One presumes his proximity to where the nearest officer was located. At least that seems to be what TFA is getting at.
Probably because the manufacturers know we’re not routinely a hairbreadth away from getting our head blown off for reaching in the wrong direction during a trafficstop.
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I’m not sure who you’re quoting, but it isn’t me. I don’t think police are terrible. I think there are terrible police officers who are terrible at their jobs, whether through malice or incompetence or some combination, and I think a very significant portion of our country is willing, for various reasons, to bend over backward to rationalize and normalize the behavior of those bad officers.
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“A hair’s breadth away from deadly force” would have been if he’d released the safety and put his finger on the trigger. If there was a legitimate possibility of a weapon under the seat, the officer was less than a second away from facing deadly force himself.
With two people in the car to watch, there really isn’t a safe way to climb down from that situation until a backup arrives. (“Hold my gun while I reach between your legs and check under the seat.” <- this never happens.)
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Y’know, I may be a shrinking violet, but I’m going to stick with my descriptor. If someone pointed a loaded gun at me for ten minutes, I’m not entirely convinced that rationalizations that the person holding the gun didn’t have his finger on the trigger the whole time, or didn’t take the safety off, would lessen the feeling that I was extremely close to having deadly force used against me.
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Only for cops though. The rest of us still have to meet the reasonable person standard.
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Yes, being on the wrong end of a gun for 9 minutes, safety on or not, would be an extremely unpleasant experience. I’d have a bad case of OMG-holy-shit nerves too. Unfortunately, waiting for the backup was the safest way, for everyone, to resolve the situation. An inept cop would have split his attention and someone could have been killed.
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Any thing or place in which drivers’ licenses and registration papers can be stored might possibly also contain a weapon. And yet, somehow, the cops don’t have to draw down and call for backup every single time they pull somebody over.
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Ah, but unfortunately, many people who consider themselves reasonable would have felt fear.
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As a colorful man who hasn’t been pulled over in a while, the conclusion I draw is as long as firearms are legal, I should live expecting to have deadly force brandished against me possibly any time I interact with law enforcement.
I am not okay with this, but I feel like I have no recourse, and it seems like nearly anything I might do in such a situation could result in the end of my life. Maybe I should transition into a career in law enforcement simply to try and lower my chances of getting shot for existing.
That or just give up, stay inside, and order everything online from now on. (wait, that sounds oddly familiar)
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… except when it comes to firearms. Then there are no lines, or the lines are so far away they effectively merge into the vanishing point.
Pulling a firearm and pointing it at someone is about as escalated as a situation can possibly get. Keeping it there for an extended period of time is escalation, since the cop is continuing to assert leverage. PTSD is harm.
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Not for long.
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I live in tranquil Canuckastan, but I’d never reach for anything without saying what I’m about to do, and getting acknowledgement by word or nod first.
I’d also maybe tell my passengers: “In a few seconds a man with a gun will be at the window. Please don’t talk unless spoken to, keep your hands in sight and don’t fidget.”
The video clip doesn’t have when the man reached under the seat and the cop drew his gun. I have no idea if it was justified or not.
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We know it was unjustified, because there was no weapon.
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Do they hand out x-ray vision in police training? They should hand out invulnerability to bullets too.
It’s easy to say that there was no weapon with 20-20 hindsight.
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At some point they all become indistinguishable. Death is not liberty.
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Sure, but we can work backwards. In hindsight we know it was unjustified. A degree of escalation may have initially been justified based on the context. Continued escalation was not justified, and de-escalation wasn’t attempted.
The cop failed in this interaction. Yes; he could have failed worse, but “hey, I didn’t kill the black guy this time!” shouldn’t count as a win.
Why did he fail? Was it personal? Was it procedural? Was it training? If all traffic stops are necessarily going to end up with weapons drawn until backup arrives, why are there any cops out hunting on their own?
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I went for the quick laugh. Sorry.
I am horrified at the thought of having to endure that torture and in amazement that the gentleman was able to keep a semblance of composure under such circumstances. No one should have to deal with such overreach and dangerous timidity.
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This is really inept. If being a traffic cop in the US is so dangerous and if they need reinforcement every time a slightly brown man make a move WHY ARE THEY ALONE in the first place ???
Put two damn cops in the car.
And to everyone who think it is normal to fear cops at traffic stop : it is not. Not in most developed countries, your cops need to make some training courses in Europe.
And maybe, just maybe, if everyone had less guns the poor cop wouldn’t be so afraid.
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The de-escalation was calling for backup–not for extra firepower–but so that he could take his attention off the two people in the car and check under the seat. Attention-splitting is a good way to get someone killed.
He was probably doing it exactly by the book. He didn’t stick the gun in the guy’s face, didn’t swear, yell and scream, didn’t get upset about the driver pointing a phone at him.
Police procedure probably says that in any situation where there might be a weapon to treat it as if there is a weapon until it’s been proven safe.
I can’t think of a safe way to check the car without backup other than having them both crawl out of the car at gun-point, handcuffing them on the ground, then searching. Which would be risky and completely outrageous. Can you think of a safe way?
If you check other stories, you’ll find that I generally heap acidic scorn on crapulant police tactics like DWB stops, “smelled pot” searches and “I feared for my life” homicides.
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