Papers Please?

[The Wanderer]

It's precisely how things escalate -- a question is not a request for information, it's a protest against the control of the situation.

For one thing, that is not necessarily the case; in at least some (probably many, possibly most) cases, a question asked is quite honestly an "I want to know". Yes, in some cases it's a passive-aggressive objection to authority or an attempt to take control, but not nearly always.

For another, even in most cases where it is such a protest, the cop quite simply does not have the authority or the right to that level of control. (No one does, outside of e.g. life-or-death "they're going to find us and kill us all if you don't shut your damn mouth" scenarios.) If the law says otherwise, the law is wrong.

I'm not defending bullies, but the public in general needs to learn that it's NOT always the cop's fault.

Agreed. Despite what I'm likely to say in contexts like this, and despite how I'm feeling at the moment, I do respect the difficult and unpleasant job the police do, and I am willing to cut them some degree of slack because of it. Just not as much as many people seem to expect.

Next time a cop pulls you over, don't assume he's being a bully, assume he's approaching you with the viewpoint that you are armed, drunk, escaped from the nearest mental institution, and high -- all at the same time. Until he's convinced you're not, anything you do that reinforces that image

And that's a problem, because it's a presumption of guilt, and therefore conflicts with "innocent until proven guilty".

Not presuming guilt in that sort of circumstance would make the police's job harder and more dangerous - but it's entirely possible that they should be required to do so anyway, for at least some of the same reasons that we have "innocent until proven guilty" in the first place.

Be smart. Do what you're told, when you're told to do it, with no backtalk.

In other words, knuckle under, bow to authority, take the risk that this is a "bad cop", and - because of various factors, including the other side of that "us vs. them" mentality you mentioned - let them get away with it.

No. You shouldn't be mouthy, rude, aggressive, and so forth - but A: there are a lot of possible responses which aren't "do what you're told, when you're told to do it, with no backtalk" which don't rise to that level, and B: not all of the ones which *do* rise to that level automatically deserve the kind of response which phrasing it that way seems to imply. People should be polite and (generally) respectful to the police, yes - but the police should pretty much always be polite "in return", even when they're not receiving that politeness. Yes, that can make the job harder and more dangerous; it's possible to argue, and I think I might agree, that that's just one of the many, many trade-offs the police should have to make in exchange for the authority they expect to receive.

(Of course, simple politeness won't be enough - because formal politeness with a silent attitude of "I consider you a threat" can actually be worse, in terms of intimidation and the fostering of resentment, than outright hostility. And that does apply to both sides of the situation.)

If you're convinced of your innocence and you feel the cop is breaking the law, the solution is NOT to get into an argument over the fine points of legal interpretation with him right then and there, it's to address it later when there's no chance of someone getting shot.

At which point it's much harder to prove (or even argue) your position, it's much easier for the officer to get backup from others (again, "us vs. them" without regard for who's actually right), and so forth.

Plus, what about cases where the officer is not necessarily (or even definitely not) breaking the law, but is overstepping other limits? It's hard enough to get officers held accountable for violations of the law; it's probably impossible, in practical terms, to get them even reprimanded for offenses which don't violate the law.

the sorts of incidents we are talking about are escalated to the level they are at least in part due to our -- ie, civilian's -- attitudes towards the police, and the police attitudes towards us.

100% agreed - and the problem is on both sides of that divide. The latter is exacerbated by the former (as well as by other factors, some of which are probably purely human nature); the former is much more widespread, since there are far more of "us" than there are of "police", and is therefore much harder to eradicate - particularly in people whose individual experiences demonstrate to them that it's justified.