I would have preferred he be much better prepared for what he must have known would be an inevitable encounter.
People go to the range to target practice, why not go to Toastmasters to practice nuanced verbal Jujutsu?
The police certainly rehearse their traffic stop encounters. Where do you think they learn those innocuous questions about voluntary search of your vehicle? Why do you think the questions are so similar across so many different jurisdictions?
We the People need to get smart about this stuff.
Best regards,
Absolutely! The typical citizen gets pulled over less than once a year; police have these types of encounters every day.
Yes, we do. However, any move toward the firearm, regardless of it not being loaded, might have been cause to shoot him.
By his assuming a non-threatening stance, in front of witnesses ('But he was eating! his hands were nowhere near the holster!'), the police were deprived of the 'shoot first and ask questions later' scenario.
I have found that depriving overbearing police officers of the use of overbearing tactics causes a reduction in alert status and cools the situation.
Merely asking an officer if he intended to hit me with his flashlight, and then to please quit waving it at me in a physically htreatening manner, took the situation down a couple of notches one night, and resulted in dialogue, rather than confrontation. (OK, so he was new on the job).
Being polite, especially when it is drunk:30 out helps as well, even when you disagree with them.
We have to remember that asserting our rights can be done in a calm manner--which goes further to prove we are capable of carrying firearms without posing a menace to the rank and file and disarms the notion that armed citizens are a menace.
One techinque in 'out copping the cop', is to remain more professional. Tough to do with some of the more professional police officers out there. The testosterone charged storm trooper wannabe types will always be a problem, but the better police forces weed these out.