it is said: “Every restraint of a man’s liberty under the custody of another, either in a gaol, house, stocks, or in the street, is in law an imprisonment; and whenever it is done without a proper authority, is false imprisonment, for which the law gives an action; and this is commonly joined to assault and battery; for every imprisonment includes a battery, and every battery an assault.” ”

“ The words 'by force, threats, intimidation, or by any fencing or inclosing, or any other unlawful means' are as comprehensive of transient means of obstruction as of continuing or relatively permanent means. ”

“ The encounter did not leave behind with Chief Inspector Heat that satisfactory sense of superiority the members of the police force get from the unofficial but intimate side of their intercourse with the criminal classes, by which the vanity of power is soothed, and the vulgar love of domination over our fellow-creatures is flattered as worthily as it deserves. ”

“ Of course the exercise of force in the suppression of rebellion, or in the maintenance of laws, stands on a different principle, being in its nature a constabulary proceeding, which cannot be confounded with the duel. ”

“ In the old days, the criminal, visible to our physical eyes, would be seen, fleeing from justice, and after him, at a decent interval, the officers of the law, tailing away in a long perspective, properly exhausted and furious, their horses foaming and reeking with sweat in most appropriate style. ”

“ I have shown how these malefactors who were supposed to be expiating their crimes swaggered about, armed, and with knives in their hands, insulting their keepers with vile abuse, lording it over their weaker fellows, using violence whenever the spirit moved them to murder a constable, beat a comrade to death, or make a mouthful of his nose. ”

“ Or, should a devil, in the shape of an adviser, appear among them, and persuade these excitable folks that they may obtain higher wages by forcing their own terms, bludgeons and bullets are resorted to, in order to compel compliance, and incendiarism and murder follow, until a military force is called out to quell the riots. ”

“ But we are determined that no thief, burglar, incendiary, assassin, ballot-box stuffer or other disturber of the peace, shall escape punishment, either by quibbles of the law, the carelessness of the police or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice. ”

“ Punishment.—Severe punishment such as bucking and gagging, hanging up by the thumbs, walking the beat carrying heavy loads, sometimes whipping and even shooting, to the death practiced in the army and prison almost invariably falls to the lot of a soldier who wilfully disobeys known rules and regulations, but these punishments are sometimes administered by tyrannical officers, puffed up with a little brief authority, to gratify their own personal spites and prejudices. ”

“ Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. ”

“ If two workmen brought their differences before a police court, instead of getting their case decided on grounds of equity, they were pretty sure to get scolded in language unfit for ears polite, or to receive still worse treatment. Even among the higher officers of the force many became famous for their brutality. ”

“ The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the [Pg 258] individual, "crime." ”

“ That force, which continually impels us to our own private interest, like gravity, acts incessantly, unless it meets with an obstacle to oppose it. The effects of this force are the confused series of human actions. Punishments, which I would call political obstacles, prevent the fatal effects of private interest, without destroying the impelling cause, which is that sensibility inseparable from man. ”

“ Provided, That no person apprehended by military force as aforesaid shall be detained longer than five days after the arrest and before removal. And all officers and soldiers who may have any such person or persons in custody shall treat them with all the humanity which the circumstances will possibly permit; and every officer or soldier who shall be guilty of maltreating any such person while in custody, shall suffer such punishment as a court martial shall direct. ”

“ It would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this Court to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind but can extract what is in his stomach. ”

“ With an inefficient police, it was not to be expected that one tithe of the malefactors, then so numerous, should fall into the hands of justice, and the authorities endeavoured to make up for this imperfection by exaggerated severity, and by grotesqueness in the punishments they inflicted. ”

“ But if they send persons there furnished with arms, with the intent to offer forcible resistance to the constituted authorities, they are guilty of the highest crime known to civil society, and are amenable to its penalties. ”

“ There it frowns all day in the midst of a sickened population. And at night, the officers, reinforced, drag forth the wretch again, so bound that he is but an inert weight—they drag him forth, haggard, bloody, weeping, pleading, howling for life—calling upon God, calling upon his father and mother—for like a very child had this man become in the prospect of death—they drag him forth to execution. ”

“ Yet there was no sign of it: no pointing, accusing hands reached out, nobody gave way to the natural impulse of those who have witnessed a revolting crime—to hurl themselves upon the criminal, to strike him or do him injury. ”

“ Subtal or other corporal punishment — which ex- mit not to any decree or other act of power, pose a man to personal hazard in the service of the justice of which you are not yourself of the military power against foreign enemies, perfectly convinced. ”

“ It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation. This penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflicted in two ways: by the agency of the Courts and Ministers of Justice, or by military force; by the coercion of the magistracy, or by the coercion of arms. The first kind can evidently apply only to men: ”

“ That the American police can perjure themselves with the same ease, that they are just as merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. ”

“ From feeling that sense of security from lawless violence, which every man, whether guilty or innocent, is entitled to feel, he has been in imminent danger of being torn in pieces by an infuriated mob. ”

“ Whoever shall, by violence, do bodily harm to the person of another shall be arrested, and suffer such punishment as may on trial be adjudged against him; and should death result from such bodily harm done to the person of another, the offender shall be arrested, and suffer such punishment as may be adjudged against him. ”

“ III. When you attempt to make an arrest be on your guard. Give your man no opportunity to draw a pistol. If the man is supposed to be a desperado, have your pistol in your hand or be ready to draw when you make yourself known. If he makes no resistance there will be no harm done by your precaution. My motto has always been “It is better to kill two men than to allow one to kill you.”
IV. After your prisoner is arrested and disarmed treat him as a prisoner should be treated—as kindly as his conduct will permit. ”

“ Then, again, this is not a question as to whether possibly the sheriff might have done more than he did. Some men, under such circumstances, might perhaps have earlier attempted to draw their guns, and would possibly only have ceased resistance with their lives. But when one is really overpowered, superior force makes efforts at resistance futile, if not foolish. ”

“ In those days, let any man be found to swear that he apprehended danger to his property, or violence to his person, from the assembling of a mob in a place assigned, and the magistrate would have held it his duty to disperse or prevent that meeting. ”

“ There is a determined resistance of personal injury by means of injury inflicted, as when a man deliberately takes life to save life, destroys an assailant's eye to save an eye, inflicts a violent blow to prevent a blow; or, as when, in retaliation, he takes life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, &c. Or, as when, by means of governmental agencies, he causes an injurious person to be punished by the infliction of some injury equivalent to the one he has inflicted or attempted. ”

“ Surely that law which can take away life might throw its protecting power over such as these, and a score or two of policemen be stationed to prevent them from witnessing such a scene as an execution, which is only calculated to brutalise their youthful minds. Pocket-picking, fighting, drunkenness, and profanity in almost every form, are the only examples to be picked up by these young frequenters of the gallows. ”

“ If the offense must be punished with more severity than you are empowered to administer, then only send it to higher authority, and with your own recommendation. It is a poor officer [Pg 148] who lets a court martial run the discipline of his command. The good one sends a man to court for punishment only in the rarest cases, and then because he is dealing with a recalcitrant who will not respond to decent treatment, and is therefore a candidate for discharge. ”

“ Indeed it is to be observed not only that the main and typical criminality has a sort of reflex criminality depending upon it, but also that an increase of more serious or more frequent crimes induces a crop of resistance to and assaults upon the guardians of public order, together with false witness, insults, avoidance of supervision, absconding, and the like. ”

“ Such an action is as much and as flagrant a crime or offence against the community as an act of robbery or murder, which, though primarily an injury to the individual, is primarily avenged as an injury to the State. ”