How to avoid getting shot by a police officer

This blog looks closely at political messaging.   

The most important message you can give to police during a traffic stop is that you are not a threat.   

Today's blog gives instructions on how not to get shot.   

Most of the readers of this blog are not in much danger.  Officers will have profiled most of us as older, light skinned, more or less prosperous: solid citizen types.   We don't get stopped as often in traffic stops as do younger dark skinned males.   

Comedy Central star Trevor Noah, a mixed race TV host, says he has been stopped 8 to 10 times during his time in the US, including once when he was driving a Tesla (a $95,000 car.)  He recently aired a segment on the shooting death of Philander Castile, a black man driving in a car with his wife and young daughter.   The policeman said he was in fear for his life and shot him as he sat in his car and was reaching for his wallet.  The officer was tried and acquitted.  The situation was ambiguous enough, the jury concluded, that the officer's actions were reasonable.

Click here to watch the short segment

Castile had a firearm and a concealed carry permit.  Trevor Noah noted that the NRA, which fights vigorously for the right of people to carry firearms, was silent on this case.  The segment is a mix of humor and rage.

My son, Dillon, is 26 and is a mix of white (from me) and Asian (from Debra).  He is big, he has a crew cut, and outside the context of his parents he is likely to be assumed to be Hispanic because of his darkish skin and black hair.   Dillon gets stopped frequently by police, he tells me, six or 8 times in the past three years.  He has never been cited for a violation.

I am easy to profile: an old white guy, and I drive nice, well maintained cars.  I have been stopped exactly three times in 40 years, twice when radar in fact showed I was going ten miles above the speed limit in speed zones, one on the freeway and another on a main artery street in Ashland.   Therefore, my own observation and experience is that police are no trouble.   The experience of my son, Dillon, is that police are looking for excuses to check him out.  

National Review article

The officer in the Castile shooting was evidently nervous and panicky.  It is possible that readers, if stopped, will encounter such an officer.   Here is how to be as safe as possible.  Some things you cannot change: your age, race, gender.   But you can change your body language.  The goal: show you are not a danger to them.  Traffic stops are a source of danger to police officers.  They are in an indefensible position, standing beside a car and they are alert for surprises.

1. If you see lights flashing behind you, turn on your hazard lights.   Drive slowly to a safe place to pull over, and ideally a well lighted one.   (You are trying to show that you are compliant.)

2. If at night, turn on your car's interior lights.  (To reduce the likelihood that the officer will misconstrue what he or she sees you doing.)

3. Roll down the windows so the officer can see into the car  Take the keys out of the car and put them on the dashboard or the roof of your car where they can be instantly seen by the officer.  (Make clear you aren't trying to elude them.)

4. Put your hands on the steering wheel.  Some people, especially people who profile as scary, i.e. large dark skinned males, suggest the dashboard.  Trevor Noah says he puts his bare hands outside the window.  (You want to demonstrate that you have no weapon and that you are conscious of your need to show your harmlessness.)

5.  Make no sudden moves.   Comply with whatever the officer says.  Repeat back to the officer exactly what he or she says to do.  In the Castile case the officer apparently told the person to show his license and registration and Castile moved to do so, a move the officer thought constituted reaching for the permitted gun that Castile reported he was carrying. Repeat back the officer's instructions and ask for permission to do it, then narrate what you are being asked to do.

Example:  

Officer:  "Show me our license and registration."

You:  "My license is in my right rear pants pocket.   You want me to reach back there an pull out my license?   (Wait for the officer to say "yes.")

If the officer says yes, then you request:

"May I reach back there to pull it out?"  (Wait for the officer to say "yes.")

Then narrate:  "Officer, I am reaching back to pull out my black wallet where I carry my drivers license", which you do slowly as you remove your wallet.  

Same thing with your car registration and insurance card, which is probably in your glove box.  Clarify with the officer that he or she is asking you to do things:

Don't show "attitude".  Don''t joke.  Don't be sarcastic.

You:  "Officer, you are ready for me to show my registration and insurance, right?, and you want me to remove it from my glove box now.  Correct?"

When the officer says, yes, do it very slowly, and narrate what you are doing:  "I'm clicking open the glove box and am going to pull out some papers now.  The registration is one of them."

Here is a how-to article:

how-deal-police-during-traffic-stop-so-you-dont-get-shot-tilford

Regular readers of this blog understand there is a recurring premise about communication, that much of it is non-verbal, communicated through body language and tone.   Some people, by their very body size and gender and race, communicate menace or at least suspicion.  Trump, by his height and heft, appeared strong.   Had Hillary Clinton attempted the very same words and manner she would have been interpreted as "feisty."    Large, dark skinned men are understood to be dangerous, per se.

Washington Post article: The policeman's perspective

No one is completely safe.  Every reader may encounter a nervous, inexperienced, jumpy, or suspicious officer.   Even those of us unlikely to be profiled as dangerous have no way of knowing if that officer recently received a radio call saying to be on the lookout for a dangerous person who in some way matches your description or the description of your car.  

Your first goal is to survive the encounter and you do it with body language, tone, and making sure that your verbal communications are understood and you are doing nothing surprising or frightening.   You know you are reaching for your registration.  It is essential that the officer know you are not reaching for a secreted gun

My white, prosperous, older readers do have one form of vulnerability.  They likely lack the habit of servility and helplessness, and may want to push back.  Don't. This is a poor place for humor or exaggeration or sarcasm done in an effort to preserve your dignity.   Overt  obedience to another person's power is a familiar part of the life of the poor or disadvantaged, but men and women accustomed to be treated respectfully by waiters, co-workers, clients, and government employees may resent an encounter when they present themselves as weak, permission-asking supplicants.  You may consider it humiliating.  It conflicts with your notion of self respect, personal freedom, your rights as an American, and your expectation of being treated like a citizen, not a suspect.   

You aren't a slave.  You are a citizen.  Citizens have legal rights. 

If the issue gets to court and you are well represented by counsel,  then you are once again in that most powerful and respectable of positions, a citizen of the United States of America.  But during the encounter with a policeman, the courts (and repeated juries) conclude that the officer is nearly always right, even when he is foolish and mistaken.   He can shoot you if, in the moment,  he should, or must.   His defense can be that he suspected you--utterly incorrectly, as it may turn out--of being a danger.   The officer's fears, or suspicions, or misperceptions are sufficient to allow him to shoot you, be put on paid administrative leave, and then found to have acted within his legal rights to make that judgement call based on his perceptions of what was happening.  He is alive.  You are dead.

Accept the humiliation.  Accept the reality of officer immunity and discretion.  If the encounter happens, and you survive it without incident, having demonstrated correctly the right attitude and behavior, then reflect on its deeper psychological impact on people who have encounters like this frequently.  Does it create buy-in to the mainstream culture, or does it create resentment against authority?

Modern policing is sending a message to young dark skinned people about how they fit into the social order.  It has consequences.   Perhaps the inherent danger of a police stop requires exactly the sort of rules that are in place regarding police discretion.  Multiple juries of our fellow Americans conclude, time after time, that the policeman is nearly always right regardless of what he does.   

It is something that dark skinned men integrate into their understanding of the world. Political and social observers need to observe and integrate into their thinking as well.  Many Democrats and progressives reflexively identify with Castile, but juries nearly always identify with the officer.  Jurors are voters.