Editorializing what, exactly? The rule of law?
"what they were doing" is attempting to illegally abduct someone. The comptroller's "impeding" was a demand to see the one thing that would make their request a legal arrest.
Instead, they arrested the comptroller without even a pretense of the law.
Agents who are masked and don't have any obligations to present warrants before abducting someone... really are we saying this is reasonable?
Police in general don’t need to show warrants to arrest people. In high profile situations it may be done to minimize political blowback, but clearly that is not a primary concern in this situation (except toward individual officers, which is why they are masking).
In many situations, they just need a documentable/articulable (to a judge, later) reasonable belief that a crime was occurring in their presence, or in other situations that a specific crime had occurred and there was a reasonable belief that person had committed that crime.
Resisting arrest, and impeding official business of a police officer are usually arrest-able offenses almost anywhere.
Details vary by jurisdiction and crime, but ‘you need a warrant to arrest someone’ is an edge case, not the common case. In those cases, it’s also often an indictment or bench warrant.
That all makes sense, but these don't look like police officers — these are guys wearing backwards baseball caps and surgical masks. Effectively, our trust that someone holds position of authority in law enforcement is based on their uniform and badge.
If we normalize some dude in a mask and a baseball cap as someone that has the authority to arrest you and put you in an unmarked van, that represents a real and serious breakdown of trust and order in society.
ICE agents should wear a real uniform (ICE with their real name), have uncovered faces, and be required to show badge/authorization upon request -- otherwise members of society have to reason to trust them (or people who look like them).
Yup, and don’t forget DEA getting into full on shoot outs while dressed even worse.
It’s a real problem, just like no knock warrants, asset seizure, lack of body cams, milsurplus equipment grants to police departments, overly aggressive training, parallel construction, arrest quotas, etc.
IMO, in this case the tactics are being done intentionally (and at the leadership level) to terrorize people and stir the pot to incite ‘bad behavior’ that can be spun to justify crackdowns. Individual officers may be true believers, but many are also ‘along for the ride’ and trying to not get too much blowback. Either way, just following orders is no excuse.
Troll in Chief.
You can legally arrest someone without a warrant, if they are committing a crime