Pull over, I want to search your vehicle

Heavy handed police tactics are in vogue today mainly due to the cleanup that has taken place in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In essence, the policy under Bloomberg is that when you make a police stop, you question the person you are stopping. Some people credit the policy with making the streets safer in NYC. Others say that there is nothing to prove that those policies are responsible for the downturn in violent crime. No one will ever really know the answer to the question without significant research.

But similar policies are being followed now throughout the US, even here in Virginia and neighboring North Carolina. Recently I have heard about three incidents involving similar tactics that some police departments are using against young male adults. I know that’s hard to believe, but, you know, stuff happens.

These first two accounts happened in Virginia. A young under 20’s man was driving home after mowing his grandmother’s lawn. A local police officer spotted his car and noted that one of his tail lights was not working—grounds for a quick stop.

While I was not privy to the stop, this is somewhat the way the incident went down as relayed to me. I know I know, we all want “Nothing but the facts,” but sometimes the facts are hard to nail down.

Upon stopping the young man, the officer took a moment to look into the backseat. There on the floorboard were some leaves of grass left over from cutting the lawn. At that point, the tenor of the conversation changed from “get your light fixed” to “what’s that in your back seat, I think it’s marijuana.”

That opened up a series of questions that ran along the lines of, “Okay, we know who you are, so who’s got all the drugs in town?” The attitude and tenor of the inquisition continued with the officer trying to frighten the young man into divulging something—anything—that might incriminate him and earn the officer a PD-kudu for netting a drug arrest from a traffic stop.

Second incident. Coming home one night after the Super Bowl a young man was having medical problems, stopped on the side of the road, and got out of his car. A local police officer stopped and tried to talk to him. He was basically unresponsive, due to some kind of seizure. The officer attempted to handcuff the young man. Backup arrived and they had a hard time dealing with the man. They fought him to the ground and beat him up a bit in doing so.

At that time, the local fire department arrived and an EMT took a look at the culprit. He immediately recognized the seizure. No charges were ever filed in the case and the family was told that it would be useless to try to sue the department. The issue was dropped.

The most recent incident that I have heard about happened in North Carolina. The young man was following his friend to the Outer Banks when a local police officer pulled him for “following too close.” They made him get out of his car, which he did. They then asked him, “You seem nervous, I think you are on drugs.”

The officer told the youth that following too close carried a $180 fine. After a short discussion, he asked the driver for permission to search his car and that if not he would just get a warrant. Still nervous, the young man allowed the search. During the search, a backup officer arrived and he took the moment to go through the driver’s backpack. After the search, the officer came out of the car holding up some scrap and stating that it was pot. But, he said, since they did not find any paraphernalia, they would believe that it wasn’t his and did not charge him. Again in this incident, no charges were filed—nothing for the alleged drugs and no ticket for following too close.

It certainly makes one wonder about the tactics being employed today involving young men. Using grass clippings as “probable cause” for marijuana questioning seems a bit out of line. Not taking the time to find out what is going on with someone standing on the roadside and going into Rambo mode seems a bit over the top. Using a trumped up reason to stop someone for a charge that usually isn’t employed except in rear end crashes seems a bit speculative on the part of the officer.

And, ultimately, stopping naïve young men seems a bit like profiling. In none of those cases were there any charges filed. In none of those cases were the young men doing anything that they shouldn’t have been doing.

We really need to teach our children what to do when they are stopped for basically no reason at all and treated in any manner that might be construed as bullying. We have rules to stop bullying in high schools, but most people don’t expect to be bullied by the police. I am certain that these three incidents are the only times such things have happened.