A traffic stop does not need to escalate into an altercation. The escalation is where the problem begins. Once you make the assumption that the officer is de facto acting wrongly, the situation is bound to get out of control. Arguing with the officer is usually the wrong thing to do and a poor way to start the interaction.
As a holder of a CHP in a “must notify” state, my interaction with a traffic stop takes the following path:
When directed, I pull over at the nearest safe place. I turn the dome light on, roll down the window and then put my hands on the wheel in a visible position. When the officer comes up to the window, he has likely ran my plates and crosschecked the DL database with the CHP database, so he knows that there is a likelihood that I am armed.
Rather than start an argument, and with my hands remaining on the wheel, I open the conversation: “Good evening Officer. I need to inform you that I have a license to carry a concealed handgun. My weapon is behind my right hip. My driver’s license and permit are in the wallet in my left front pocket, and my registration and proof of insurance are in the console. How would you like me to proceed?”
From that point, we are on a non-threatening basis for each of us. Producing the licenses, registration and proof of insurance results in the officer going back to his car to check and then returning. The last five traffic stops for me, conducted like this, have resulted in verbal warnings like “you need to watch your speed a little closer” and “next time make sure to come to a full stop at the stop sign”
For me to jump out of my car and start yelling at the officer would end badly. He already knows I am probably carrying a gun, so it would be dangerous for me to do that.
You don’t have to roll over for the officer. Just starting the interaction on a cordial basis will disarm the situation and likely end up, at worst, getting a ticket.
It is not a criminal offense, nor evidence thereof, nor should it be regarded as self-incriminating, to “not know the drill”. And the police should not regard it as such.
I am a non-threatening person, and I have a right to start out from a presumption of innocence.
I agree about the presumption of innocence. This is inherent in our structure of laws. However, jumping out of your car at a traffic stop and yelling “WTF Dude! Why did you pull me over! Are you profiling me!” at the officer can result in the stop not coming out in your favor.
You don’t need to “know the drill.” I do because I carry a weapon. For you, a nice and quiet response will start your traffic stop on a civilized note which makes it easier on you and the officer.
In most traffic stops, the officer is only presuming that you may be guilty of a few miles an hour over the limit, or a soft roll through a stop sign. These are traffic offenses and if you really need to fight them, do it in court. Adding stress to a traffic stop is stupid. There is no need to get dragged out of a car for arguing with the officer. He is not perfect, and going out of you way to piss him off might not be the smartest thing you can do.
My last traffic ticket cost me maybe fifty bucks. Not enough money to risk getting hauled in for obstruction or resisting
As I understand it, in the “Land of the Free” a prospective employer, bank offering you a loan, and almost every other situation, that party can ask “Have you ever been arrested?” This means that bad case or not, bogus “disturbing the peace” arrest or not, by the very fact of arresting you the police have won. You will be passed over or explaining yourself for the rest of your life.
By comparison, in Canada generally the only questions permitted in a job application generally are “do you have a criminal record?” (i.e. convicted of a crime for which you have not obtained a pardon after a suitable time) and “are you bondable?” (if the job requires it). The cases where the crown failed to prove you guilty are nobody else’s business, because… you are innocent.
I just did an auto loan application not very long ago–nope, that question was not included. In fact, I can’t recall ever being asked about any arrests on any credit application ever, and my employer’s job application form asks only about felony convictions. YMMV.
I have never seen the question “Have you ever been arrested.”
The only question I have seen is “Have you been convicted of a Felony?”, or occasionally “Have you been convicted of a crime, excluding traffic offenses?”.
Apologies then. I had heard somewhere that “have you ever been arrested?” was a common question on US job applications. It is not something you are legally allowed to ask in Canada.
Well, anecdotally, one night, about 2am actually, I had just gotten off work (really bad day) and was driving home, in a snowstorm, and I got stopped. I have no idea why, except it was a little after bar break and they do stop people then. The cop asked me to get out and, as I was exhausted and it was snowing heavily and my car was warm, I said, “I’d really rather not.” I may have actually whined. He thought about it for a very long minute and a half and decided I didn’t have to get out. I mean, standing there in the snow probably wasn’t much fun for him either.
He did take my license and registration and spent what I thought was an awfully long time in his car. He never did say why he stopped me or why he wanted me to get out. He told me to be careful. But he may have stopped me because I was driving like a little old lady because I’m a California native and I don’t like driving in show (or anything else about it; if you can see snow you’re too close).
I love watching the show Cops (please don’t judge me). I would say 8 out of ten times when a cop pulls over a car with more than 1 person in it, he will handcuff the occupants while he’s checking things out. He tells them “you are not under arrest, I am only detaining you”. I know it’s for his own safety because he’s outnumbered, but I really hate that.
Also, when he puts the cuffs on, he automatically searches them. How is that legal? Then he will ask if there’s anything he should know about in the car. Of course, they say no, and he says “Do you mind if I check for myself?” At that point if they say no, he will always find a way to search anyway, the favorite is him saying “Well, I smell marijuana”, and bam he has his legal search.
Also, people talk way too much to the police. I find myself yelling at the TV, “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
I’ll call you on that one, bucky. The highlighted statement is completely incorrect and a simple Google search shows it. Now, did you make that statement out of ignorance or did you make it knowing that it wasn’t true, simply because you have a boner for the cops?
“Have you ever been arrested” is not a common question on job applications here, and I’ve never seen it on loan applications. Most ask if you’ve been convicted of a crime, and in some States they aren’t even allowed to ask that (although most they are.) I’ve filled out many loan applications and have never seen criminal history or arrest history listed on the forms.
Whether they can or not, it’s not a common practice here. Further, most employers don’t care about arrests or even convictions for minor crimes. Fuck, not long out of the academy I got arrested for DUI and I was able to continue my career in the army. I didn’t get convicted on the charge, but the Army knew about it and wasn’t too pleased, but it didn’t prevent me from ultimately being promoted pretty far up before I retired. In the 2010s era military that is reducing its size and also a very different society in terms of DUI it may have been different, but at least back then I was working in a government job where you normally wouldn’t expect to get away with a bunch of legal nonsense and that happened and my career continued. I knew other officers who had convictions and were able to continue their careers. I knew some who were separated because of them (usually multiple convictions relating to alcohol for example), and some whose careers probably stalled out because of those black marks on their record–but most of them it wasn’t one strike you’re out.
I know a lot of people in private industry with misdemeanor convictions. Employers often don’t care about them unless they are theft are some kind of violent crime.
Most of the applications I’ve seen that ask about convictions were for jobs where the answer had a direct impact on eligibility, even if not an obvious one.
For example, until a couple of years ago a business in Virginia with a license to sell alcohol could not employ anyone convicted of a felony. The revised law now allows some felons to work in such places, so long as their crimes did not involve drugs or alcohol, and those with convictions for fraud may not do any of the bookkeeping.
So, for instance, as an Assistant Manager at a convenience store that sells beer would be required to be able to do the paperwork at end-of-day, nobody with a fraud conviction could hold that job.
But we’ve only been talking about asking questions directly. Loan companies and prospective employers routinely run background checks on applicants, and I don’t know if those show arrests. I know when I had to get a copy of my criminal record (I was a corporate officer for a store that sold alcohol), it showed every traffic ticket I had ever received, and noted whether I was convicted or acquitted.
I have a friend who owns a small company and I know he runs criminal background checks on applicants because he shared a story about a guy who had lied on his application about felony convictions. Turns out he had a few.
Deep aside: we’ve all seen cop shows where they bring in a suspect and in questioning him bring up something he was charged with in the past. “Hey. those charges were dropped.” Which is why it bugs me when shows, often those same shows, make it seem like dropping the charges makes everything go away. The worst offender in my experience is the movie My Cousin Vinne: excuse me, Your Honor, but the Prosecution has rested, the defense has presented it’s case, and I think the defendants have earned a finding of Not Guilty. It would be inappropriate to allow the Prosecution to “drop the charges” as, even if jeopardy has attached, this arrest will show up any time somebody runs a criminal background check on the defendants. They deserve a little note next to that saying it wasn’t them, not just that the case couldn’t be made.
/rant.
But if a background or criminal record check shows even acquittals of traffic tickets, presumably the arrest and acquittal of Vinnie’s cousin’s armed robbery and murder charges would also show on the record.
the point is, if you were not convicted, found not guilty, it should not be part of your record outside of assorted bookkeeping data required by the administration of justice, and in extraordinary circumstances like government security clearances. It certainly should not be something your employer should access.
See, I’ve never received a traffic ticket where later the charges were dropped. (Actually, the record I got only reflects offenses in Virginia, and in Connecticut I had that happen on two occasions, but I digress.)
So I don’t know what it looks like on one’s record if the charges were dropped. But I suspect it says something very like that.
So the question is, which of these would you rather have appear on your record:
“Armed Robbery and Murder - Acquitted” or
“Armed Robbery and Murder - Declined to Prosecute”
Neither one is good, but it seems to me that Acquitted is better, and the only reason someone would take dropped charges instead is if that saves them the inconvenience of going to trial. Once the Prosecution has rested, dropping the charges isn’t really doing you a favor (in the scenario depicted in the movie, where your innocence has been effectively proven).
This to me is the heart of this and similar questions, and I seldom see the true issue actually answered. Yes, we know an officer has to have legal grounds to order (and in turn physically force) people to do certain things, at least if they care about coming out on top should those actions be challenged later in court… BUT:
How does the person being given an order there on the street know whether it’s legal or not?
…especially since officers are both trained in the use of AND well-served to make use of deception as well as varying levels of intimidation tactics when talking to people in order to keep themselves safe and to make their jobs easier/get what they want/etc?
The closest I’ve come to finding an answer was from a thread here on the SDMB a few months ago where someone with both detective and experience as a judge in the US essentially said even with a solid legal education and professional level of understanding they don’t know and feel uncomfortable when being pulled over and told to do certain things by police. I can understand that with the line-blurring myriad of varying laws/circumstances/juristictions/personality types that happen in day to day life.
It seems to me that only the officer at the scene can know what his motivation and backing for giving particular orders is, and the courts can only try to guess if he/she was right weeks to months later based (partly) on what evidence remains of the incident and (more so) on what the same officer states in the report and later in court - which of course is heavily flavoured with a good understanding of how to describe events so as to come across as favourable in a court setting. Which of course leaves the person on the street being given orders at an almost complete loss for answers and with little choice but to either blindly comply, or push their luck and risk getting assaulted and becoming another youtube video or anecdotal story which spawns this same question again (and again).
You could very well be sitting in a legally parked car doing absolutley nothing wrong and out of nowhere with no explanation be ordered out and then dragged out through your freshly broken window a few seconds later at gunpoint and cuffed/roughed up/screamed at with no recourse then or later in court. Because unbeknownst to you a violent crime was commited just a block away and you and your car happen to match the description of the bad guy. The officers have to watch out for their safety and of course its reasonable for them to have thought you were the bad guy… so, well kind of sucks to be you. No amount of legal knowledge can let you know what the dispatcher said a few minutes ago nor the the background of what that particular officer’s day was like.
That’s of course an extreme example but there are dozens of videos on the internet of people being ordered to do more mundane yet still uncomfortable or wrong things they didn’t have to do by various forms of law enforcement… If I’m not mistakem, pkbites himself shared a story on the SDMB a few years ago about driving through a different state than he worked in with some fellow LEO buddies, getting pulled over by the local law, and recieving very different treatment than expected - which envoked some pretty extreme feelings (apologies if my memory is wrong).
The thing is you can’t tell the difference between legal and non-legal orders until the officer either backs off or starts using violence (by which time of course its too late). So in my mind, I’m still looking for an answer to the question so as to not have to either roll the dice, or to roll over ever time no matter what you’re told to do…
