A lady dancing with flowers at a protest in Portland, Oregon was just arrested by federal officers tonight. After seeing the video footage there is no cause for an arrest. She is literally just dancing with flowers when she tried to give some to the feds and they grabbed her. One good samaritan tried to rescue her but they grabbed him too. The rest of the protesters were too afraid of the feds as they opened fire with automatic weapons to do anything to help. At what point does a citizen have an obligation to intervene and stop what is obviously an unjustified kidnapping by law enforcement?
The feds will probably charge the guy with assaulting an officer, resisting, impeding, etc., but will the charge stick once the charges against dancing flowers lady is are dropped? Unfortunately, probably because as this author knows all too well you can't defend a charge of resisting, impeding, or assaulting an officer on the grounds that the underlying arrest was not justified. That is one of the laws that need to be changed so that people are free to intervene as long as they know the underlying arrest is not justified. The guy trying to rescue her is almost a nightly fixture at these protests and they have probably been looking for an excuse to grab him for awhile. No matter what he will have to spend at least a year with the charges hanging over his head and we have zero faith in the magistrate judges to honor his First Amendment right to protest as any other person that has not been convicted of a crime. They will probably offer him a slap on the wrist plea, so his best chance to beat the charge would be to seek a jury nullification like Ammon Bundy did.