[mirimir]

If the cop shoots you, it won't matter what you said or didn't say.

And in TFA:

> According to ABC Action News, these affected customers ended up in handcuffs and in the back of a police car in the majority of the cases. A few people were even met with the business ends of a firearm and were taken into custody forcefully after disagreeing with police.

So with routine traffic stops, playing it cool is almost always the best bet. I've experienced scores of them, mostly for speeding, but some for reckless driving. And a couple for evading. And I've never gotten more than tickets.

One of those evading stops involved a county-wide APB :) I just said something like "Hey, I just saw "Dawn of the Dead", and got scared". Which was almost the truth, in that it was hypomania. They almost impounded the car, but eventually we all decided that it was funny.

[chrisseaton]

> So with routine traffic stops, playing it cool is almost always the best bet. I've experienced scores of them

Why do American police stop people so often? Every American here seems to have experience of being stopped and acts like it’s a super normal thing. I live in the UK and I’m don’t think I’ve ever even spoken to an on-duty police officer in my life. They don’t just cruise around stopping cars here.

[_jal]

> Why do American police stop people so often?

Multiple reasons, but the big one is money. There are a lot of places smaller than big cities who have massive revenue problems. Turning cops into revenue generators seems to be the preferred solution.

And then come second-order effects: private probation enforcement companies, private prisons, communications monopolies for private prisons... and they all lobby to keep and expand their pound of flesh. And you get this:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prison...

But hey, freest country on earth, amirite?

[dsfyu404ed]

We haven't gone as far down the 1984 path as you have so we have still have human cops write tickets instead of using speed cameras.

It also depends a lot on your area. Where I live the cops to "real problems" ratio is pretty good. I'm basically free to go a safe and reasonable speed regardless of the speed limit. I'd have to do something really flagrant to get pulled over for it. In the wealthier cities and suburbs that the people of HN tend to live in you have many more bored cops looking for trouble where there is little to be found so they spend more time extracting revenue from motorists and making fishing stops.

[chrisseaton]

But I hear about the police stopping people for things like tail lights in the US? Or in other comments people are talking about being stopped because they're driving a suspiciously cheap car in an expensive area? The police just don't seem to stop people here in the UK unless there's something seriously wrong. As I said elsewhere, I've never seen a tail light out ever, but it seems to be a common thing for normal people to be stopped for in the US?

And of course speed cameras don't bother you if you don't speed in the first place, so they don't catch people unless they're doing something wrong.

[dsfyu404ed]

> they're driving a suspiciously cheap car in an expensive area?

This happens all the time in rich areas. It's a plain and simple fishing stop.

>I've never seen a tail light out ever,

Because your government intentionally makes vehicle ownership so financially onerous that everyone who drives a car has the resources (time more than money) to get it fixed promptly. In the US, even in poorer areas it's not common but it's not uncommon. In a 40min rush hour commute in the winter (when it's dark and you can see everyone using lights) I could probably still count on one hand the number of head lights and tail lights I see out.

[chrisseaton]

> We haven't gone as far down the 1984 path as you have

> This happens all the time. It's a plain and simple fishing stop.

[dsfyu404ed]

Oh screw off.

You can't make a good first impression on a speed camera.

Overwhelming majority of fishing stops result in a warning because the cop realizes after getting a closer look at the vehicle and its occupants and realizing that there's nothing sketchy going on. And I say this as someone who's been subject to a heck of a lot of fishing stops because I tend to check the boxes that make me worth stopping (one time I had almost an entire PD stop me over the course of a month as they rotated through the shift and location that put them where I was driving at the time I was there).

I'd much rather have laws that go fishing than robots that enforce the law to the letter 100% of the time.

[coldtea]

>Why do American police stop people so often? Every American here seems to have experience of being stopped and acts like it’s a super normal thing.

And they also seem to think a cop pointing a gun at people they've stopped, or even shooting them for reaching into their pockets is also normal ("what did they expect?").

>I live in the UK and I’m don’t think I’ve ever even spoken to an on-duty police officer in my life. They don’t just cruise around stopping cars here.

Yeah, but you're not in the land of the "free".

[chrisseaton]

What I really want to know is what's wrong with American break-lights? Often the cause for a stop seems to be 'your break-light was out' (sometimes it's implied it's a lie, other times not.) Again I've never seen a break-light out in the UK, never been stopped for a break-light, never had to replace my break-lights. What's different?

[tazard]

(from movies) I think it's usually the 'tail light' and it's so they can smash it when the walk by. I've never heard of a break light being out either.

[sokoloff]

> I've never heard of a break light being out either.

LED lights are slowly reducing this, but I don't think I can do my 20 minute morning commute for a week without seeing at least one car with a burned out brake light. How is it possible that you've never seen or heard of it?

[striking]

Are you certain that movies reflect reality in this regard? I'm less willing than you are to believe a cop would smash a tail light, perhaps you could link me to a recent incident or something.

[_jal]

Yeah, that's movie-plot silliness.

In many jurisdictions the real method involves human cops making deputized dogs perform ritualized tricks near the car.

In US culture, performing this ritual grants the human cops permission to arrest people.

[chrisseaton]

I don't even understand how you could easily smash a tail light. They're inside the car bodies, encased in heavy plastic, and usually made of LEDs so there's no single bulb to hit even if you could get through the plastic.

[mirimir]

From what I've read, police in the UK rely more on speed cameras. But there certainly are lots of police in the US. I live in a small city, and it's rare that I don't see at least one police vehicle on a trip to the supermarket or whatever.

I experienced so many because I'm bipolar, and was taking an SSRI, which made me hypomanic, but with little affect.

[drewmol]

There are substantial protections against unlawful search and seizure in the US constitution which are also supported by subsequent legal precedent/case law, often specifically referencing private property, dwellings, persons, etc. An arrest warrent does not necessarily allow police to go barging in to private dwellings to enforce it. Persons in vehicles were generally not explicitly referenced in the law and a slow encroachmemt on executive power has led to 100+ years of case law that eroded those protections when it comes to persons in vehicles, especially on public roadways. This has led to vehicles in public being a place where police have a lot of legal leeway and a common place for police to enforce warrants, etc. for minor violations and a common place for police to fish for possible crimes with less risk of explicitly violating a persons rights (at least in the eyes of the judiciary).

[hyperman1]

As I understand it, US culture makes it impossible for the state to build a trustable database of inhabitants, complete with addresses etc.

So if a cop sees something, he has to react immediately. They cant simply go to your home afterwards as they dont always know where it is. And gun culture makes it impossible to know when some random dude is going to shoot you, especially when pissed off or drunk. So I can understand the cop paranoia.

Strange thing with social security numbers as pseudo-id happen there too. I wonder how they know who to tax over there.

[crooked-v]

See small towns like Hampton, FL that get their funding overwhelmingly from setting up bullshit speed traps and ticketing everyone who passes through, sometimes to the point of the town existing almost entirely as a support structure for the police department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton,_Florida

[weberc2]

Usually it’s to enforce traffic laws, like obeying the speed limit or yielding for traffic signals. Are traffic infractions not common in the UK?

[mirimir]

Sorry. My comments about being shot, and my outlandish experiences, were foolish.

But the point about TFA stands. "[I]n the majority of the cases", people were not arrested.