What do you do if a cop approaches you and starts questioning you while you're sitting in your car in a public parking lot?
What do you do if a cop approaches you and starts questioning you while you're sitting in your car in a public parking lot?
Unfortunately, I drive a ghetto minivan which causes the police to profile me and has caused people in small towns to call the police on me if I am in a public park or in their neighborhood. I even had someone call the police on me at campground that I had pre-paid for and the police were not sympathetic at all to my right to just exist.
I am aware of stop and identify laws and know that a cop needs reasonable suspicion to demand to see your ID. However, can't the cop just make up some lies about reasonable suspicion?
If a cop approaches me can I immediately start with: "Officer, do you have reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred, is in the process of occurring, or is about to occur?" It seems like that will immediately escalate things even if technically the law is on my side.
I just want a damn right to exist law and to not be a target for an overactive imagination by the police which treats me like a criminal until they can check me for warrants.
Honestly, I want to tell them to fuck off right away but I also don't have money for a lawyer.
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If you're not doing anything illegal then I highly recommend keeping your hands out in the open where they can see both of them, and politely answering their questions.
They have a gun, so its not about right/wrong, it's about your own safety. You don't know if that's a decent one or a shitty one.
Yeah, you are right. Once I opened the door when I got pulled over by Border Patrol. I opened it because my power window was broken. They did not like me opening the door.
Many police departments in the US are explicitly trained to treat encounters with people as potential combat situations. They get taught lessons like “Your first job is to go home alive.” It’s continually drilled into them how dangerous their job is, even though that’s not statistically true. This obligates you to treat an encounter with an officer as a potentially life threatening situation.
If your window isn’t working, do not open your door. Police regularly approach a traffic stop prepared for a violent confrontation, sometimes going so far as resting their hand on their firearm.
I worked on a military base for a while, where each vehicle was stopped to show ID badges. The right approach is to say (and mime - eg point at the window, point down, and shake your head “no”) that your window isn’t working. They’ll probably take a step back and tell you to open the door.
It’s wrong, it needs to change, but until it does we need to adapt our behaviors to fit the situations we are put into.
Solid post. These guys get “warrior” training. Like they are embedded with the enemy. When you set the general tone like that, common folk are at a disadvantage right out of the gate.
Be respectful and polite and try to escape the situation with as little impact as possible.
Lt. Colonel David Grossman is not the worst thing to happen to american policing but he's sure not helping anything.
oh that's the dickhead with the silly killing mentality right?
having a van that works properly would probably help your credibility, yes.
/lh