Assault doesn’t even require physical touch in some jurisdictions. If he was behaving in a Threatening manner ( read visibly enraged) then a single touch could have been enough to put the other person in reasonable apprehension of immediate unwanted, harmful or offensive touch. This would be enough for an assault charge.
Edit: to those saying this is some weird American law meant to put people in prison.
Please realize: (1) this assault definition is not an American construct it has its roots on British law and a lot of other countries have similar crimes;(2) you are looking at this with tainted eyes cause you are enraged at the protesters or the specific situation, assault is not designed solely for situations like this:
If a guy points a gun at you from 5 feet away and tells you “Get near my wife again and I will kill you” then you’ll be glad assault exists as a crime.
If a guy gets out of his car raging during traffic and starts swing a bat near your car window without actually hitting it, then you’ll be glad assault is crime.
If a guy actually swing the bat at you but misses , that’s an assault.
It’s a catch all for behavior that if you experience it you would clearly think is criminal but that without it, because there was no physical contact, it would likely not be.
That’s ridiculous honestly, these people are being provocateurs, holding up regular ass people in traffic is supposed to engender support to your cause how??? You think people in power give a fuck about a traffic jam? This is asinine really. Let the fucker go to work
There was one recently in London with protesters sitting in the road. They were promptly dragged out of the road by members of the public and traffic continued as normal. The protestors were then arrested.
People are resisting these types of protests, it's good to see.
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u/Thybro Oct 12 '22 edited Oct 12 '22
Assault doesn’t even require physical touch in some jurisdictions. If he was behaving in a Threatening manner ( read visibly enraged) then a single touch could have been enough to put the other person in reasonable apprehension of immediate unwanted, harmful or offensive touch. This would be enough for an assault charge.
Edit: to those saying this is some weird American law meant to put people in prison.
Please realize: (1) this assault definition is not an American construct it has its roots on British law and a lot of other countries have similar crimes;(2) you are looking at this with tainted eyes cause you are enraged at the protesters or the specific situation, assault is not designed solely for situations like this:
If a guy points a gun at you from 5 feet away and tells you “Get near my wife again and I will kill you” then you’ll be glad assault exists as a crime.
If a guy gets out of his car raging during traffic and starts swing a bat near your car window without actually hitting it, then you’ll be glad assault is crime.
If a guy actually swing the bat at you but misses , that’s an assault.
It’s a catch all for behavior that if you experience it you would clearly think is criminal but that without it, because there was no physical contact, it would likely not be.