(1) First, a
logical point.
Semantically,
epistemologically, the expression routine
traffic stop is comparable to successful
candidate -- you don’t know until after
the event that the candidate was successful, or the stop routine. If the officer gets shot, turns out it
wasn’t so routine after all.
The term “routine traffic stop” is currently deployed so as
to load the political dice, much like “unarmed black teenager”: until you have searched him, you do not
know that he is unarmed.
(2) Second, a
statistical/criminological point.
Many traffic stops, especially at night, are a time of peril
and tension for the officer involved.
For an example, we need seek no farther than this morning’s headlines:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/02/memphis-police-officer-shot-and-killed-during-traffic-stop/
The reader may wonder,
whether the media frenzy over the recent Cincinnati case, may not have
sapped the officer’s vigilance, and thus contributed to his death.
(3) Third, a
rhetorical point.
Some traffic stops that the police themselves, with good
reason, present as “routine”, in fact are a tactical pretext in the investigation
of a crime scene in progress. The
police know for certain that a violent and dangerous individual is on the
loose; what they don’t know is
whether the person in the vehicle (whose description loosely matches the
necessarily provisional witness description of the perp and his getaway car) is
the felon in question. Until
that is established, it makes plain operational sense not to alert the suspect to the fact that he is under
suspicion, so that he goes for his gun before backup can arrive. Hand him a line about a tail-light, or
a front license plate, or whatever, to buy time.
A dramatic illustration of this appeared yesterday on
NPR. They were interviewing a black DC lawyer who has just published a
book about how the public should deal with police. He presented what, on the face of it, was a plain case of
wanton police profiling and overreaction.
While not speeding or otherwise infringing any traffic laws, he was
pulled over, and told it was because he had tinted windows. He did not, in fact, have tinted
windows. Several cops with guns
drawn swarmed the car. After investigating, they let him go; he filed a complaint with the city.
At this point, every listener would be siding strenuously
with the motorist, and fuming at the DC police. But as a result of the complaint process, the motorist
eventually learned what had really
been going on that night; and he
was man enough to share this with the audience.
A couple of blocks from the stop, shortly before, a murder
had been committed. The killer was
on the loose; his description and that of his vehicle were within error-range
of what the cops were confronted with here. That bit about the tinted windows was simply the best the
frontline cop could think up on the spot -- not very skillfully; if it had indeed been the perp, the guy
would have caught on to the ruse.
After this lesson in the basics of police technique, the
lawyer still doesn’t quite get it.
He still holds it against the police that they didn’t give him the real
explanation right on the spot. But
that was while the killer was still on the lam. It would have been a gross operational infraction to
divulge information on an operation in progress, to John Random Citizen, who
then posts this exciting news on social media, potentially alerting the killer
that the cops have a description of his vehicle so he’d better ditch it
pronto.
(4) A
game-theoretic perspective
The officer/motorist scenario is a case of ‘asymmetric
warfare’:
Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton Jr.,
said late Saturday that the shooting “evidences the fact that there are so many
guns on our streets in the wrong hands…At any given minute in a 24-hour day,
[police officers] are dealing with folks who have no rules of engagement.”
(5) The broader
legal context
The lead article in this morning’s New York Times profiles a trainer and researcher who
focuses on exactly such matters, and often serves as an expert witness:
[Update 8 Dec 2015]
The latest "routine traffic stop":
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/12/08/officer-involved-shooting-reported-in-denver/
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