What Happens When You Argue With the Cops?
Or ponderings on power and degrees of privilege
I got pulled over on the way home from soccer practice last night.
I ran a red light.
I’m going to indulge myself here and explain why I did it. It was 9pm, I was tired, traffic had been unexpectedly bad, and I was impatient. Also, the red light was stemming the tide of a statistically insignificant probability of oncoming cars; the intersecting road was completely blocked off.
That being said, it’s not an excuse. I know the law, and I chose to break it. I idiotically did not see the Travis County Sheriff’s vehicle sitting right the fuck behind me. I muttered this to Gage and his friend in the back seat, minus the expletive, trying to be a good example and take responsibility for my decision.
The cop was a salt-and-pepper-haired dude maybe ten years older than me. He was polite, to the point and not unfriendly, as he collected all of my data; thank the gods I’d gotten the van inspected and re-registered that morning. He did say, as he let me off with a warning, that he thought my behavior especially egregious with kids in the car. Mentally, I scoffed at this. If I thought running a red light at a useless crossroad would in any way endanger my minor passengers, I would not have done it. But I didn’t say that.
Nope. I said thank you, and I won’t do it again and have a good evening mister officer sir, before carefully using my blinker to merge back onto Ranch Road 620 as he watched.
Why? It’s obvious, even at first glance. One does not argue with a cop who is about to walk away without giving one a (deserved) several-hundred-dollar ticket. But what is at the crux of that conversation he and I had on the side of the road in the gathering dark through my open car window as traffic zoomed by?
Power
The reason I didn’t defend my parenting as I would have with some other random, non-law-enforcement-officer adult is that he had the power at that juncture. He could decide to cost me some money and inconvenience or not, and my pride was not worth spending that money.
This is not a big deal. Both kids were thrilled at the unexpected excitement and decided it was because they were so cool the officer didn’t give me a ticket. Gage told the story to his dad and brother, separately, when we got home. I’d made haste to park myself on the couch with a glass of cabernet and had the opportunity to roll my eyes multiple times. They poked fun, we laughed and moved on with our evening. But…
This morning, sipping coffee and staring out the window, I am thinking of Sandra Bland. I am thinking of George Floyd and Brionna Taylor. I am soberly contemplating all of the times police officers held the power and wielded it with egregious lack of responsibility (as opposed to imagined, fake-red-light-running “egregiousness”) that ended in unnecessary death for people who were without fault in the situation or, at the very most, had a lapse in judgment similar to my own.
Side Note: I did give my cop mental brownie points for using “egregious.” It’s a favorite adjective of mine.
Side Note Part 2: Here are two pieces I wrote in June of 2020, when police brutality was at the forefront of media attention:
I am a middle-aged white suburban soccer mom.
That fact is obvious to any person approaching my minivan. I had the soccer-uniform-and-dirt-clad kids in the back to prove it. Maybe, in my penchant for giving people the benefit of the doubt, I can concede that context clue didn’t matter to this particular officer, didn’t prompt him to feel more relaxed than he would if I’d been younger, Black, a man or driving a different car. I can imagine it is possible it wouldn’t change his treatment of me. But it matters to a lot of them.
When I was a young adult, my few run-ins with the cops were in downtown Austin. Those police were decidedly more aggressive in their dealings. Doubt benefits were not given to those they encountered. Maybe it’s because for whatever reason, that’s the APD cop micro-culture, maybe it’s because downtown on Saturday night with a bunch of drunk assholes, things are more volatile, and they are more on edge. Perhaps I noticed their arrest first, ask questions never mentality because my friends and I were younger and gave off a vibe that said “troublemakers,” unlike my 47-year-old mom self. Point is, I was treated slightly differently then than now.
Maybe the Travis County Sheriff’s Department is more laid back. Our west-of-Austin-proper burg, though sprawling, doesn’t see the regular weekend mayhem of downtown. Maybe all the cops out here are older and have settled their hormones some, so they seem more reasonable…
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the power dynamic.
This is the problem. Even when people are pulled over for just cause, even when everyone is perfectly calm and reasonable, it’s there. So when an unarmed person like Sandra gets riled during a sorta-bullshit, partially made-up traffic stop, does that give the officer the right to demand she put out a cigarette inside her own car, to pull her out of that car, to tase her and throw her on the ground? To use his power to its fullest extent? Absolutely not.
When you are the one with more power in a situation — you are the cop, the parent, the boss — you have more responsibility to wield it with restraint. Because you are the one with the law, the gun, the ability to take things away. No matter how badly the other person acts, you are responsible for keeping the cooler head. That is what you signed up for. So if I had decided to say something, to point out that I hadn’t actually endangered anyone beyond the basic risk of driving, it should not have influenced whether or not he gave me a ticket.
With great power comes great responsibility.
~ Either Voltaire or Spiderman (seriously)
That’s not to say the other person doesn’t have culpability for their actions or isn’t responsible for examining and potentially adjusting their future behavior, just that with the power, your culpability is more.
This is a post with a point.
Think about that power. We’ve all been on both sides of it. How does it feel when you know one false move might significantly, negatively affect your future, that your well-being lies in someone else’s hands? How does it feel when one small lapse in judgment can have dire consequences? And how does it feel when you wield the power? When your choices could be a matter of whether this other person has a good or a shitty day? When it might even mean life or death?
I’ve used this minor traffic violation example with pretty much no consequences beyond a little embarrassment and being later getting home as a result of cutting corners out of impatience to get home — one of life’s enduring and mundane ironies, how the thing you do to make something happen faster is the very thing that makes it happen agonizingly slower. But this is a useful tool. If we can see the power dynamics at work in our own lives in minor situations, it makes it easier to extrapolate that into higher-stakes circumstances. Mull it over.
When I was in my early 20’s I worked at a kind of rough bar that hired an off-duty cop for our weekly Wednesday night all the beer you can drink for $5. That additional security was a good investment. Anyway, the officer would stay and have drinks with us after closing time and I learned a lot of things from him that I have never forgotten, including motorcycle safety tips. But the main thing I remember is him telling us that, within the first 10 seconds, YOU determine how this interaction is going to go. He called it “passing the attitude test.” Are you a nice person or a jerk?
You are so right about the power dynamic. The cop wants to establish IMMEDIATELY that he/she is in charge. It’s time to roll over on your back. If you are unwilling to do that, there is going to be a problem, maybe only a small problem but an unnecessary problem. Val is astounded by how many times I have “talked my way out of tickets.” I don’t think it is that as much as just being polite, honest and “throwing myself on the mercy of the court.” I am a good driver and (mostly) obey the traffic laws (most of the time). And if there is a significant enough problem to warrant pulling me over it is almost certain to be a misunderstanding, usually I didn’t see the reduced speed sign, which I truly didn’t. I try to POLITELY explain why that infraction might have occurred. And they usually accept my explanation and APOLOGY and, after checking to ensure I don’t have any warrants, let me go with a warning.
That being said, I have also had a couple of bad encounters with police that were unwarranted and unnecessary abuses of their power. For example, a cop called me an asshole when I honked at him after he made a U turn across my lane, right in front of me without warning, without signaling. It was mostly a thoughtless reaction to a dangerous maneuver and I shouldn’t have done it. (Think power dynamic). But I am still indignant about that. He was in the wrong, he made a dangerous illegal turn and I simply brought that to his attention.
In my experience, there has gotten to be a lot of difference in enforcement depending on where you are. Austin police seem to have completely given up on traffic enforcement. And it shows. People (at least in central Austin) speed and run red lights with impunity. I mean, not entering the intersection on yellow, but entering a couple of seconds AFTER their light has turned red. I often say that every time a light turns red in Austin, someone runs it. And what’s REALLY dangerous about that is that when they do it, they do it at high speed because they are “punching it.” I suspect this relaxation of enforcement is a result of the pandemic, but it’s time to get over that. Austin cops have also gotten MUCH more aggressive since they were in the 70’s, when they were mostly polite and helpful public servants, at least around the campus area.
I saw an interesting PBS news story recently about a study of traffic stops. A study analyzing footage in 577 stops of Black drivers found the first 45 words spoken by the officer determined how that encounter ended. The study found that, if the police officer began the encounter by issuing a command or not giving a reason for the stop, it was three times more likely that the interaction would escalate, that the driver could be searched or handcuffed or arrested, versus if the police officer began with a greeting. In situations in which there was an escalation, it was 2.5 times more likely that the officer didn't explain the reason for the stop.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/study-shows-first-words-from-police-during-traffic-stops-affect-outcome-for-black-drivers
(As Usual) I Enjoyed your "Piece", April !
And I concur 100% with Valerie's " You are Wise " ___ :)