Local media outlet HudPost posted video footage of a car attempting to flee after being surrounded by anti-ICE protesters during a rally in Fairview, New Jersey, on Saturday afternoon. The driver, Linda Roglen, a 62-year-old resident of North Bergen, slowed down when a protester approached her window and, as reported by the person recording the video, allegedly spat in her face. Roglen closed her window and moved forward, and according to a report in the New York Post, clipped his foot.
Immediately, her vehicle was surrounded by a group of demonstrators. Roglen continued moving slowly through the crowd and finally escaped their grasp. In the process, two additional protesters reportedly sustained minor injuries.
The caption on the first video read, “Newly obtained video footage shows a driver striking protesters twice during a July 12 immigration rally on Fairview Avenue in Fairview, New Jersey.”
The second read, “On July 12, a peaceful protest against federal immigration policies near the border of Hudson and Bergen counties was disrupted when a driver struck several demonstrators with her vehicle.”
After watching both videos multiple times, it became clear that the HudPost‘s descriptions of events were disingenuous and that Roglen wasn’t the aggressor. This looks like a replay of what has quickly become routine at protests throughout the country in recent months.
The New York Post reported:
Roglen has been charged with careless driving, reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident, and four counts of assault by auto resulting in bodily injury.Three people sustained minor injuries, including one victim who sustained an injury to their knee.
I find it shocking that Roglen was charged. What was she expected to do? Sit in her car until the crowd turned violent. I would argue that simply surrounding her vehicle en masse was a violent act.
A similar incident recently occurred in New York during one of the “No Kings” protests. A woman who tried to block a car claimed she was injured when it continued moving forward. Not even the police were sympathetic to her “trauma.” In fact, they issued her a citation.
If this incident had happened in Florida, Roglen likely would not have been charged.
In a recent episode of The Rubin Report, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) told podcast host Dave Rubin, “If you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety, and so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.
He said, “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.”
“You have a right to defend yourself in Florida,” he added.
Assuming Roglen decides to fight these charges, and I sincerely hope she does, what would be her defense under the law?
After protestors in Charlotte, North Carolina, tried to block Interstate 277 in September 2016, attorney Andrew Branca looked at whether running down rioters surrounding your vehicle was a lawful self-defense in a post on Legal Insurrection.
In short, it’s not as easy as one might think. Branca takes the reader through the five “elements” that are required for such a defense: “innocence, imminence, proportionality, avoidance, and reasonableness.”
He explains what is necessary to satisfy each element. To put it mildly, for a layman like myself, it gets complicated. For example:
It is also worth noting that if you respond to even a legitimate threat that is non-deadly in nature with a deadly force response, it’s quite possible that you will be deemed the deadly force aggressor, even if the other party was the non-deadly force aggressor. In that case the other party could well be legally justified in using deadly defensive force against your deadly force aggression.
However, he notes, “things change dramatically” if the protesters are not merely blocking your path, but present a threat.
Once a person being blockaded has been placed in reasonable fear of an imminent deadly force attack, then that person would be legally entitled to use deadly force in self-defense, including the use of their vehicle to “run them down” and neutralize the unlawful deadly force threat.The question then is what would be required to generate a fear of imminent deadly force that would be deemed reasonable by police, prosecutors, judges, and juries.Certainly if the protestors attempt, or reasonably appear to attempt, to forcibly enter the blockaded vehicles, this would constitute reasonable grounds to fear an imminent deadly force attack. Such conduct would include the smashing of windows or attempts to force open doors. The same applies to attempts to set vehicles on fire, or to flip vehicles over.Note that a defender need not necessarily wait until the protestors have turned violent against his particular vehicle. If they have begun threatening or using deadly force against other blockaded vehicles it is reasonable to infer that your own vehicle is likely to be next — you are, after all, legally entitled to defend yourself not just against the danger already occurring to you but also against the danger that is about to occur, that is imminent….As a parting thought, there is nothing to prevent a legislature from defining the disorderly blockading of a public way as an act against which deadly defensive force can be used, such as by creating a legal presumption under such circumstances of a reasonable fear of death or grave bodily harm. The large majority of states have already created such legal presumptions justifying the use of deadly defensive force in other contexts — particularly in the context of an intruder in the home.
Incidents of protesters surrounding vehicles — often in threatening and menacing ways — are becoming increasingly common. What should be the consequences for those who are, in effect, holding citizens hostage? And what rights do individuals trapped in their cars have in these dangerous situations? It would behoove state legislatures to take this issue seriously.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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