I don't hate cops. If they do their job, I have the utmost respect for them. And I have no problems admitting when I've done something wrong. But 4 times in 6 months? Guys. Put a note on my file that my parents live up the street. Fuck, I peer tutored half of you in high school.
Thats the problem. The mentality of "Got nothing to hide? Why not let me search the car anyway?" I don't typically hate cops. But the whole guilty until proven innocent thing chaps my ass a bit. Why do you need to search the back seat for a minor traffic violation?
For reference: I have two friends who are sheriiff's officers in Florida. Another friend recently retired form a suburban police force in NJ. My neighbor is the chief of police two towns over. I am white, middle class, with no record. But police make me nervous as hell. I know most are good folks, but that isn't the point. Most doesn't cut it. Police as a group are no more or less virtuous than any other group of people in the general population. And since I don't particularly trust the general population, I have no reason to put any more faith in the police. And they carry a badge, which gives them a great deal of power, and a gun. A shithead cop can do hell of a lot more damage than a shithead garbage man, shithead store clerk, or shithead car mechanic. I probably have less reason to be nervous about the police looking in my car than most of you, but, not knowing if the cop who pulled me over is in the dangerous minority, I'm not only going to be exceedingly polite and respectful, I'm not going to give them an opportunity to fuck me over if I can help it. Windows stay up, the trunk stays closed, and invitations for a cavity search are not extended unless I am given no other choice.
Because somewhere along the line, "protect and serve" morphed into "get the bad guys". It's a subtle but significant difference. The ones that scare me are the white cops with shaved heads. Every one I've ever met has been a sack of rage with an inferiority complex looking to take it out on someone. Balding men who don't try to hide it are a different story.
That's pretty much where I stand. I consented to a car search once after rolling a stop sign and was angrily grilled for 30 minutes about my girlfriend's prescription Allegra being in my glove box - which incidentally, shared the same address as the one on my driver's license. Yeah, I'm probably a junkie abusing large quantities of allergy medication. I definitely fit the profile of a dangerous drug smuggler: mid-20s, professional attire, a grocery bag full of perishables, driving a Subaru station wagon, pulling into a middle class apartment community at 6pm on a week night. Then I was left to put my car back together after they pulled everything out of everywhere. Since then, I do what normal people should do: I'm polite, hands visible at all times, and no, you can't look in my car.
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The police in my city are currently to most hated demographic there is here. They are basically blackmailing the citizens saying that unless they get a 4% budget increase (millions) the chief said "Your city will not be adequately safe." The reason we don't have the money to pay them is because they're grossly over-staffed and overpaid. This year a new police HQ was built and they replaced their still fullyfunctioning cruisers with expensive Chargers and Tahoes. They make $50+ an hour here, in a major city with five murders a year. They set up ten to twenty officers at RIDE program roadblocks and are demanding a zero probable cause clause to pull over and search cars. This is what happens when you take public servants for granted too long-- they turn a service into a jobs program that you're not permitted to debate.
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The bolded line, to be clear, is a court admissible admission of guilt. If you fight the ticket, or if you have to fight a later search, or a later set of charges based on whatever the search turned up, that admission will cost you. Cops get treated without respect for a lot of reasons. But the two that seriously degrade my respect for the profession are 1) the ever present stories of serious violations of civil rights and crimes committed by cops coupled with 2) the attitude of most cops I know who, when discussing those stories, defend the bad cops instead of condemning them. When a story breaks about cops beating people to death, subjecting them to pointless body cavity searches, holding them in jail for lack of politeness, and so on, it would build a lot of credibility for the profession if other cops chimed in with "I hope that guy goes to prison for sullying our profession" instead of "Well, people are kind of dicks so tasing them and clubbing them into comas is ok".
And, btw, probably the easiest way to tell there's a serious problem with policing in America is that we're discussing, very earnestly, how to be polite to cops so they don't fuck us over. How to appease them into not being dicks. That's a travesty right there. Police should have to justify each and every use of their power against the citizenry and the bare facts of the incident should decide what happens, not whether or not I was sufficiently meek and subservient. It is a dangerous and terrible erosion of civil liberties to create an atmosphere in which a citizen who exercises his rights and requires an explanation from the officer as to why they have been bothered is somehow treated with more suspicion and harsher treatment. "Do you know why I pulled you over?" is an offensive question. It's designed to do nothing but elicit an admission of guilt and give cops an excuse to be pissed off if the person doesn't answer it to their satisfaction. You pull me over, I would hope you know why you did it and you really don't need my input. My answer, btw, has typically been "I'm not sure. Why did you?" The sad thing is that I know all this and yet when I'm pulled over I am meek. Why? Because we give cops too much power and not enough consequence for abuse of that power and I'd rather not get killed because the officer had a bad morning.
You can't be serious. I'm thankful for the protection that law enforcement provides overall and respect that it is a dangerous profession, but I do not enjoy interacting with law enforcement personally. I'll be as polite to a cop as I would any given stranger on the street but that's it. I don't trust them. I'm sure as fuck not going to incriminate myself by answering the bullshit "do you know how fast you were going" or anything similar regardless of how minor the offense. I haven't had a bad interaction with law enforcement in a long time and I plan to keep it that way; by avoiding interaction with them as much as humanly possible. It isn't that I distrust them any more than the average person, but they have way more power over me than the average person, plus most of them are pretty unintelligent and poorly trained in the use of the weapons at their disposal. For example NYPD shot NINE fucking bystanders trying to get one guy who was standing 8 feet away from them.
Yea, if you had those in your car you probably would've had a bad day. When an officer pulls you over, there's a suspicion of your guilt. Its implied that you may be guilty or are guilty of something when they stop you. No reason to fill in the blanks for them and admit your guilt. That said, I've been pulled over probably about 8 or 9 times since I've had a license. None of them have been serious violations, and I've only had one cop who was an asshole. I rolled a stop sign in Florida, got pulled over, the female officer saw my California plates and said some shitty comment about hearing about California rolls and finally seeing one. Here's a nice example though of how you can fuck yourself: When you get to Florida you have like 2 or 3 weeks to get new plates. Its easy to not know about this, and there are real consequences for not doing this. Easy to not do though and kind of hard to know about. The officer pulls you over and say you're honest and say you got here a month ago. You just admitted guilt and could've fucked yourself. Cops are pros and most people do not know the game let alone how to play it. People really should brush up on how to protect themselves. Even a person who grew up white upper middle class like myself is still susceptible to being fucked by an annoyed/angry officer who will manipulate you to admit guilt for something.
No, no. He is serious. Largely, that is the mentality that prevails in law enforcement across the country. If you have nothing to hide, let me search you then. The problem is, people are too scared to say no to a cop because they don't know the extent of their rights. Not to say that the general citizen is incredibly stupid, but search and seizure law can get complex. And the burden of proof on the cop to prove reasonable suspicion is so small, anyone can find any way to justify it. In Florida, in "high crime areas", it gives the cops reasonable suspicion(or probable cause, I can't remember which) to stop someone if they merely run at the sight of a cop. He or she could just be patrolling the area, not looking at anyone in partcular and if someone just takes off running for whatever reason, the cop can then give chase and stop the person and inquire as to their whereabouts. When the mentality is that "Everyone's a criminal. Now lets go find out why.", the general public becomes increasingly distrustful of police forces.
To be fair, the original question was how to act when pulled over for something minor in order to get off without a ticket, not how to avoid being fucked over. Having driven speedily for about 28 years now, I've had quite a few interactions with police officers for minor traffic violations. Someone else mentioned that police are as varied as the general population, which I've found to be true. I've had an officer act like an asshole when I was only speeding on a deserted road in the middle-of-nowhere, Tennessee, and I've had them let me go with only a verbal warning doing 20 over in a construction zone. I always act polite and respectful, so it's mostly up to the cop's personality and mood at the time. However, I do know that it helps to have nice cleavage, as my wife's ticket/stop ratio is much lower than mine. Her most recent stop was blatantly and deliberately running a red light right in front of an officer, with all three kids in the car. He let her off with a verbal.
Clearly if you get pulled over for something basic like going 9 over, those tips he gave are appropriate. I think the issue is how to not let that get turned into something more significant. In general, most traffic stops are boring, annoying things. However, its best to try to not let get that turned into something more exciting. Take katokoch for example. If he told the officer he had firearms in the car, a boring ordinary traffic stop would get turned into something much more exciting where he would have to prove ownership, and a whole bunch of other things where if he gave the wrong answers he could be really fucked.
"My brother in law is a traffic cop, and he once told me the only way he would let somebody out of a DUI is if they gave him a blowjob. I said, 'Hey scumbag. You're married to my sister. Just give me the DUI.'"