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A lot of your entry was about the problem with car theft and fake plates. And I don’t disagree it is a real problem. I live in a state where theft is horrible also. Between January and March of 2021, 6,692 cars were stolen across the state of Washington. For that same time period in 2022, 12,569 cars have been stolen. If current trends hold, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs estimates car thefts could top 50,000 by the end of the year. There were 26,520 vehicles stolen in 2020, and 31,032 in 2021 in Washington state. I feel your pain.

But there are ways to approach a car unlike the way that was done that could control the situation far better and not incite the action the driver took leading to life threatening possibilities of innocents. I’m in no way going to say the driver didn’t panic as it appeared to me he did. But he was given the opportunity and panicked by the officer doing what he did with the intrusive way he took. Walking up on a blind side location, and pulling the door open on a driver could easily have gotten himself killed from a lap placed pistol. AS it was, it elevated into open gunfire throughout the parking lot from the police officer with at least one clip being used, possibly two. Bad choices.

wy69

A lot of your entry was about the problem with car theft and fake plates.

Yeah, the roundabout point I was making is that it is frustrating law enforcement efforts. Reliability of license plates for investigation purposes is practically worthless these days, so pretty often all there is left to go on are descriptions of vehicles and persons. See a vehicle that matches a description, turn back around and go look - the cops around here have to do that all the time. Can't say for certainty that's what led to that particular confrontation in San Antonio but the possibility is pretty high. The problem with that contact was how badly it was initiated and escalated.