Basis?
How about 5 seconds of rational thought as the basis for that claim?
- Police have arrest powers.
- Police are legally permitted to use physical force to effect an arrest.
- It is unlawful to assault a police officer.
- It is unlawful to resist arrest.
- Anything where you lay hands on an officer qualifies as assaulting them, whether that's pushing them, hitting them, wrestling with them, whatever.
The way this plays out in the real world is that anyone who decides to do anything
other than comply and accept the officer's actions and offer no resistance to the officer... is creating enormous problems for themselves.
The problem is that nobody, from the other officers who show up as backup, to the passing pedestrian (who sometimes help officers subdue someone btw) is in any position to determine whether the officer was being "too aggressive" or overstepping their bounds, or arresting you for something you didn't do, or arresting you for something that didn't merit an arrest, or arresting you with more force and aggression than was necessary.
All those sorts of determinations are beyond the scope of what anyone is in a position to determine
while the event itself is still unfolding.
Is it possible that there are situations where the officer is so out of control that the pure laws of your natural right to defend your life kick in and you could be justified in fighting the officer physically? Sure. That could happen. But just know that you are on very thin ice once you go down that road and you'd better hope you were right, better hope others agree, better hope you can prove it, better hope you WIN and the officer doesn't just get even more aggressive and possibly kill you due to you fighting back. Because once you decide to go down that road, you very likely will have to subdue the officer and it could become life or death. Just not a situation you want to be in. At all.
So law and society must default to siding with an officer and assuming that any time a person is physically aggressive toward an officer, that they are in the wrong. This has to be clear to you. I refuse to believe it isn't.
The situation Michael Brown found himself in, even in the most anti-Wilson narratives, was one where he should have complied and not offered any physical resistance, let alone physical aggression. His fate is a good demonstration of why. So is Wilson's lack of indictment.
So even if Wilson whacked Brown as hard as he could with his truck door, deliberately being more aggressive and confrontational than he needed to be... and even if Wilson screeched his tires and pulled his vehicle back toward them in a way that made them feel like he might almost hit them... and even if Wilson grabbed Brown's neck and pulled him into the truck window... and even if Wilson got his pistol out at a time Brown didn't think he was justified in doing so (and I don't believe any of this to be true or likely btw) but even if all of that is true, Brown's best course of action, and likely only legal course of action, was to comply, comply, comply.
If Brown were a rational person his reaction in the face of such over the top (fanciful, likely fictional) aggression from Wilson would be to go out of his way to show how much of a threat he
was not, and go out of his way to comply and try to make it clear he would go quietly. The last and worst thing you'd want to do when faced with a red-faced raging cop is to do anything which would increase their perception of you as a threat they need to ramp up physical violence against even more. Again, Brown's fate is great evidence of this.
I always enjoy people apologizing for Brown's actions while accusing Wilson of misconduct, and claiming to know things that "most police officers would do" while providing no evidence to support that theory.
