Police Brutality?

This video of a utah cop tasing a motorist has been a hot button issue lately and has shown a lot of confusion over what your rights are and aren’t. I’m interested to hear everyone’s perspective on this one.

Problems laws “broken”

Does not have Miranda rights read to him
This kid asks quite a few times to have his Miranda rights read to him but doesn’t seem to know much about the law. Miranda rights or a Miranda warning is only required to be mentioned in the event that the Police officer is interrogating someone. Wikipedia has a whole section on the misconceptions on Miranda rights. “On the side of the road” is in fact not the place to have your rights read to you.

The officer never tells him he is under arrest!
Actually, as is my understanding, an officer doesn’t have to tell you that you’re under arrest (even though this officer does) and then he has to give a reason, as per Habeous Corpus. In fact you’re not under arrest when an Officer tells you to but you are under arrest when you are no longer free to leave.

Unlawful search!
I don’t have a reference from this one but I’m pretty sure that once you’re under arrest your immediate property is fair game. They have to search you for obvious reasons and then I think he had reasonable suspicion to search the car. Maybe he was going back for a gun, whatever. At anyrate the officer hands over the “vehicle” to his wife which probably means that it was temporarily the officer’s to look through.

He never tells the motorist how much he was speeding
At this point I think what he was speeding was irrelevant. He wasn’t arrested for speeding, he was arrested for disobeying a lawful order. His arrest has nothing to do with speeding other than the fact that he wouldn’t sign the ticket.

Beyond that his ticket must have had a speed on it because you can’t even get a speeding ticket without a speed written on it. If you did the court would have no idea how to punish you or what class of violation it is. Quickest way out of a ticket ever.

What I think

It seems to me that the police officer was fully within his right to taser this dude and arrest him. At which point would anyone with half a brain think it’s a good idea to walk away from a cop when he is telling you to stop?

I’m all about sniffing out police brutality and I think we’ve seen it quite a few times on youtube but this doesn’t see to be a case of police brutality.

To the motorist’s defense

When the motorist tells the police officer that he will not sign the ticket and that first they will go have a look at the sign the police officer says “alright, get out of the vehicle”. The officer intends to put him under arrest at that point for not signing the ticket. The motorist seems to think they’re going to go look at the sign but then disregards the police officer’s warnings.

So, what do you think?