What's the deal with motor vehicle violations?

Percy, I agree with your points of principle, and I agree you have the right to volubly disagree with the police--but I can't recommend it.As to the cop in the Bland case, he clearly had an aggressive agenda. He moved up behind her, provoked a nervous lane change and then moved to cite her for it--this swoop, like tailgating, is a common tactic used by officers looking for a reason to stop a vehicle of interest that has offered no probable cause for the stop. He provoked a stop on flimsy grounds and then provoked an angry rejoinder from Bland.Even had the stop been clean, the cop abandoned professional conduct when he invited comment by saying, "You look irritated."When she said she was and why, further punishment began.We have a tremendous problem with police forces in the U.S. Based on personal experience, I think that despite screening and testing, many of those drawn to a career in law enforcement are attracted more by the power than the service. In recent decades, police forces at all levels have become more militarized in tactics, equipment--and attitude. Resistance--even disagreement--defines an enemy who must submit.But it has always been this way, more or less. The notion that if you're just meek and mild, your police encounter will go all kumbaya would amaze most people of color--as it would amaze any identifiable group who ever earned their ire, from mine workers to suffragettes to hippies.So I say pick your battles and where and when you fight them. The angry citizen who calls or writes and who hadn't been waving his arms and shouting is more credible and effective at change.But I keep my pie hole closed with cops. They might have to shoot me to save me. Crazy bastards, some of them.

My experience with police during the Vietnam era frames my advice: I spat defiance and teeth.Youthful demonstrators confronting the police over liberty or war issues en masse is one thing; I was willing to "throw my body into the machine". Hell, I was immortal like everyone else.An aging middle-class white male at a traffic stop is another thing altogether: he has more powerful options.

Yes--I didn't mean working alone, although smart phones and the web empower both the individual and the organized group working against police misconduct.Still, an organized group of upright middle-class citizens has more clout than one angry man of any sort.So if you could get a mob of pale zen surburbanites to levitate a cop station over misconduct issues, that would be awesome.

Being an older Caucasian in a nice car is your best bet.If you still get stopped, just being sober and respectful might well save you from a ticket or long hassle, even if you're not white. But a big enough jerk of a cop can make even verbal restraint hard for anyone. Of course, if you're rich enough, you could explain your rights to the cops, but you have to be awful rich, and connected, and they have to know it.Public civil disobedience is one thing--the whole world is watching, sometimes. But during a traffic stop, you are alone, confronting an armed agent of the state with, essentially, a license to kill.Those cops are terrified you're gonna be the stupid tail-light stop with a body in the trunk and a gun in the console. After a police shooting, the officers always claim to have feared for their lives. I always believe them.So, ya, best to focus on avoiding and surviving those encounters. It's best to not even be memorable, really, because if you want to resist, you need to resist politically. Getting your name in a police dossier or database, or your carcass in the county jail , is the last thing you want.

I agree. They often carry their very own personal fog of war around in their heads, a miasma of fear and, too often, hate. Both have flourished in a vacuum of accountability, as though the police had a status of forces agreement protecting them from answering for collateral deaths. Better recruitment pratices, training, true civilian oversight--these and more would help and should be sought.But it's also true that as we hardened our foreign policy into preemptive war, we militarized our police into an occupying force, complete with heavy automatic weapons and armored personnel carriers. I think that's not a coincidence.There's plenty of responsibility to go around at street level, but fear and violence plaque our responses to each other and the rest of the world. We can and should make the sorts of policy changes you imply, but as long as we engage the foreign other primarily with violence or its threat, we'll see the same play out at home.I don't excuse any individual violent or reckless action on the grounds of social or political forces, but Uncle Sam can't pick up a big stick every time he steps over the border and not expect a lot of little sticks to fly at home. It's not just local clusters of bad actors, it's a national universe of bad thinking.

Yeah, but you're just passing through Mornings are best--the worst predators are nocturnal.Your white middle-class privilege probably has been evidenced most where you noticed it least: the times you weren't stopped--tail light out, failure to signal lane change, failure to signal pulling away from curb, driving a few miles over the limit, driving slowly down a block where you don't appear to belong...I've often mulled the irony of modern police bemoaning the strength of the "no ratting" meme in our inner cities, because the cops created it. That's where I grew up, and we knew that like as not the cops would show up with the attitude of aggressive contempt they reserved for the poor, especially blacks. We were split between low income whites of Appalachian descent and black families from down south.We clashed with and insulted each other in all color combinations, but nobody called in noise complaints or trash or lawn complaints on a neighbor: police calls could go bad a dozen different ways. Before you knew it, a guy who played his Johnny Cash or James Brown too loud was roughed up and/or jailed--not because that had to happen, but because the cops demanded the kind of humiliating submission that is difficult for any proud person.So, yes, there are many lines in America, but the one between "Call 911!" and "Jeez, don't call the effin' cops! Are you crazy?!" is pretty bright. The history of police abuse and misconduct is so horrific that, from this side of the line, indignation on the other does sometimes look like willful naivete.