Thursday, September 25, 2014

Reminder: Wear Your Seat Belt

     Especially in South Carolina.  Yes, the link goes to the sad video of a man shot and injured by a former Trooper Of The Year and now former trooper, in the opening moves of a routine traffic stop over not wearing a seat belt.*  The state policeman is now facing felony charges.

     They fill young cops up with cautionary tales -- real-life cautionary tales.  They make them understand the stakes while skimming over the odds, and then this happens.

     What nobody does is give getting-stopped lessons to those of us who don't wear badges.  If Officer Friendly is your friend, why wouldn't you park your car and get out, empty-handed, to greet him as an equal?   

     Yeah, no.  Officer Friendly may live just down the block but on duty, he's the sharp pointy end of the State (or County or City) and he's been told a hundred times about the LEO one state over who stopped a hopped-up bank robber for a burned-out taillight and stopped a bullet for his troubles.  His heart is pounding and he's got not just a gun but a whole bat-belt of violence, and a radio linked to the full weight of lots more where that came from; behind that, a bulldog prosecutor and judges and juries inclined to listen harder when a cop talks.  You're not meeting as equals, no matter how much both of you might wish it.  There's tremendous tension on your interface and nobody is more aware of it than that solitary officer walking up to your car.

       Sometimes things break under tension.  J. Random Peaceful Citizen -- you and me, or at least me -- is the most fragile component in this transaction.

     I hate knuckling under.  I loathe having to bend the knee.  --I like getting shot even less.  One of the best ways to increase the tension in a traffic stop is to proactively get out of your car.  Sure, in the right circumstance, it can seem like a natural thing to do, but it's a really bad idea.  Another bad idea: making any but the slightest motion without checking with the policeman who stopped you.

     The guy that got shot did both.  Does that make the shooting his fault?  I don't think so.  The South Carolina State Police and the local prosecutor don't seem to think so, either.  J. Random Citizen doesn't encounter the police very often; he or she does dumb things.  That's normal.  Officers are supposed to deal with it appropriately.

     Not all of them do.  Stay in your car.  Shut off the engine.  Keep you hands in plain sight and stop fidgeting.  I'm not saying open the window wide, nor volunteer for a search.  Indeed, there's a point where, "Am I free to go?" becomes an appropriate question -- but understand you're facing not only a person (as fallible as yourself) but a system.  Don't provoke it needlessly.  Don't get out of your car unless told to do so. (Where do you stop complying?  I don't know.  Ask your lawyer.)

     (What's the percentage of shootings like this vs. the percentage of policemen shot during what should have been routine traffic stops?  Here's a hint: this made the national news.  "Trooper Shot In Traffic Stop" rarely gets past the state or regional borders.  And for every one of the latter, how many stops that happen without a hitch?  Tens of thousands?  Hundreds of thousands?  Aim to be one of those.  Don't like cops?  Then lend your efforts to Cop Block, share the locations of speed traps, record it when you see police doing dodgy stuff; a traffic ticket isn't a real good time to be pushing back.)

     "Never get out of the boat."  Or at least not while the policeman is walking up to ask for your license and registration.
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* In Indiana, you cannot (AFAIK) get pulled over on the sole offense of not wearing a seat belt.  Now, if you have a light out, don't signal, go even a little over the limit, then they can pull you over and add "failure to wear a seat belt" to your other offenses.  So this stop wouldn't even have been a stop. 

16 comments:

Stranger said...

400 plus police killings, 146 "in error," vs 30 LEO's shot and killed. Wounded to killed at about six to one either way.

JayNola said...

My CHL instructor did about 15 minutes on interaction with police while armed. His direction was very similar to yours. I had always traveled with a gun in the car and due to my propensity for speeding had plenty of experience dealing with Leo's but some of the people in my class honestly thought you were supposed to get out of the car once the officer did.

Sigman said...

In TN you can be stopped for not wearing seat belts. There has to be a primary reason for the stop. I teach the TN HCP class and tell my student to keep their hands on the wheel, be polite and don't do anything sudden or stupid.

fillyjonk said...

They could make it part of driver's training. But even then, it's easy to forget.

I was stopped once (I crossed the "white line" onto the "improved shoulder" and I guess the cop wanted to be sure I just had a moment of inattention and not something worse). I was very, very careful to tell him, "Okay. My license is in my purse, is it okay if I reach for it to show it to you?" and "My insurance and registration are here in the console, I am getting them out now" but I can see in a higher-tension situation someone could forget that.

I also said "sir" more than I think I had the previous six months....

I wound up just getting a warning but I don't think that's something I could be ticketed for anyway, unless I had actually been impaired.

Anonymous said...

Never get out of the boat - not even to look for mangoes.....

Merle

Dave in Indiana said...

I think not wearing a seat belt IS a primary in Indiana. I seem to remember it was upgraded to a primary 8 or 10 years ago.

Paul said...

Here in this state the seat belt is an also ran. It cannot be the sole reason for a stop. Now having a second reason for a stop on a seat belt is trivial for most experienced gendarmes.

Sean D Sorrentino said...

They shouldn't be teaching drivers not to do things that make police officers nervous. They should be teaching police officers to read our minds and just know that we're not a threat to them.

Wait, you mean that the real world doesn't work like the "teach men not to rape" activists think it works?

Say it isn't so!

Sean D Sorrentino said...

They shouldn't be teaching drivers not to do things that make police officers nervous. They should be teaching police officers to read our minds and just know that we're not a threat to them.

Wait, you mean that the real world doesn't work like the "teach men not to rape" activists think it works?

Say it isn't so!

David aka True Blue Sam said...

Chris Rock says it very well in his video "Am I About To Get My A** Kicked By The Police."

Anonymous said...

Knew a guy whose dad was a State trooper in state A. He got pulled over in state B. He dismounted the car and got an earful from the local. He responded by saying, "I figured you'd be more at ease if I wasn't sitting next to that" (pointing at his service weapon in the console).

Granted, this was a score or so years ago, but it shows that even the pros dork it up.

Will said...

Couple things: One, the motorist wasn't getting out for the cop, the cop drove up as the guy was exiting his vehicle to do something at the station/store. I'd say the cop had no business interacting with him at that point, they were both on private property when the cop decided to check him out. In fact, he was parked behind the store, and I suspect he didn't even have a sightline to observe a missing seatbelt while that truck was on the road.

The driver got shot for doing exactly what the cop commanded: to "get out of the car!". That command is what will convict him in court. If he had yelled to stop! or freeze!, things might have turned out better for both of them. Cops need to be trained to make appropriate commands for the situation. It needs to be standardized. When you have multiple cops yelling contradictory commands at gunpoint, it's common for things to go pear shaped (witness the Costco shooting in Las Vegas). They are not being trained properly. Such a simple thing...

Roberta X said...

Will, your read is out of sequence -- "Get out of the car!" is said immediately before the first shots are fired. We *don't" know if the officer had given the driver a blip of his lights or made a "pull over" gesture to him and the camera doesn't show us what the officer may have seen to make him believe the victim had not put on his seat belt. (Or indeed, if the vehicle was then operated on public roads, or only in a parking lot; if the latter, the misjudgement starts there.)

One the driver turns back to the vehicle, shouting "Get out of the car! Get out of the car!" while drawing and moving to cover? Okay. That could only have been faulted on style points, and who cares about that? Doing that *while* *shooting* is the felony.

Tam said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GMCfxezdfE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6z8q4lOrDU

I meant to use these for a post today, but they'll have to wait for tomorrow...

Tam said...

Er... WARNING: Don't click on the first one if the sound of agonal respiration disturbs you.

Will said...

Roberta,

the driver is shot after backing out of the drivers area, which is EXACTLY what he was commanded to do. Of course, whether he was responding to the actual words, or just the sound of the voice is not known.

It appears that when the officer first tells the driver to show his papers, he is a bit surprised to find the cop is there for him, which is one of the reasons that makes me think this was just opportunistic ticket writing on the cops part. I wonder if there is video from the store? I'm thinking there is, and that having more evidence it was a bogus "stop" was why they decided not to try to cover for him on the shoot.

Frankly, the cops tactical thinking on vehicle stops is bad. Perhaps if he was better trained on how and where he should be relative to the car and driver, he might not be so nervous and hair-trigger. From his location, he couldn't see what the driver was doing. Once the driver separated from the vehicle, he should not have been allowed to return until a close interview had established his bonafides, and that there were no handy weapons.

I'm not familiar with that state's traffic stop techniques, so no idea if what he was doing was typical. However, if he wasn't in view of the camera's coverage, he was doing it wrong. He was too far away, like he was setting up a hit. Or thought he was dealing with a major crime figure of some sort. Frankly, I don't think he did anything right.

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I'm surprised that more cops don't follow the CHP method. They never go to the driver's side, but the passenger's, if the situation allows. It gives them a better view of the driver and the interior, and gives them a bit more safety from being hit by passing traffic. You can focus more on the occupants, when you aren't worrying so much about becoming a hood ornament, or getting whacked by a truck mirror, etc. You can generally hear better, too. Working with them, I was required to follow those tactics, and it is a much better environment.