• orcrist@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    As we saw, it’s actually a bigger safety issue if the cops can order you to lower your window. Fortunately, you and I don’t get to decide what’s “reasonable” in this context. It would go to the appeals courts, and who knows what would happen.

    I think it’s likely that the appeals courts would say that Pennsylvania v. Mimms already let cops order people out of the car, which solves the safety problem, so there’s no need to give cops extra authority to order you around willy-nilly. The ordinary person has a clear interest in knowing what exactly cops can and can’t order, and you’re proposing increasing the ambiguity of it all, which (as we just saw) is dangerous.

    • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      it’s actually a bigger safety issue if the cops can order you to lower your window

      most inane take I’ve read about this interaction

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        You didn’t explain, which suggests shadiness, but let’s assume better… Let’s assume you didn’t understand what I meant.

        Cops can let you stay in the car. They can make you get out, if they have solid grounds to do so. That’s relatively simple, and it lets cops choose the best location for the interaction. So it’s safe for the cops (but not the occupants). Whatever, that’s the law, OK.

        But they can’t have it both ways. If they let you stay in the car, they’ve already decided you probably aren’t going to grab a gun from under the seat. So there’s no safety issue for them.

        But there is for you. They might reach in the window, for example, violating your civil rights. It would be better for them to have to open the door. It’s easy to see big actions on dash and body cameras, and it’s harder to write them off as accidental. You could even keep your door locked. After all, who knows if the cops stopping you are upstanding citizens. Who will vouch for their character, my friend?

        Lock the door, crack the window as necessary, get out when ordered, always film the pigs. This is 100% legal common sense. Or don’t, and risk your own safety. It’s your life.

        • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          If they let you stay in the car, they’ve already decided you probably aren’t going to grab a gun from under the seat. So there’s no safety issue for them.

          Dude, you aren’t making a lick of sense. Google “officer shot during traffic stop” and tell me again that keeping your window rolled down during a traffic stop is unreasonable.

          crack the window as necessary, get out when ordered

          two things he refused to do? What are you talking about, dude?

          • orcrist@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Did you watch the video? Your facts don’t quite match what it showed. He gave the cops his papers, and then he closed the window, because he didn’t need it open until they got back with his ticket. That’s when they started power tripping. If they wanted him out of the car, all they had to do was wait 10 or 20 seconds. It really was that simple. But they wanted violence, so that’s what they created.

            What’s actually dangerous to cops? The number one thing is bad driving by the cops themselves, which is the leading cause of death for officers on duty. During the pandemic, the pandemic itself was the other leading cause I think, because many officers didn’t believe in it and they put themselves at risk.

            Every year US cops shoot and kill over a thousand people. Many of those people are innocent. The risk to the average citizen is high, but the risk to the cop is much much lower. The last numbers I saw were in the hundreds, in the low hundreds, but it might even be lower than that. And now you’re trying to carve out a special situation, where the cop is not shot when they first approached the car, but is only later shot after they already got the papers from the driver, and specifically because the driver closed their tinted window. I wonder if you can find even a single example of that happening in the last year. This is an issue that I tend to pay attention to, and I can’t think of it happening in recent history.

            And you might want to argue that we should err on the side of caution. First of all, that’s not the law of the land. The Constitution doesn’t allow you to do that. Second, if the situation is as rare as I think it is, almost or entirely non-existent, then what you’re talking about is paranoia. In that case, you need a psychologist, not an open window. Third, the threat to the driver and passengers is real. If the cop makes a mistake, they may draw their gun and shoot people in the car. What if an acorn falls near them? They might shoot the driver. Sadly, this is a very real situation, unlike your hypothetical. In other words, the facts are not on your side here.