Man's Lawful Refusal To ID Leads Cop To Assault Him, Charge Him With Resisting Arrest

Chris | InformationLiberation
Feb. 27, 2014

An Austin, Texas man's lawful failure to identify lead a DPS trooper to physically assault him, falsely arrest him, then charge him with "resisting arrest," despite video showing he did nothing of the sort.

In May of 2012, after letting someone go during a routine traffic stop, DPS Trooper Chancy Davis saw a truck with two men in it parked in front of a window tinting business, which he evidently felt was suspicious. David approached the vehicle and demanded the men provide him with ID. They refused, which evidently led the officer to throw a fit.

"When an officer asks for your ID, you give it to him,” DPS Trooper Chancy Davis told Ray Muniz, who was actually just sitting in the parking lot at his own place of work waiting for his boss to arrive. When Muniz's boss did arrive, he confirmed to the officer he knows Muniz, the officer responded by ordering him to back off. The officer was clearly peeved he failed to ID, so he decided to threaten them with jail if they didn't ID.

"Right now, I can arrest both of you for fail to ID. The second thing for resisting arrest," Davis tells him, despite no such law existing.

Failure to ID is only a crime after an arrest has taken place, or if you've been pulled over while driving. Muniz asked clearly if he's being arrested and the cop responds he's being "detained."

As failure to ID is not a crime, the detainment holds no weight, and all charges were later dropped against Muniz, but not before he was arrested by Davis and spent two nights in jail. He was also terrorized with false charges for four months before the district attorney dropped all charges against him.

Despite this act of harassment, the officers involved faced no charges, and faced no punishment for their false arrest, lack of knowing the laws they're supposed to enforce, nor their directly criminal actions as a result of their ignorance of the law. The officers should be fired and criminally charged, instead they're still on the beat searching for new victims.

Muniz filed suit against the officers saying he was falsely arrested and assaulted, we'll have to wait to see if it goes anywhere.

Video courtesy of KVUE:

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Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.