The full video of the Mississippi Highway Patrol traffic stop should be required viewing for anyone who needs to learn how resisting reasonable law enforcement orders can make an already-tense situation much worse.
Last Friday the Department of Public Safety released the 40-minute recording of the Aug. 5 traffic stop on a rural road in west McComb. It shows plainly that the driver stopped by the trooper for speeding on Delaware Avenue was repeatedly uncooperative when being taken into custody on misdemeanor charges.
This required the trooper to act aggressively at least twice, but it is important to note that in this time of distrust between white lawmen and Black citizens, the trooper never crossed the line of abusive behavior.
The full video answered a lot of questions about the traffic stop — and exposed the lie of allegations by the driver and his two brothers that the trooper had beaten the driver in the Highway Patrol SUV.
At the beginning of the video, the trooper said he was refueling his SUV when he saw the driver “come flying down Delaware.” After the two vehicles stopped on Schmidt Road across Interstate 55, the driver admitted that he did not have a license — it was suspended — and that he had smoked marijuana an hour or so before driving.
The five-minute Facebook video made by the driver’s brothers, who returned to the scene a few minutes after the trooper told them to leave, included the claim that the driver had been beaten. The cruiser’s cabin camera was invaluable in disproving this, as it showed the trooper first struggling to get the handcuffed driver into the vehicle and then trying to buckle him into the seat.
When the trooper walked away to warn the driver’s two brothers to stand back, the driver got out of the cruiser and stood a few feet away from the trooper, cursing him repeatedly. It was clear that more force would be needed to get control of the situation.
As for the tussle that put the trooper and driver in the ditch, it appears the trooper was trying to catch the driver off guard to get him back into the SUV. The trooper told another onlooker to make sure the two brothers did not rush him, then grabbed the driver. They lost their balance at the side of the road and slid into the ditch.
That was the single most concerning moment of the five-minute Facebook video. But it did not tell the whole story. The trooper did not have a body camera — the Highway Patrol should add them — but he was wearing a microphone that recorded what everyone said.
It was obvious from the driver’s shouts and curses that he would not get in the cruiser willingly, and the trooper’s effort to get the driver back in the vehicle was not successful until both men were in the ditch for about three minutes.
That, of course, led to the memorable “seizure moment,” when the driver, still cuffed and finally buckled into a seat, started shaking his body in an apparent attempt to get released by pretending to be sick. The cabin camera recorded this charade perfectly.
Lawmen on the scene — there were at least four on hand by the end of the video — called an ambulance, whose EMTs said the driver was in good health and could be taken to the Pike County jail safely.
The lesson is this: You can argue with a lawman to a point, but when you resist arrest and fake illness, you have lost the debate and are only making your situation worse.
That’s exactly what happened here. Once the driver calmed down, the trooper told him, “All that stuff was unnecessary, man.” He added that if the driver’s two brothers had backed away as instructed, they would not have been arrested. Instead, the driver wound up with 10 charges, while his two brothers face nine and five. All are misdemeanors.
Some will disagree with this assessment. They may believe the tumble into the ditch, or the trooper’s hands around the driver’s neck for a total of about 5 seconds as he attempted to force the driver into the SUV, were improper treatment of a handcuffed suspect.
But the trooper had no other choice than to act decisively. Much of the time, he was outnumbered 3 to 1. The first step in calming the situation was to get the driver secured.
The public safety commissioner has praised the trooper for handling the situation professionally. The commissioner is correct. Under duress, this trooper kept control.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
NOTE: A link to last week's story, which includes the 40-minute video and a statement by the Department of Public Safety commissioner, is below.
https://www.enterprise-journal.com/top-stories-local-content/public-saf…
