Given the practical power that police have to mess with us and the wide discretion they have in exercising it, an attitude of meek subservience may seem advisable. That expectation is not fair, reasonable, or compatible with the principles of a free society. But it is demonstrably safer than the approach that Bland took, which was based on the assumption that she was a citizen whose constitutional rights should not be blithely violated by an authoritarian bully with a badge and a gun. I do not by any means fault Bland for questioning Encinia's authority to order her around for reasons unrelated to her traffic offense, any more than I fault Jessica Cooke for questioning the Border Patrol's authority to detain her at an internal immigration checkpoint in upstate New York. To the contrary, both young women showed exceptional bravery in standing on their rights. But as the outcomes in those cases (an arrest and a Tasing, respectively) show, such resistance to arbitrary power is brave because it is dangerous.
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