What began as a routine band performance of Talkin’ Out the Side of Your Neck by Cameo at an Alabama high school football game ended in a troubling confrontation when a police officer tased the marching band director for refusing to stop the music.
The altercation occurred Thursday around 9 p.m. local time after a game at Jackson-Olin High School in Birmingham, Ala.
Minor High School band director Johnny Mims, 39, and his ensemble of 145 students were about a minute away from being done with their final song when a police officer approached the podium. According to both Mims and the Birmingham Police Department, officers asked Mims to stop the performance so they could clear out the stadium. Mims responded that the song was about to end and the performance was agreed on by both schools.
“Nothing we were doing at the time was being a danger to the community, fans or the school,” Mims told NPR on Monday. “Everyone was enjoying themselves. That’s the part I’m having a hard time grappling with.”
As the students finished their performance, officers attempted to arrest Mims for not complying. Police said the band director “refused” to place his hands behind his back and allegedly pushed an arresting officer.
Can someone explain to me
The bodycam footage looks like everyone was having a good time. So, I’d consider it the duty of police officers to enable everyone to continue having a good time. Asking a band director to cut off a song when there’s no emergency is completely ridiculous.
The cop probably wanted to get home so he could beat his wife.
Simple, the cops job is absolutely not to enable everyone to continue having a good time. Their job is to protect capital and the ruling class, usually with impunity. Unfortunately that sort of power corrupts, and this cop probably had somewhere to go and wanted to hurry things up (with impunity)
Police were at the stadium because they were likely required to be. Very often if you have a large gathering you are required to have Police present, often paying for it. It’s largely a racket to get officers easy overtime.
Since posting that, I thought about it myself. Over here in Germany, we have similar laws, but it’s specifically securities, not police. The massive difference being that those securities don’t have guns.
And yeah, that was basically my thinking. Why would you send people with guns to such an event? It just causes everyone to feel uneasy. And unarmed securities can break apart brawls much more aggressively.
…but yeah, I forgot that everyone and their mother has a gun in the US. Unarmed securities would be on a suicide mission. So, yeah, I do understand now, why police is present…
It’s not really about guns. They are already illegal on school property and large event venues. Unarmed security is also common in the US, but it’s growing to require police specifically.
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Well, if there was an emergency, I’d have expected them to at least drop the word “emergency” when talking to the band director. That would have side-stepped that whole discussion of how, when and why the band should stop playing.
And then, yeah, them focussing entirely on the arrest rather than actually clearing the stadium when the band did stop, doesn’t speak in their favor either.
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Yeah I was scratching my head at this one. Cop had better have a really good reason here because otherwise, have fun getting Section 1983’d. I am not sure qualified immunity would apply against the right to peacefully assemble, unless either there was reasonably a threat of danger, or some legal authority made the assembly or its actions illegal (e.g. no one allowed on school campuses after 9pm, a citywide noise ordinance on weekdays, etc).