# Isn't it ALWAYS foolish to run from the police? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 30, 2015, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-it-always-foolish-to-run-from-the-police/726601 "2015-07-30T19:33:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![robertliguori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2015, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-it-always-foolish-to-run-from-the-police/726601/61 "2015-08-03T23:22:54Z")
Happily for the whole race issue, there’s a pretty in-depth meta-analysis of [race and the criminal justice system here](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/), encompassing the usual claims and several more besides. I’d highly recommend people give it at least a once-over and consider reading the studies which disagree with their assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-it-always-foolish-to-run-from-the-police/726601/62 "2015-08-04T02:56:21Z")
> [@OldOlds](#): > > In suburbia the secret is, especially at night, to get a few lefts and rights between you and the cruiser and duck into a driveway. Kill the lights & engine and get low, and there’s a god chance they go right past you. But make sure you don’t keep your foot on the brake! I’ve actually done this - I was doing donuts on the road shoulder when an unknown car started chasing me - I made a few lefts and rights (my friend knew the area) before ducking into a friends house that was located on a “back section” (i.e out of view of the road because of a dog leg driveway) and turned off the lights - and Yes, I remembered to keep my foot off the brake. I had another friend who ran from the fuzz on his bike - he pulled the fuse from his brake light so he wouldn’t be seen ---
**Author:** ![Hiker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3be4f8/32.png) [@Hiker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hiker)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2015, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-it-always-foolish-to-run-from-the-police/726601/63 "2015-08-04T07:32:42Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > You’re right that the answer to the basic question of whether one should run from the police is simple. In the vast majority of cases, the answer is you should not run. That seems pretty logical and reasonable. Part of my puzzlement through relates to the fact that we KEEP getting incident after incident in the news plastered all over tv and radio of some black guy/gal bolting from the police or not complying, and dying. Again, and again, and again. In that aether, doesn’t it seem like it would impel people being stopped to NOT try to bolt like you stole something? I’m confused because in the midst of the REPEATED spotlight and death toll from officers overacting to people bolting or being non compliant, you STILL have numerous examples of people still choosing the dumbest possible response. Is this just a case of not thinking things through in the moment? Being so unhitched from what is going on at large they are not aware of the faulty responses? Being filled with such over the top fear of perceived malice of officers towards black people writ large they think being compliant is even MORE dangerous? > > If that last is true then we need to rhetorically slap the nonsense out of people, because it’s getting them killed. You are asking why people keep running from the police even though they should (and probably do) know that it is dangerous. I think that is a valid question. The people who recently were in the news for coming to harm in a police encounter would probably be better off today if they had complied. You can say now, that they were being stupid so what happened to them is their own fault. If there had been an individual incident like that, I might be willing to follow. But these incidents keep piling up. So maybe there is more to this than just people being stupid. I wonder: How do policemen generally behave when they approach citizens? Do they display the friendliness and courtesy you would expect when meeting someone whom you are supposed to protect and to serve? My impression is that there are parts of the population who have a different experience. They do not perceive the police as someone who is there to help them. They perceive them as a threat. To be fair, I do not believe that all (or even most) policemen misbehave when meeting with black citizens. Policework is an arduous and often thankless job and there probably are way more of the good ones than they are given credit for. But it is the bad ones that make the news. Looking at the reports of the encounters gone wrong, I get the impression that there is a certain feeling of entitlement among some policemen. They do not understand that they are supposed to be a servant to the person in front of them, not their commanding officer. They believe that their official authority gives them the right to be met with an attitude of subservience. And if they are not getting that, they do what a policeman never should do - they escalate the situation. That kind of policeman may be a minority. I sure hope they are. But there are obviously enough of them to shape the image of the police as a whole. So I suggest if you want to “slap the nonsense out of people”, these are the people you want to start with. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt-it-always-foolish-to-run-from-the-police/726601.md?page=3)