You can watch Officer Tatum's analysis of the encounter with Nazario below:
I think he makes some good points and I'll address those in a second. If you read my post yesterday you know I came down hard on the police and I still think they were overboard. Even with the video of the guy with the AR who shot a responding officer.
My point is about the "he drove a mile before stopping". As I said before I think that is a lame excuse as I have had police pull the "I don't recognize the temp tag" excuse on me before. But I think his issue with the distance driven is out of order. I can run 1 mile in about 6 minutes provided I don't have to do anything else for the rest of the day. A vehicle traveling 60 MPH will cover the distance in 1 minute. A Cyclist at 23 MPH, which is quite fast will cover that distance in about 3 minutes. We do not know how fast Nazario was traveling but given the average "in town" speed limit is 35 MPH, he was driving with the cruiser behind him for 2 minutes. But let me tell you a story.
Many years ago I was driving through South Carolina. I was doing about 85 MPH. Apparently I passed a police cruiser on the side of the highway who decided to pull me over. Well. I didn't see his lights or hear his siren. I don't know how long he had been following me but when I finally saw his lights I pulled over. He approached my vehicle and asked me if I knew how long he had been behind me. No guns drawn. No shouty orders to get out the car. In the south. White police officer too.
You would think that under those circumstances where I was booking at near 90MPH with a police car with flashing lights behind me, he would have had every reason to do a "felony stop". But he did not.
So no, I don't buy the "he continued to drive for a mile" as a valid excuse for the level up. Nor do I consider the tag issue since I see tags in all kinds of places ALL THE TIME. And I regularly travel the roads.
Go watch some videos on VINWIKI on YouTube. They have all kinds of stories. These officers were over the top. Period. Particuarly since the offenses were not violent felonies and they did not have a report OR witness a felony involving the vehicle.
That said, I agree with officer Tatum that Nazario was not being cooperative and seemingly had a social justice martyr complex. Most importantly though is what happened at the end of the video. If you didn't watch to the end, go back and do so. That, IMO changes my overall view of the encounter. Yes, I still think they over-responded to the incident. I do agree that they took it down and gave the guy a break given that yes, as a fed, he faces double jeopardy if he gets written up.
So I'll take yesterdays commentary which was a 10 on the outrage scale and bring it down to a 5.
