Obviously the Internet is full of extremes. The rest of the world sees footage of police being aggressive, super paranoid and always asking for ID. You can even lose your life for something as simple as a traffic stop. Made me wonder when I saw a thread on legal advice about a guy in New York who nearly got fined for picking up litter on his dog walk. Surely it can’t be as bad as it looks? Or do you guys live in fear of a police interaction?
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The risk of losing your life thing over something as simple as a traffic stop is, unfortunately, a real (but unequally distributed) fear for many. There are crooked cops, there are asshole cops who will do whatever they can to antagonize and instigate, but no, a really average interaction with law enforcement would be the kind of thing where you get pulled over for speeding, you give the cop your license and registration, you either get a warning or get your ticket, and then you’re on your way. The internet is filled with extremes — but they do happen. They’re not, however, by any means the “Average” interaction with law enforcement
>always asking for ID.
If its a traffic stop, that’s to make sure you are licensed to drive.
Outside of that you often don’t have to provide ID, which is actually at odds with a lot of other countries.
>You can even lose your life for something as simple as a traffic stop.
Doubt. There’s almost always something else going on, either a bias at play on the end of the officer or circumstances making the suspect turning it into far more than a traffic stop.
>Made me wonder when I saw a thread on legal advice about a guy in New York who nearly got fined for picking up litter on his dog walk.
Doubt. Also that sub is basically a karmafarm sub full of people who aren’t lawyers who intentionally give bad advice.
I imagine you are a victim of AI and algorithyms. You search “terrible law enforcement dashcam” and you get that in your feed. It then feeds you more because you viewed/voted/commented on previous entries.
No one is going to watch a traffic stop where everything goes normal, or a beat cop talking to someone on their front porch.
Mundane and hardly worth mentioning. My interactions with the police have never been more than speeding infractions. In each and every case I cooperated and maintained a good attitude. A lot of times you don’t even get a ticket unless you’re a habitual offender. You know, my neighbor is a police office. I have no fear at all.
Vast majority of police interactions do not end up in the use of force
Keep your hands on the steering wheel, inform the officer if you are legally carrying a firearm and obey all commands
If they violate your rights you can sue them afterwards
If you following the above it is extremely unlikely that you will be killed in a traffic stop
However, if you jump out of the car, resist, try to grab the officers gun/taser, or pull out your own weapon, you are putting yourself at risk
Most of my interactions have been them pulling me over, checking my ID, and a 50-50 chance in them me a (deserved) ticket for speeding or letting me off the hook. In every instance I got a speeding ticket (except once many years ago) they usually write the ticket for lower than I was actually going.
All the cops who I have ever spoken to have been very respectful and polite.
The problem isn’t how common dangerous interactions with police are, the problem is that we are helpless to do anything in the rare occasions they do happen. The power to minimize bad police interactions are out of our hands, and that’s scary.
Most people go their entire lives without ever having a dangerous interaction with the police. But even a 1 in 100 chance id something happening is still too high when it should be near 0, and we the regular folk have next to no power at all to prevent them from happening or hold those responsible accountable. That is where the issue comes from.
I try to avoid any interaction if possible. In my 40 plus years my interactions have been mixed. I had a cop curse at me (because I complained about being asked for ID) and another was insulting and rude, most were neutral or polite. I’ve never been arrested and I’ve gotten two speeding tickets ever so I have limited interactions thankfully.
It’s a mixed bag. I’ve had interactions with cops that have been super sweet and professional and other interactions with cops that have been unnecessarily rude.
It really depends on context. And who you are and where you are makes a huge difference. Some police forces are fine. Some are awful.
I go out of my way not to interact with police. Where I live, they’re not interested in stopping any serious crime. They just harass people or hang out in their cars doing nothing and accruing OT pay.
It would be great to have a police force that cares about public safety, but my police force seems too offended by the response to George Floyd’s murder to care about that. Our police has known ties to right wing gangs, and has instituted a deliberate slowdown in response to left-wing protests.
https://www.koin.com/news/portland/portland-police-bureaus-average-response-time-more-than-doubles-in-6-years/
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/23/portland-police-proud-boys-protest/
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/right-wing-meme-included-in-police-training-slideshow/283-62f0cc59-14fa-4da5-a98e-a40ea0e503fc
I don’t know about losing your life because of a traffic stop, but you might lose your life for misbehaving at a traffic stop.
If a cop believes he has reason to fear for his life then yeah, you might get shot – but that’s not limited to interactions with cops.
Yes, there have been some cops who have wrongly shot innocent people. For the most part, those cops are charged and judged accordingly.
I’ve had a few instances where a cop was an a-hole on a power trip. Yes, in some cases it’s been standard procedure or nice/ polite. I live in a city so I’ve had to call the police a few times at home or they’ll come to me to ask questions about something. But the worst one was this encounter below. Then another time I just had 3 cops in my face trying to intimidate me and instigate because I was getting a little upset that I felt like they weren’t helping me with a man who was breaking into my apartment building and made me feel like the bad guy. They threatened to arrest me because I raised my voice.
Worst time: I was coming from my parents house who live in a lower income trailer home community. They always have an officer who patrols at night. It was just about to start snowing so I was wanting to get home. So the cop was doing like 5mph on his patrol. It’s a residential street, so no lines on the road for lanes. I made sure to use my turn signal to go around him (didn’t want that to be a reason to be pulled over). But instead he decided to pull me over. Usually when you get pulled over they immediately ask for license and registration. This mf starts screaming at me “wtf do you think you’re doing passing me? you think you can pass me?” And I was like, sorry, I thought you were just patrolling. Is there a law that I can’t pass a police officer? “how fast do you think you were going to try to go?” the speed limit is 20 and I didn’t do more than that. you were doing 5. “where are you going? where do you live?” And he continues to yell and scream calling me names and yelling at me that I passed him. At this point I’m pretty mad and I’m like, “are you going to tell me exactly why you’re pulling me over and do you plan on checking my license or are you just here to go off on your power trip because you think I’m poor because I’m coming out of this neighborhood. I am on my way home to (insert rich town) before the snow starts coming down. So you can either give me whatever ticket you think I deserve or you can let me be on my way so I can call my lawyer as soon as I get home because we both know I am allowed to pass a police officer in a residential neighborhood.” And as soon as he heard the word lawyer he backed off and just went back to his car. There was absolutely no reason for that interaction.
The average interaction is, by definition, uneventful. There are many issues with policing in this country, ranging from poor training to outright murder and criminal enterprise, but the average cop is fine and most of the time people deal with police the experience will be completely neutral. Always a chance you run into a horrible cop, but it is not that likely.
I personally cannot say I live in perpetual fear of them, but they are armed dudes that have the right to cuff you, throw you in their car, and take you to jail, it’s not like I’m seeking them out. Generally try to avoid interaction with them, and interact politely when I don’t have the choice. As a Black person, I know they are more likely to think I’m involved in crime, but I’ve only had minor negative interactions.
I have been pulled over three times in my life. Police have always been extremely aggressive and intimidating. I would prefer not to interact with the police if I can help it.
Guaranteed police will lie and try to get you to self incriminate. I have a dash cam and I just sit quietly as they accuse me of nonsense and let the traffic judge toss out the case.
Depends on the precinct and their culture.
Around here, the police tend to be antagonistic, aggressive, combative, rude, and intentionally try to “throw you off” or confuse you into giving them a reason to escalate the encounter.
If they don’t like how you look, they will walk up to you on the street and demand your ID and ask you where you came from, where you are going, etc. They will pull you over on made up stuff and do the above as well. All of my minority friends had been pulled over ***more times than they could keep track of*** by their mid 20s, almost never resulting in any sort of traffic infraction at the end. They just pull over anyone they don’t like and say things like “oh, you were over the yellow line back there” or “your tag light was out for a minute” and then would go on to harass them and try to trick them into an escalated encounter.
In my city, the chief of police and his staff all quit and are suing the city because the systemic racism is so bad he couldn’t perform his job duties or do things like punish blatantly and openly racist officers who joke about things like killing black people for fun.
Really my experiences are all over the map. I’m just gonna throw out some random estimates.
-60% completely uneventful, cordial, or matter of fact. If the trooper is professional with a neutral to friendly demeanor, that’s a win.
-25% rude, disrespectful, lazy, or maybe even a bit creepy. Some of my examples include going on and on about how shitty my car is, giving a lecture about how my passenger who is a male friend “looks like a chick” and men shouldn’t have long hair and talking about how he’ll consider himself a failure of a father if his son looks like my friend, two cops at my car window discussing the pros and cons of güerras(white women) vs latinas while referring to me and my wife and making up hypotheticals about us. My wife has her own stories about being told to smile or hit on.
-10% Completely aggro. Threatening more severe punishment, yelling and swearing right off the bat, or threatening to search me. I have a few stories about really WTF moments that were more confusing than scary because of how comically over the top they were.
-5% genuinely positive, helpful. Times I was thankful for police being there, or giving me tips on how to approach a situation.
I have been fortunate in that my few encounters with police have been neutral to positive. The last time I interacted with a cop was last week; my car had broken down at a busy intersection and it wasn’t long before a police car pulled up behind me and the officer approached me. I told him what had happened and that I was in the middle of calling for help, and he stayed with me until the tow truck arrived to make sure no one hit me.
I am aware that I could run into a bad cop at any time, but it hasn’t happened so far.
Every interaction I’ve ever had with law enforcement in my life has been positive, even when I was a smart mouthed teenager. As an adult I’ve been pulled over a couple of times, each time I was polite, answer the officer’s questions and was told to have a good day and I then went on about my day. When I worked 11pm to 7am at an all night gas station, in rural Louisiana, the only place open all night to buy beer and liquor for about 25 miles in any direction, the Parish Sheriff’s deputies would regularly sit at the tables in the deli area of the gas station and do their paperwork and I was happy to have them there.
Here’s a video some good advice on how to have positive interactions with police:
https://youtu.be/uj0mtxXEGE8
I’ve gotten pulled over, maybe, two or three times and the officers were always pleasant to deal with. They always just gave me warnings or let me know I had a taillight out or something. Last time I got pulled over and the cop was still chill even though he knew I was armed.
Same for when I was a passenger in a car and we got pulled over.
The police I’ve encountered have been neutral or positive. I did a ride along with police in college for my criminology class. You see police pretty frequently in down town DC and they direct traffic a lot in a nearby school at pickup time.
I live in Minnesota, and most county sheriffs and townie cops are pretty pleasant during traffic stops. I was in the car with my friend one time and he got pulled over and didn’t have his ID, but the cop just took his name and insurance and sent him on his way with just a “Don’t let your friends distract you, now.”
I’ve found it’s usually State Troopers (“Staties”) or city cops that tend to be the hard-ass, stupid jackasses that fuck everything up around here.
The average interaction for me starts with me seeing flashing red and blue lights in my rearview mirror and saying “Well, shit” (out loud, even if I’m in the car alone.) Then I pull over, turn off the car, try to lower the window, turn the car back on, lower the window, and turn it back off again. (My old car let you put the windows down with the key shut off. My current one doesn’t.)
The cop comes to my window and says something like “Good afternoon, license, registration, and proof of insurance.” I hand the documents over.
He’ll then ask one of two questions, “Do you know how fast you were going?” or “Do you know why I pulled you over?” My answers are “Not really, I thought I was going <speed limit> but I’m talking to you, so I might be wrong about that.” or “No, sir.”
He’ll then inform me of my actual speed and either write me a warning or a ticket, or he’ll tell me that my headlight or tail light is out and tell me to get it fixed. Either way, I say I’ll take care of it, and that’s the end of the encounter.
I don’t think that most police interactions are violent but I will definitely admit that every time I get pulled over or stopped by the police I get nervous I may do something wrong or they may take something out of context. No other public servants such as fire, EMS or members of the town municipality (clerks offices and such) can shoot you and claim it was part of their job.
I rarely have had police interactions in my life. The few interactions I have had have been professional. Most people’s experience generally involves traffic violations. They’re generally pretty straight forward. I do not put the fear of a police interaction as something that enters my general world concerns.
There is a huge volume of interactions every year and most are pretty mundane. The overwhelmingly vast majority of traffic stops do not end in one losing their life.
IDs are asked for during traffic stops. Police aren’t running around the streets demanding to see everyone’s ID. Unless you are part of an incident, they generally won’t approach you.
Generally the best thing you could do is limit your interactions with them as much as possible. If you an avoid talking to them entirely, you should aim for that.
Thankfully I don’t have a ton of data to pull from but the handful of cops I’ve had run ins with are generally curt but professional. Only once was one an outright dick for no reason.
Cops I’ve interacted with while NOT being on the wrong side of the law have all been a quite friendly, jovial bunch, funnily enough.
I say this as a white female, fully recognizing I may receive different treatment from the police than other folks on this thread.
I’m a sixty-year-old white guy in a public-facing profession. I’ve had one ticket in my entire life. Obviously, I never have a problem with the cops. But I know there are good cops and a smattering of bad ones. And a lot of the bad ones are kind of messed up by the job.
I have worked with the feds and secret service professionally. Locals and state just traffic violations.
[I hope I can have an interaction like this.](https://youtu.be/aMbJr4RSSAY)
Mixed. Its just according to what cop you get ive had terrible and amazing interactions with police.
I called one cop because my roommate stole my laptop to sell for drugs. The cop saw her and instantly said hey roommate, how ya been. They flirted. Then he screamed at me for wasting his time cause she was just borrowing it without permission, i told him he was a useless fucking moron and its no wonder hes a cop even mcdonalds wouldnt hire him
Another time however, my cat got out in the middle of the night as my friends and i were going to go to a bar. She got under the neighbors cars and we were trying to get her. The people across the street called the cops saying some teens were messing with peoples cars (we were 25+). The cops came, asked what we were doing, and then spent 45 mins helping us chase my cat up and down the street until finally one of them got her.
I’ve never had a bad experience with the cops. Then again, I don’t really interact with the cops but the few interactions that I did have were either positive or really mundane. Plus, I have family members who are officers in my PD back home.
Shitty, asshole cops exist and they don’t deserve to wear their badge or their uniform (certainly don’t have any business being armed); however, it is worth noting that a decent chunk of these videos “exposing” the police for “violating muh rights” or “racism” are asshole citizens trying to get their 15 seconds of fame from being the “victim” of “police brutality”. People act disrespectful towards and insult the cops and then are surprised when they get met with the same proportional force or arrested for committing a legit crime. A 5 year old could literally be getting hacked to death with a giant machete and if the cops shoot the guy, the cops are suddenly in the wrong.
“Police brutality” is also such a fun buzzword that’s become a propagandized phrase. People expect the cops to do their jobs but then they get screamed at whenever they follow their SOP. No, a cop tackling some dude on the ground doesn’t look clean or civil but that’s probably because the dude is resisting arrest. Not trying to downplay or dismiss actual instances of the police going overboard or anything but let’s also be realistic here.