Not that that is my intent and surely not yours either, but I have my own story.
Background: I am an overweight pale early 50s upper middle class guy driving a new Mustang GT convertible with disability plates this summer. A cop didn't like my sudden lane change and brief blip above the limit to get past a left laner dawdling along well under the limit so pulled me over. Can't complain, as I had definitely valued efficiency over adherence to the letter of the law.
In full view (top down), in business dress at 5pm in a very safe and reputable part of town, I do the right thing and kill the engine and sit still to await his approach. He's a typical enough modern cop. Young, athletic, crew cut and military bearing. I'd surely guess he's the common Armed Forces-Police transplant. He is reasonable and polite in telling me why he pulled me over, and asks for my papers.
I respond they are in the glove compartment and that being hemiplegiac with very limited mobility on my right side (unlike many, the disability plates are there for a valid reason) I cannot reach them seated. I say I'd be glad to have him grab them or I would walk around and take them out, and knowing the usual caution, that I have no weapon in there or on me whatsoever.
So I get out after he oks it, obvioiusly shambling given my condition, twice his age and long past my physical prime, in the most non-threatening of circumstances and environments, and I note with some surprise that he unsnaps his holster retention strap and keeps his hand close to the grip. He's not panicking and not threatening and I'm fine with it but it strikes me that he is obviously preparing for that. 0001% chance that a well-to-do lardass crippled white guy in rush hour in an upper middle neighborhood is going to take it in his head to go copkiller.
Now many would call that an overreaction. I'm sure he would call it a low probability just in case. I'm also sure a young powerful black male driver in an older car and poorer neighborhood at midnight would see more than a loosened strap, but the point is they are just two steps on a continuum that says cops need to and are trained to prepare for even very unlikely eventualities, even in very benign scenarios. I'm sure a (very) few cops have been attacked by folks like me in other seemingly safe situations. Far more have been attacked in worse circumstances, and even though it's very rare even then, this is a situation where not being ready is potentially catastrophic, so the cop response is always to be ready. Unlike me, they are not allowed to simply walk away from trouble (well technically limp away but hey) so they always get ready for the worst.
If you add to that mix a non-cop with either justified or not personal resentment to police, maybe add in a life with far more physical risk and altercations than mine has had, maybe add in more easily wounded pride or more insecurity, and that spiral of preparedness for violence or conflict escalating into actual violence is not too hard to imagine.
Some cops doubtless are violent and even murderous bigots. Many victims of police brutality doubtless did everything they could to avoid escalation, but you can easily see, even with all the admitted race and class advantages that I have, how easily the mindset of "I must be ready to make the best of any possible violent situation however unlikely" in both cop and non-cop , can get out of hand really easily.
Should we, even the fairly privileged like me, have to always remember to be extremely calm and non-threatening to police? Ideally no. I should theoretically have been able to just happily walk around the car, grab something from the glove compartment with my back turned and without discussion, and then cheerfully hand him my registration packet while he whistled unconcernedly looking the other way. In my case and 99.99% of others like it that would just have saved both of us some time. But the cop has to worry about that one stop in 10000, and he doesn't know it's not me. For the Browns and the Garners does that mean abject and immediate submission and more indignity than I would need to swallow? Sadly yep. Because any cop is likely to look at those men in those neighborhoods and work out that probability might be higher than stopping non-threatening suburbanites like me. It's not right. It shouldn't need to be true. It's neither of their faults obviously. But it's true. It will be true until cops are willing to accept tiny risks for the sake of public safety and decency and trust like they used to, at least more so than today. It's easy though for me to say that. It's not easy to know if I would though. I hope so, but can everyone say they would?
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