Perhaps. But if cops with “rifles” are threatening me, I am more inclined to make my hands visible than to put them in an unknown bag.
But that is me. They said he was an Army Reservist, they didn’t say he was smart or that he handled stress well.
My point is that we see this constantly even (or especially) here on FR: Cops shoot a person/dog/(insert something here) and regardless of what actually happened or how it is reported, there are people who will automatically castigate the police and people who will support the cops, no matter what.
The story from the UK has a particular agenda, we know that, we have seen it before. A stopped clock can be right twice a day, and zebras do end up on horse farms, but most of the time, we can only go on what we know.
It could be a dirty cop. It could be a bunch of cops willing to draw weapons in public because someone is sleeping with another cop’s woman, it could be any number of things. We don’t know any of that. None of it. But we have lots and lots of theories.
Best case scenario: If he then reached down to push the drill that had slid forward back under the seat, then the officer should still be surrendering his badge and prosecuted.
Before this is over the police union will have the driver attacking the officer with the drill.
“Perhaps” is all I intended. Since the guy turned out to be clean, and it would be incredibly stupid to point a drill at the police in the dark, I was looking for a reasonable accidental explanation.
As to the predictable bifurcation of default positions on FR, it is what it is.
I tend to be sympathetic to the police, but I’ve experienced enough occasional bullying and threatening behavior to be very careful, more careful than I think I should have to be.