How can you say that after the video posted by Machine Elf?
In USA, there is a genuine threat to the police officer every single time they pull over a driver. Every time they approach a driver, they cannot know whether they’re going to need their gun or not. To suggest that police should approach a traffic stop without their hand ready to pull their gun if necessary is to suggest that police should ignore the risk to their own safety.
It’s not about “cops behaving like everyone not a cop is a criminal”, it’s about cops behaving like everyone not a cop MAY BE a criminal who is about to shoot you in the face. This kind of risk is orders of magnitude higher for American cops than it is for other ‘developed’ countries, so it only makes sense that the mentality of American cops must be orders of magnitude more cautious/defensive/apprehensive.
Not to nitpick about the specific case in point, but in that video, the cop had nothing he could do except duck and dodge, in that split second, when the perp fired that gun at him. Having his hand on his gun would have made no difference - in that first split second, it was imperative that he duck the oncoming bullet.
He could have just drawn the gun in the following 1-2 seconds and his survival likelihood would have been unaffected.
How often does that happen though? I’d be willing to bet that relative to the number of traffic stops, it’s exceedingly tiny. It’s about as stupid as airline stewardesses carrying parachutes in case there’s a problem.
I’ve never really really had to interact with them (I guess I’m a goody goody :P) and I’m not friends with any so I guess I’m pretty indifferent to them.
I picked ‘other’ because of a wide variety of personal experiences. Note that I’m white and I know from direct experience that that makes a huge difference (stories to follow).
First the good – I’ve had a lot of positive interactions with cops. A good friend of mine is retired NYPD – he was a first-responder on 9/11, and we’ve had some really good discussions about a variety of the more negative stories about cops, and he seems to have some very reasonable opinions on those incidents. I also had a high school acquaintance who became a cop and helped me out when local cops were asking neighbors questions about me (it was regarding burglaries, and they did actually catch the burglars, and ironically, the police themselves were partly to blame for those burglaries because they posted the addresses of people who went on vacation on their bulletin board… in the hall leading to the jail cells. Not smart.
As far as negative impressions that I’ve had – I saw a pair of cops try to frighten a poor old guy crossing the street in NYC. they nearly hit him with their car. They were clearly trying to frighten the guy, and nearly hit him. Yeah, the guy was probably drunk but that’s not an excuse. They were even laughing at him and making fun of him.
I had a regular game night at a friends house years ago. It wasn’t a wealthy neighborhood – it was pretty much standard middle class. And one of our friends (who happened to be black) told us that he no longer could come to the games, because every single time he drove into that neighborhood, the cops would pull him over and hassle him. Same address, I once locked my keys in my car really late at night. I borrowed a wire hangar to try to open the lock. Cops came by and didn’t even check to see if I was the car owner (as I said, I’m white) and merely gave me a hand with the hanger and got my door open. While I appreciated the help, the double standard was not lost on me.
Then there was this other cop who was a friend of a friend. We all traveled together to Philadelphia, and I remember a few of us in a cab ride. The driver was probably indian or pakistani, and the cop would not stop making fun of the guy’s accent, his dress, everything about him. He just HAD to give the driver a hard time for no reason whatsoever. He once actually told a story about a domestic dispute where the husband had beaten the wife. The guy said that the wife deserved the beating for mouthing off to the husband, that he’d have done the same. I couldn’t believe my ears. There really are people like that, and some of them happen to be cops.
So when I see a cop, I don’t make any assumptions. I hope that I’m dealing with a good guy. But cops are people like anyone else, and some people are attracted to the job for the exact wrong reason. They exist at both extremes, and every point in between.
FWIW, here’s one officer who says she was trained not to rest hand on holster because it can “look aggressive.” She seems to imply that officers who do so are not necessarily trying for a quick response, but rather are concerned about weapon retention (which isn’t particularly necessary with police security holsters, which require a specific sequence of actions to draw the weapon).
OTOH, here’s a sheriff’s department article explaining why an officer might elect to have hand on-holder during a traffic stop. The article indicates that hand-on-holster is indeed about reducing response time.
It’s not that the general public is a threat, it’s that any individual they detain may be a threat, and it’s prudent to be ready for anything until the detainee has given indications that they are probably not going to be a threat. While a basic traffic violation may be the initial reason for the stop, the cop doesn’t know what else is going on until he investigates further. Maybe the driver has a kilo of heroin on the passenger seat. Maybe he’s wanted for murder in the next county. Maybe he just robbed the gas station a few blocks over.
The differential treatment of people of color by some officers is indeed a problem that needs to be addressed.
A fine nitpick in keeping with long-established SD tradition. You’re right, hand-on-sidearm didn’t make a difference in this particular incident. But it still may provide a useful time margin in other incidents. Moreover, it’s one of several things a prudent officer does to reduce his risk. Others include being vigilant during the initial approach, looking to see (as much as possible) what the occupants of the car are doing with their hands, and remaining a little further back than the driver might like, so as to use the B-pillar for shielding (it’s more difficult for the driver to draw a bead on you in that position).
There is some objective data in this PDF document. They examine “routine” traffic stops, i.e. ones in which the reason for the stop was a simple traffic violation, to see how often these resulted in the officer being assaulted or murdered. Data is from the late '80s to late '90s. The chance of a cop being murdered during a routine traffic stop was about one in ten million, and the chance of being assaulted was about one in 20,000.
FWIW I’ve witnessed the hand-on-holster posture during traffic stops, and never perceived it to be particularly threatening. I’d be far more concerned if the officer approached with his gun actually drawn, even if only in a ready position (i.e. pointed at ground or sky).
I’ve dealt directly with cops for many years, as a prosecutor and now as a magistrate. Most are honest, hard-working people who want to do some good, but there are certainly exceptions. Given the far too many shameful examples of racist and/or violent policing that have come to light, especially with the ubiquity of cellphone cameras, I can understand why many black Americans are not as confident in them as I am.
Which bears out my point- it’s a matter of perception and self-segregation on the cops’ part- they’ve, for whatever reason, mentally segregated their world into “cops”, and “everyone else, who might be criminals”. And that latter category seems to be further subdivided into “Black people, who are probably criminals”, “Mexicans, who might be criminals”, and “white people, who probably aren’t criminals, but we don’t know.”.
That’s a big problem IMO. Cops shouldn’t be organizing their worldview like that- it makes them have an adversarial view as a default, when they really *should * have the attitude that they’re part of the same community as the people they’re policing.
A lot of things in American society are adversarial, though, from the court system to a school system which (in general and in the default imagery) is set up as a permanent competition. There isn’t only one feedback loop, there’s several and they’re tied up around and atwixt each other.
You realize that with traffic stops, the cops are working for gov’t and required to enforce laws, not make them; probably many of them have assigned quotas so it’s not personal to them
Cops (at least in Texas) will tell you that they don’t have quotas! They will not respond to you however, when you ask them where they are at in their “required monthly activity level.” That is why you can bet if you get a ticket its on the 30th or the 2nd of the month.
I had considered discussing this incident in another thread, but this seems to fit here. Six Tempe, AZ police officers who were on their break were asked to leave a Starbuck’s coffee shop on July 4 because a customer felt unsafe in their presence. Starbuck’s has since apologized to the Tempe police department.
Working at several restaurants and bars over the course of my collegiate experience, we didn’t want the police to hang out there either. The city I went to college in had a rule that two uniformed police officers were the max that could be eating at one place at a time. If we had too many cops there, people wouldn’t show up. The chief of police would routinely show up to the restaurant I cooked at to make sure his cops weren’t loitering the place. A quick pop in and pop out.
Cite on those odds? I bet that 150,000 of the 300 million people in America don’t die of being hit by an asteroid or comet each year.
I have to imagine there’s some kind of crazy long-tail event included in that (like, every few million years a comet obliterates a continent), which is not a useful comparison to the fact that some cops get killed every year because that’s not how real people do risk analysis.
The safest I’ve ever felt around police was during a trip to Japan back in October of 2008. The things cops get away with here in the US is ridiculous. Even if most cops aren’t assholes, the ones that are can really ruin someones day, up to the point of ending their life, just because the cop was a bit jumpy. That alone makes me nervous around them.
Frankly police scare the shit out of me. The idea that we have an entire group of people that are entirely above the law just freaks me out. Seeing one in person and knowing that, if they chose, they could gun me down in cold blood and not get anything worse than a paid vacation completely unnerves me. Logically, I understand that they are unlikely to go murderous at that exact moment, but just to know it’s possible freaks me out. Add, on top of that, their ability to just mess with anyone they want whenever they want for no reason at all, and I just don’t want to deal with it. It seems like hardly a day goes by that I don’t read about someone spending the night, or more, in jail for “impeding an officer” or “resisting” when they have simply failed to kowtow to the police.
And I’m a white, middle class, guy. I’m probably the last person on earth that has to worry about this stuff. But knowing it has happened and will continue to happen makes me very uneasy.