Man arrested for resisting arrest on Goleta video

June 13, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-06-12 at 8.15.10 PMA video purportedly showing police brutality in Goleta touches on a second policing trend that is causing concern among some citizens.

Early Thursday morning, Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies arrested 22-year-old Keenen Johnson in a motel parking lot. Deputies pursued Johnson initially as a burglary suspect and then as a possibly armed man, but they ended up arresting him for resisting arrest. [KEYT]

Johnson’s wife, Jennifer Johnson, recorded video of the arrest, during which deputies wrestled Keenen Johnson to the ground. Jennifer Johnson published the video on Youtube argues that it shows police brutality.

As with similar videos that have been released in recent months, there also may be a racial undertone. Johnson is black, and it appears the officers are white.

Around 3 a.m., the deputies responded to a report of a burglary in progress at the Extended Stay motel in Goleta. The caller said someone was going in and out of a hotel window near a camper truck.

When deputies arrived, they saw Johnson on top of the RV and a motel room window that appeared to have been tampered with or broken into. The deputies also saw that Johnson had a sheath that may have been covering a weapon, sheriff’s spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said.

Johnson’s wife said her husband was patching up a leak in the RV roof at the time. She also said they had a room in the motel and were having beers by an open window. The couple was sharing the room with coworkers from a motel renovation team, she said.

The deputies grabbed Johnson and said they were checking him for weapons. They then wrestled him and slammed him to the ground, the video shows.

During the encounter, Johnson was saying he did nothing wrong and the deputies were breaking the law. His wife screamed “stop” while filming the incident.

“You don’t legally get to check every single person for no reason,” she said.

The deputies found no weapons. They booked Johnson into jail on charges of felony resisting arrest, KEYT reports.

In recent years, it has become increasingly common for police to arrest individuals solely for charges relating to resisting arrest.


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Exactly ! How can one ‘resist arrest’ when there is no predicate or underlying crime to be arrested for ?

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It’s called detention. How can you not know this? If a cop has reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred you can be detained pending the investigation. Do you understand that? Reasonable suspicion. Suspicion. Based on reason. It’s not arrest. It’s detention.


Think for crying out loud, when the cops get a call at 3 in the morning about a burglary in progress at a motel and they pull up and see an open motel window and a guy on the roof of an RV near the open window, what do you think they think? Are they just supposed to ignore the guy and go “hmmm wonder who’s been going in and out of that motel window, couldn’t be that guy on the roof of an RV with a sheath in his side could it? So let’s just ignore him and start looking around for some suspicious activity and suspects”


Do you really think the cops have to pull up to a situation and already know all the facts of a crime and either make an arrest or drive off?


If I return to my home and find someone burglarizing it, or standing inside it with a gun in their, or worse yet assaulting my wife – that person will wish they would only be subject o police “brutality”. Under the circumstances I list I would interpret each as a direct threat to my life. But unlike the police who can only detain an feed these social dregs to the court system so they can be housed and fed at public expense, I would act as jury, judge, and executioner when I felt my life was threatened.


Scott


i agree, but don’t see the relevance to the article


It is interesting the one thing the few that defend don’t understand. If the police are suspicious a crime may have been committed, then they would need to look into it, i.e. check the camper etc. Now do you think they are going to leave the suspect just hanging around to possibly run etc? NO!!!!!!!!!! They cuff them, usually put them in the back of patrol car and then look into the situation.


GEEZ is that so F**KING hard to understand!!?? It has been done this way for years. But no some want to be hero’s and say what you can and can’t do to them and escalate the situation. Wouldn’t it be easier if you are innocent, sit in the car, let them look into and figure out…………yea the guy is innocent and let you go? Nope let’s do it the hard way.


The video shows an arrest. What more does it show?