A coworker of mine claims that he is pulled over by police officers on a pretty regular basis (like monthly) for traffic violations.
He swears up down and sideways that every time they pull him over they do so as a “felony stop” gun drawn hiding behind car door, ask him to step out of vehicle, etc, etc.
He claims that he is treated this way because he is a minority, and that there is always a way for the police officer to say he felt “threatened” enough to justify this method. Amazingly enough other coworkers who share his ethinc heritage have never experienced this when pulled over.
If true this would be a horrendous abuse of power on the part of our police dept and should be recified. Is there any legal way, without getting himself in more trouble, to refuse to pull over without another officer present or signal to an officer that you are uncomfortable with your surroundings and would prefer to drive to public place x or the police substation 2 blocks up without a cell phone call to the dispatcher.
Personally I think the guy :
A: is Full of it
B: is a smart ass and probably would do things like rummage around in his glove compartment just to make the officer paranoid.
C: Has authority problems in general
I would if possible like to give him a “do this or shut up” scenario so we can stop hearing how the police department wants him dead and is just waiting for him to make one wrong move as an excuse to shoot him.
I would ask for more details. To get pulled over monthly, you have to be doing something wrong to draw attention to yourself. What is the reason for these frequent stops? Is it always the same officer, or different ones each time? I could see a single officer having a problem with the guy and harassing him, but an entire police department harassing him?
Most big-city police cruisers now have video cameras. This benefits the police greatly, because they can now point to the specific act that caused them to initiate a traffic stop.
Of course, if certain police officers were lying about the reasons for their stops, this doesn’t benefit them much at all. But it’s still a salutory circumstance for the public.
Is this happening with a small department somewhere, or is this the big city?
I think if you signal your intention to pull over (put on your 4-ways or turn signal and slow down), that you can drive to a more populated area or an area that is safe to pull over. Policy probably differs between police departments on what they tolerate though. Tell you friend to call and ask what he is permitted to do when being pulled over.
In my experience, small town police seem to have more of a tendancy to pull over minorities. It’s easy to catch the person doing something, since they’re probably from out of town as well. Since small town cops don’t have quite as much to do, pulling people over can be a real power trip for them.
I should note that the above is a wild generalization, but at least in the places I have lived/frequented it fits with my observations.
It’s just a guess, but some people, for some reason, seem to attract undue attention from the police on a regular basis.
For instance, in France, a police officer can ask you to show an ID at essentially any time. It never happened to me, not even once in my life. Picture me some years ago : sloppy clothes, long hair, etc…Not once a police officer would give me a second glance.
On the other hand, one of my brothers, always well dressed, short hair, etc (and as blond and blue-eyed as you can get, so nothing to do with his apparent ethnicity), and incidentally a police officer himself, couldn’t walk past a policeman without being looked at with suspicion and asked his ID (I’m exagerating, of course, but you get the idea…). He must have a “this guy is a criminal” aura around him. That’s the only conclusion I could come up with…
Thinking twice, I’ve been asked once to show my ID. But I was in a cafe notoriously (or at least obviously) frequented by criminals, so the police had some reason to check everybody.
(If you wonder what I was doing in such a place, it’s because we could order a cafe in the morning and the owners would let us alone until close-up time discussing all day long any important matter teenagers have to discuss. Actually selling beverages was denitely not their main concern. That was an ideal place to hang-out for lazy teens with empty pockets)
Does your friend have a criminal record? Is he on parole? That fact alone will get him treated differently by the police.
My friend (who is white, and thoroughly law-abiding now) used to get harassed all the time by Ventura County sheriffs, who would even use the fact that he went to continuation school as “probable cause” to search his car, every time. Once a cop even threatened to haul him in because of an empty baggie he felt was drug paraphenalia, when in fact it had contained a sandwich earlier (and even had mayonnaise in it, still!) I don’t think they ever pulled a felony stop on him, but if he were black, they might have.
Considering that Fresno’s an even more hillbilly, backwater town than Ventura (despite its population), I can see this conceivably happening. The best thing he could do is set up a hidden camera to record one of these incidents, then send it in to the local news station, if it looks damning enough.
I wouldn’t dismiss drachillix’s friend so quickly. There are a few suburbs of Detroit (Dearborn, Livonia, Garden City…) where the cops are notorious racists, and they most certainly do harass black motorists. OTOH, the cops in Detroit are known to harass white motorists.
Southeast Michigan’s version of equal opportunity :rolleyes:
There was a study by the US DoJ showing that blacks were speeding more then whites on the NJ turnpike (this was in response to claims of racial profileing). IIRC something like 10:1 on the southern turnpike while about even in the conjested section by NYC.
I think that one might ask if your friiend violates a lot of traffic violations before you start throwing around the race (or minority) card.
I have read that late model domestic luxury cars are favored by drug runners and thus attract more attention from the man. It is generally relatively difficult to tell the race of an individual from behind in a car.
I would think drawing your weapon is a bit extreme for a speeding ticket without other circumstances. I have seen officers unsnap their holsters before approaching a car (which I understand and see as prudent behavior by the officer)
I unfortunately do not know anything about his criminal history (if any). Age about 40 slim, 5’10" and black. I wouldn’t exactly call Fresno a hillbilly backwater (Clovis maybe I know minorities who won’t go there in fear of traffic stops).
I will reccomend the camera thing but its kinda hard to set up something like that for a long period of time.
tell him to get a new car. I used to get stopped all the time in my various 20yr old rice burners, since I got my 99 altima I have been stopped once. I was doing 80 in a 60 and was let go with a warning.
for some reason cops like pulling over people who obviously havent got the cash to afford a ticket.
cite, please?
I would like to point out that from the description I read, the victim in this story drives something analogous to a Pontiac Boneville, 1979. This doesn’t qualify as late model, although it may have been a borderline luxury car in its era.
I would imagine that the problem here may be partially tied to the age of the vehicle along with the race of the driver. Perhaps they see him and think they have a match-up with a wanted man, only later to discover they have the wrong gentleman?
I’m told the racial-profiling problem is pretty bad in NJ, or at least was pretty bad a few years ago. A black guy who went to my high school told one of my friends that he got pulled over ridiculously often for stupid/nonexistant reasons. In fact, the slang term DWB (“driving while black”) seems to have entered into the lexicon in northern NJ in recent years. So I’m not sure how bad the problem actually is, but it’s certainly something people are aware of.
Also, there definitely is “beat-up car” profiling. I have a friend who drives a really battered 1987 Jeep Cherokee; mismatched body panel colors, lots of rust, etc. One time he was driving through a wealthy area (Harding Twp, NJ) and a local cop followed him for ten minutes before finally pulling him over and issuing a $45 ticket because his license plate light was broken. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone getting more than a warning for a burned out light. I think the cop was just looking for a reason to pull him over, hoping he could make a drug bust or something.
The amusement park I worked security for used to have lots of customers driving “ricer” style vehicles. You would be amazed how many of the guys who drive those like to brag about what they stole and stripped to build those cars. I’m sure a percentage of them are trying to look like the bad boy on the block but if I was a cop, knowing what I know now…I would be pulling these cars over all the freakin time. Even if half of what I have heard is true, about half of those cars have something on them that was stolen at some point. So its pretty good odds that the guys with them either are stealing stuff…or associate with people who are. Not a crime in itself but…play in the mud…you get muddy.
If you can afford to pay thousands of dollars for stereo equipment, you can afford a speeding ticket.