Let me tell you about pretext stops.
I had a guy drop a pay phone in mid-sentence and run at the sight of my patrol car.
I would have a hard time articulating what crime he might have been committing but since I prefer to live in reality, I went down the street, turned around, and looked in the alley for him.
I was unable to find the guy, who I assumed had a big warrant or similar, and lurked in the shadows waiting for him to come back.
I wasn’t able to find him.
Had I been in the outside lane instead of the inside lane when we he ran, I would have been on his heels going down the alley.
I wasn’t, so I didn’t turn down the alley and face the ambush that was waiting for me.
4.5 hours later he was shot dead by my co-worker...his name was Maurice Clemmons and he had killed 4 officers 48 hours earlier.
That sir is not a pretextual stop, but it is basically what these officers had (per the story). That is a police officer seeing something suspicious and investigating it. It is not racial bias, profiling, a pretextual stop, or any other such non-sense.
These officers saw something suspicious and went to check it out. They paid some high prices. I can see nowhere in the article any shred of detail that would lead one to believe they did anything wrong legally or morally.
I think your take on it is wrong and you owe their memories an apology.
Well done.
Since you are an officer, I was wondering if you would also check out something that was “unusual” or “weird” but not necessarily “suspicious”.
Or at least what mental criteria you use before something that may fit the first two categories bumps you into “suspicious”?
I mean the example you gave is pretty clear suspicion, but there are a lot less subtle weird things that probably don’t trip the radar to investigate.