Not sure how to read this as anything other than advocating use of force, up to and including deadly force against police. What you appear to be advocating already has a substantial body count minus this magnitude of provocation.
Preferably, in a civilized society, we would work to change laws to reduce the power asymmetry between police and Average Joe/Jane. If that proves insurmountable, we could and should work on our own local governments to change policies within police departments, and to negotiate contracts with better accountability for officers baked in.
Right, in the “real world” if a cop asks you for something and you don’t already have it in your hand, then you’re automatically under arrest, because he can’t allow you to defy him and he can’t allow you to move your hands around either. Better call for backup.
Let’s review the sequence of events again. Driver is speeding on the highway. Police officer pulls his car over. Police officer walks up to the car, requests documentation. Driver and passenger start to comply, including at some point, reaching under the seat. Police officer draws weapon and points it at passenger, who stops reaching under seat and keeps his hands in view. Passenger states that he was reaching for requested documentation, some of which is under the seat.
At this point, there is no way you can convince me that it’s “police procedure” to continue to have the weapon drawn at the passenger once they’ve stated that they are retrieving the documents that were requested, and not allowing them to retrieve the requested documents. The officer is putting the passenger in an impossible situation. At this point, the concern that the passenger was pulling a weapon should be near zero. The officer initiated the stop. The officer requested the documentation (which was, in fact, under the seat, and no weapon was pulled). If the situation became so untenable that the only other alternative was to point a weapon at an unarmed citizen for 9 minutes, terminate the stop. It’s not worth it.
Then you appear to avoid most of the context of my post. If a cop (or anybody else who claims public office) is not accountable, then what evidence do you actually have that they are officers of a given department, engaged in legitimate police business? So if that evidence/accountability is pretty much “none” then we risk starting with a category error of assuming who are “police”. And I even gave a brief example of this from my own experience. I had somebody in a police uniform and car cause an accident for me, and then threaten to kill me if I told anybody about it. The local police department’s response was denial. “A police officer would not have done either of those things, therefore whoever you dealt with was not actually one of our police officers, therefore I cannot file your complaint.”
Also you are avoiding the mention I made of restraint, and other non-lethal forms of force. Deliberately avoiding most of the nuance between “comply with them” and “kill them” seems disingenuous. Saying that those who pull guns on people have a reasonable expectation of being shot, clobbered, or hog-tied is to remind people that there are consequences and it can be an emergency requiring immediate intervention. The mistakes are 1. that of holding police to looser standards, and 2. assuming that somebody is doing legitimate LEO business based solely upon their say-so. Dealing forcefully with government can be perfectly courteous and compassionate, and is only as deadly as they want it to be. It is nothing more grandiose or reckless than the burden of being their employers, and taking responsibility for what they do.
How does anyone else but the occupants know this? The cop made the decision not to gamble about what the occupant is going to pull from under the seat.
“Should”, a red flag word when talking about safety.
the leading cause of death among police is traffic accidents. so, if this person was accessing actual risk vs. perceived risk standing by the side of the highway for nine minutes with their attention fixated completely on a person they’re threatening to kill…
that’s far more dangerous than the likelyhood of an everyday traffic stop leading to a guns blazing shooting incident.
The more elaborate the preplanned ritual for appeasing the Man becomes, the more opportunities there are to blame the victim for getting part of the ritual wrong.
if i had my way – and i never will, of course – we’d give the majority of traffic safety ticketing over the department of transportation. let them hire the equivalent of meter maids to pull people over and issue citations.
we’d still need cops on the road, and they’d still be allowed to pull people over ( just like we have sheriffs doing ) – but their primary purpose would be as armed backup when the situation seems warranted.
the majority of police could then focus on major crime.
everybody wins. we have less guns being drawn, fewer people being killed, and we have police happy for not doing grunt work.
i suspect it would never happen though because so many people incorrectly believe that routine traffic stops are somehow inherently life threatening.
An honest, non-snarky question for you: If a regular, non-police officer Jane was in a fender bender with Joe and was talking to the him through his window when she noticed him reaching under the seat after she’d just asked to exchange insurance information, would Jane be justified in pulling out a gun and pointing it at Joe, just to be on the safe side and avoid gambling with her life?
Of course, the vast majority of people would likely agree that this would be a hell of an escalation of the situation and that the mere fact that Jane couldn’t know for sure what Joe was reaching for was nowhere near sufficient justification to draw a gun. So why are we so eager to hold police officers to lower standards than we’d hold regular Janes and Joes?
He moved too slowly when I told him to comply. He moved too fast. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and seemed furtive. He stared right at me and seemed aggressive.
The real contention that is being argued here is whether or not it’s ‘okay’ to have to live in constant fear of the authorities who often exceed/abuse the powers they are given with no real repercussions.
Some people just can’t wrap seem to wrap their heads around the concept that absolute power corrupts the individuals who hold it, and no matter how ‘just’ or “righteous” a person is, there is no real ‘protection’ from being victimized by such corrupted entities.
We’re not a “civilized society;” that’s just a pretty lie we tell ourselves in order to get by.
This makes a great deal of sense. Somehow, we got to this point. When a traffic stop becomes the biggest perceived threat to both the officer and driver, it’s time to wipe the slate clean and start over. Traffic stops also create traffic jams, and the subsequent risk to all the drivers. Locally last week there was a traffic stop that slowed down traffic, which caused an injury accident, which caused another accident (non-injury) which caused a fatal accident. The problems flowed upstream into the rush hour traffic like reverse dominos. Anything could have kicked it off, but it happened to be a speeding ticket. Not worth it.
I think if an officer feels there is a threat and they draw, take control of the situation, and get backup to make sure everything is kosher lessens the likelihood of police shootings.
Again, it seems in the examples I have seen with bad police shoots you have officers who lose control of themselves, freak out, fire too early, or don’t follow procedure that ends up directly harming suspects.
Again - I can’t confirm this officer was 100% in the right to draw, that the perceived threat was great enough to warrant drawing. But assuming it was, I can’t think of a better out come than what happened.
Let me ask you this, have you attempted to put yourself in the officers position? What if he did something to make you think he might be reaching for a weapon? What would you do? Stand there and hope for the best or follow through with your training?
It seems to me you keep saying my partial approval of this specific incident means I approval all police actions - which isn’t it all.
Any requirement that what the officer “feels” be objectively reasonable under the circumstances is conspicuously absent.
I don’t assume you approve of all police actions, but I do see that the line of rationalization you’re taking is the same one that creates a near blank check for police officers to be held to far lower standards than they should, and in fact lower standards than non-police officers with no training at all.
No, actually I’m quite clear in what I’m asking, and that isn’t it.
Yes:
[passenger reaches under seat]
Officer: “DO NOT reach under your seat.”
[passenger complies, keeps hands in sight]
Passenger: “The document you need is under the seat”
Officer: “That’s a strange place to keep it.”
Driver: “I don’t have room in the glove box for it all. California, amirite?”
Officer: “Ok, please carefully remove the document from under the seat.”
Passenger: “Yes, bro.”
[passenger retrieves document from under seat, hands it to officer.]
Officer: “Thank you. Next time, you might want to remember that a LEO standing where I’m standing is going to get nervous if you reach under the seat. You might want to find a better place for your [documents].”
Driver: Thanks, bro. I hadn’t thought about that."
Given the general level-headedness (and lack of actual weapon) in the behavior of both parties, that’s roughly how the whole thing would have gone down if the officer had not pulled his sidearm. That’s not speculation. The passenger’s weapon existed only in the officer’s head. He really did have documentation under the seat.
It makes no sense to imagine what would have happened if the passenger had a weapon and had pulled it on the officer. It didn’t happen, not because the officer pulled his sidearm, but because there was no weapon and the passenger didn’t have any intention of pulling said imaginary weapon.
I’m not a firearms expert. Which rule is it that says, “Don’t point your firearm at anything you don’t intend to shoot?” Is it the first, or the fourth?
An oft-repeated maxim among police officers is, “there’s no such thing as a routine traffic stop”. Sudden movements or reaching somewhere that a weapon could be hidden is a surefire way to escalate a situation.
Also, there would seem to be more to the statute than this, since the cop was apparently wearing a loaded and holstered firearm, which they were recorded threatening somebody with.
I shouldn’t even dignify this with a response but naturally there’s exceptions for law enforcement here.
I don’t want in on this discussion, but I’d be remiss in pedantry if I didn’t point out that acting aggressive is actually a way of de-escalating with a bear.
