Quote:
Originally Posted by wdfifteen
And if you don't run, they'll mess with you until you've had enough and fight back.
The cops lit them up and the driver pulled over and stopped. He complied.
If the cop had simply given him a ticket for the infraction and moved on there would have been no problem.
But the cop escalated the situation by claiming he saw someone put something under a seat. Even if the guy actually did put something under the seat, there is nothing illegal about that.
These cops knew they were going to mess with these guys the minute the lit them up. It was profiling and harassment, plain and simple.
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If you reach for anything during a traffic stop, it will likely be considered a furtive move and escalate or prolong the stop. It also gives the cop RAS to ask the occupants out of the car, which then starts the Terry Frisk chain of events. It's perfectly legal to investigate a furtive move during a traffic stop and these thugs not only gave the cops every justification for it, I'd say finding four guns on them pretty much vindicates their quite reasonable, articulable suspicion. Once the driver tried to run, that shut down any further argument that these "good citizens" were just being harassed by racist cops. These were bad guys up to bad things and they gave the cops all kinds of red flags for the stop, further investigation and arrest. People who commit big crimes usually ignore the small laws too and that's often how cops get to them.