Two recent teen beatings stories making headlines of police officers involved in the beatings of teenage girls in two different cities are calling attention to the potentially criminal police encounters and the legal issues surrounding just and unjust police reactions in chaotic situations. What is the proper course of action for a police officer when dealing with a teen and when does the officer’s reaction cross into criminal territory? 1.800.NoCuffs founding criminal defense attorney Darren Kavinoky appears on CNN International on January 4, 2017, to delve into issues calling them, “a tale of two cases.” [1]
Watch Darren Kavinoky on CNN discussing teen beatings by police.
Teen Beatings
Kavinoky says, “The first one from Philadelphia, leaves me with a lot more questions than answers. And I’ve seen that video several times. That shows the difficulty of law enforcement where you’ve got a crowd seemingly out of control. And in some of the versions, it sounds like you hear the words, ‘gun gun gun,’ being repeated. And one of the most dangerous things for a police officer is to be in a crowd setting where somebody can get access to that officer’s weapon, now you’ve got an armed ‘crazy person’ and an unarmed officer. That’s a bad and dangerous situation.”
Police Violence
When asked if age and gender should play into an officer’s reaction to avoid teen beatings, Darren Kavinoky replies, “I believe that it should. What ultimately we need to be concerned with is whether the officer’s conduct was reasonable given the totality of the circumstances. So that suggests that the circumstances are going to have a very significant impact on the appropriateness of the officer’s behavior. So for instance, in the second [North Carolina] clip where that girl gets body slammed, I don’t know that there’s any good excuse for what happened in that second situation and that’s why I say this is a tale of two very different cases.”
SOURCES
1. CNN International.
2. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/04/us/philadelphia-police-teen-brawl/index.html
3. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/04/us/north-carolina-officer-body-slams-student/
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