Drivers, Beware: The Costly, Deadly Dangers Of Traffic Stops In The American Police State
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“The
Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary
governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been
shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation
Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the
police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will
emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure
about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will
turn deadly.
The odds weren’t in Walter L. Scott’s favor. Reportedly
pulled over for a broken taillight,
Scott—unarmed—ran away from the police officer, who pursued and shot
him from behind, first with a Taser, then with a gun. Scott was struck
five times, “
three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart.”
Samuel Dubose, also unarmed, was
pulled over for a missing front license plate. He was reportedly shot in the head after a brief struggle in which his car began rolling forward.
Levar Jones was stopped for a seatbelt offense,
just as he was getting out of his car to enter a convenience store.
Directed to show his license, Jones leaned into his car to get his
wallet, only to be shot four times by the “fearful” officer. Jones was
also unarmed.
Bobby Canipe was pulled over for having an expired registration. When
the 70-year-old reached into the back of his truck for his walking
cane, the officer fired several shots at him, hitting him once in the
abdomen.
Dontrell Stevens was stopped “for not bicycling properly.”
The officer pursuing him “thought the way Stephens rode his bike was
suspicious. He thought the way Stephens got off his bike was
suspicious.” Four seconds later, sheriff’s deputy Adams Lin shot
Stephens four times as he pulled out a black object from his waistband.
The object was his cell phone. Stephens was unarmed.
If there is any lesson to be learned from these “routine” traffic stops, it is that drivers should beware.
At a time when police can do no wrong—at least in the eyes of the
courts, police unions and politicians dependent on their votes—and a
“fear” for officer safety is used to justify all manner of police
misconduct,
“we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.
According to the Justice Department, the
most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop. On average,
one in 10 Americans gets pulled over by police.
Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white
drivers, or about 23 percent more likely than Hispanic drivers. As the
Washington Post concludes, “‘Driving while black’ is, indeed, a
measurable phenomenon.”
As Sandra Bland learned the hard way, the reason for a traffic stop no longer matters. Bland,
who was pulled over for allegedly failing to use her turn signal, was
arrested after refusing to comply with the police officer’s order to
extinguish her cigarette and exit her vehicle. The encounter escalated,
with the officer threatening to “light” Bland up with his taser. Three
days later, Bland was found dead in her jail cell.
“
You’re doing all of this for a failure to signal?”
Bland asked as she got out of her car, after having been yelled at and
threatened repeatedly. Had she only known, drivers have been pulled over
for far less. Indeed, police officers have been given free range to
pull anyone over for a variety of reasons.
This approach to traffic stops (what I would call “blank check
policing,” in which the police get to call all of the shots) has
resulted in drivers being stopped for windows that are too heavily
tinted, for driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to maintain
speed, following too closely, improper lane changes, distracted driving,
screeching a car’s tires, and leaving a parked car door open for too
long.
Motorists can also be stopped by police for driving near a
bar or on a road that has large amounts of drunk driving, driving a
certain make of car (Mercedes, Grand Prix and Hummers are among the most ticketed vehicles),
having anything dangling from the rearview mirror (air fresheners,
handicap parking permits, troll transponders or rosaries), and
displaying pro-police bumper stickers.
Incredibly, a federal appeals court actually ruled unanimously in 2014 that
acne scars and driving with a stiff upright posture are reasonable grounds for being pulled over. More recently, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that
driving
a vehicle that has a couple air fresheners, rosaries and pro-police
bumper stickers at 2 MPH over the speed limit is suspicious, meriting a traffic stop.
Unfortunately for drivers, not only have traffic stops become
potentially deadly encounters, they have also turned into a profitable
form of highway robbery for the police departments involved.
As
The Washington Post reports,
“traffic
stops for minor infractions such as speeding or equipment violations
are increasingly used as a pretext for officers to seize cash from
drivers.” Relying on federal and state asset forfeiture
laws, police set up “stings” on public roads that enable them to stop
drivers for a variety of so-called “suspicious” behavior, search their
vehicles and seize anything of value that
could be suspected of being connected to criminal activity. Since 2001,
police have seized $2.5 billion from people who were not charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued.
“In case after case,” notes
The Washington Post, “highway interdictors appeared to follow a similar
script. Police set up what amounted to rolling checkpoints on busy
highways and pulled over motorists for minor violations, such as
following too closely or improper signaling. They quickly issued
warnings or tickets. They studied drivers for signs of nervousness,
including pulsing carotid arteries, clenched jaws and perspiration. They
also looked for supposed ‘indicators’ of criminal activity, which can
include such things as trash on the floor of a vehicle, abundant energy
drinks or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors.”
If you’re starting to feel somewhat overwhelmed, intimidated and
fearful for your life and your property, you should be. Never before
have “we the people” been so seemingly defenseless in the face of police
misconduct, lacking advocates in the courts and in the legislatures.
So how do you survive a police encounter with your life and wallet intact?
The courts have already given police the green light to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons. In an 8-1 ruling in
Heien v. North Carolina,
the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that police officers can pull someone
over based on a “reasonable” but mistaken belief about the law.
Of course, what’s reasonable to agents of the police state may be
completely unreasonable to the populace. Nevertheless, the moment those
lights start flashing and that siren goes off, we’re all in the same
boat: we must pull over.
However, it’s what happens after you’ve been pulled over that’s critical. Survival is the key.
Technically, you have the right to remain silent (beyond
the basic requirement to identify yourself and show your registration).
You have the right to refuse to have your vehicle searched. You have
the right to film your interaction with police. You have the right to
ask to leave. You also have the right to resist an unlawful order such
as a police officer directing you to extinguish your cigarette,
put away your phone or stop recording them.
However, as Bland learned the hard way, there is a price for
asserting one’s rights. “Faced with an authority figure unwilling to
de-escalate the situation, Bland refused to be bullied or intimidated,”
writes Boston Globe contributor Renee Graham.
“She understood her rights, but for African-Americans in encounters
with police, the appalling price for asserting even the most basic
rights can be their lives.”
So if you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, tasered,
tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or
killed, don’t say, do or even suggest anything that even hints of
noncompliance when it comes to interactions with police.
One police officer advised that if you feel as if you’re being
treated unfairly, comply anyhow and contest it in court later.
Similarly, black parents, advising their kids on how to deal with
police, tell them to just obey the officer’s orders. “The goal,” as one
parent
pointed out, “is to stay alive.”
It seems that “comply or die” has become the new maxim for the American police state.
Then again, not even compliance is a guarantee of safety anymore. “
Police are specialists in violence,”
warns Kristian Williams, who has written extensively on the phenomenon
of police militarization and brutality. “They are armed, trained, and
authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors
their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of
violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the
law, is what they represent.”
In other words, in the American police state, “we the people” are at
the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute
discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and
how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to
“serve and protect.”
As I point out in my book
Battlefield America: The War on the American People,
this mindset that any challenge to police authority is a threat that
needs to be “neutralized” is a dangerous one that is part of a greater
nationwide trend that sets the police beyond the reach of the Fourth
Amendment. Moreover, when police officers are allowed to
operate under the assumption that their word is law and that there is no
room for any form of disagreement or even question, that serves to
chill the First Amendment’s assurances of free speech, free assembly and
the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a casual “show your ID”
request on a boardwalk, a stop-and-frisk search on a city street, or a
traffic stop for speeding or just to check your insurance. If you feel
like you can’t walk away from a police encounter of your own
volition—and more often than not you can’t, especially when you’re being
confronted by someone armed to the hilt with all manner of militarized
weaponry and gear—then for all intents and purposes, you’re under arrest
from the moment a cop stops you.
Sad, isn’t it, how quickly we have gone from a nation of laws—where
the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and
respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law
enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat us all like
suspects and criminals?
Clearly, the language of freedom is no longer the
common tongue spoken by the citizenry and their government. With the
government having shifted into a language of force, “we the people” have
been reduced to suspects in a surveillance state, criminals in a police
state, and enemy combatants in a military empire.++++
the Fascist American Globalist Surveillance State (FAG-SS) is complete
and the Police Departments are inevitably 100% privatised... that the
omnipresent surveillance cameras and weaponized drones can be easily
manned by Chinese or Indian citizens 8,000 miles away for under $2 an
hour. Let's not even talk about the new cars that will drive themselves
to wherever the authorites will allow you to go that can never need to
be pulled over for a traffic violation. So, the message is, if you live around F.A.G.S., stay away from anyone with P.D.
THE MESSAGE IS SIMPLY, BE A GOOD LITTLE BITCH, COMPLY, LET THEM ROB YOU OF YOUR POSSESSIONS, AND YOU MIGHT BE ALLOWED TO GO HOME.
