The Bad Guys VII: Cops (Part 1)

There are some fantastic cops out there; I know a few. That said, this series is about examining the groups that routinely get labeled as bad guys. Whether you agree with it or not, millions of Americans of every political persuasion see the cops (all cops) as the bad guys. It’s worth asking why.

Back in Part III: The Feds, I mentioned my first experience with the police was a fun one. I won an art contest at school and the 1980s cops were awesome. My second experience with the police wasn’t as pleasant. That encounter included the cops frisking me on the side of the highway with guns drawn at 1:00 am.

I was coming home from a late movie with a bunch of teenage friends. My reckless driving and excessive speed—coupled with my ‘71 Oldsmobile Cutlass, a gang favorite in those days—gained the California Highway Patrol’s attention. Once they discovered I was a sober, scared white kid in a car full of other scared white kids, they let us go with a warning.

This is not the way these interactions play out for a lot of people, white, black, or otherwise. Far from it.

Personally, I’ve had both positive and negative experiences with cops. Some are great, some are jerks, and every cop I know will admit there are serious dunderheads on the force, even more so since the vaccine mandates in 2021—coupled with the Defund the Police lunacy of 2020—forced tens of thousands of quality officers to wash their hands of the entire profession.

Some cops stuck it out only to see desperate recruiters flood the ranks with cast-offs and mentally unstable glorymongers who couldn’t get along with people in ordinary professions and certainly shouldn’t be wearing a badge. The result now—and maybe it’s always been this way—is that when you get pulled over, or if you get that knock on the door, you never know which version of cop you’re going to get.

Case Studies In InDiscretion

On May 24th, 2009, Oklahoma State Trooper Daniel Martin passed an ambulance in route to a call for backup. After leaving that call, Trooper Martin—upset that the driver had failed to yield quickly enough as he passed it, and upset because he believed the ambulance driver had made an objectionable hand gesture at him—chased down the ambulance and instructed the driver to exit the vehicle.

Paramedic Maurice White, Jr. intervened from the rear and explained he was currently transporting a patient. Trooper Martin ignored this and continued to demand the driver exit. When threatened with arrest for interfering with Trooper Martin’s investigation, Paramedic White informed Trooper Martin, “You can arrest me after I get my patient to the hospital.”

Matters escalated and Trooper Martin attempted to arrest White, who resisted. With spectators gathering, Trooper Martin abandoned the attempted arrest and called for backup. After backup arrived, White and the ambulance were allowed to transport the patient and no arrest was made.

On May 8th, 2022, Corporal Michael Pritch of Ocean Country, New Jersey saw a young man (age undetermined) walking in the grass adjacent the road. The young man extended his middle finger to the officer as he passed. Officer Pritch pulled over his squad car and approached him, citing “using an obscene gesture” as probable cause for detaining him. The young man argued with the police, often mocking them, and after refusing to comply with their demands, was allowed to walk away.

On October, 2019, Jaime Guevara was in Long Beach, California, filming the police apprehending a stranger. After noticing they were being filmed, Officer Romo of the Long Beach Police Department approached Guevara, demanding to know his age and to see his ID, insinuating that Guevara may be skipping school. Guevara refused.

At one point Romo’s partner mocked Guevara, telling him, “Why don’t you go to law school?” when Guevara correctly and repeatedly informed them that he didn’t have to to identify himself, which is true given California state law. After illegally arresting¹and transporting Guevara to his squad car, Officer Romo soon released him, as soon as they verified his age.

I could list a thousand cases, but these merely serve to indicate two things: a) Often the police don’t understand the law, and b) sensitive egos can drive officers to create incidents where none need exist.

In part 1 of this article, we’ll focus on the legal aspect of these kinds of interactions.

When the Police Don’t Know the Law

A number of important precedents dictate the powers of the police, perhaps none more so than the landmark Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio (1968).

On October 31, 1963, Cleveland Ohio police officer Martin McFadden, operating under suspicion that an attempted burglary was about to be carried out, stopped, questioned, and frisked John W. Terry and Richard Chilton. After finding pistols in their jacket pockets, McFadden arrested them for suspicion of carrying illegally concealed weapons.

In an 8-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme court upheld their arrest, establishing the legality of what is now known as a “Terry Stop” (or, Stop and Frisk) which generally means that an officer may stop an individual so long as they have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is about to be committed.

Many police officers mistakenly believe this means they have the right to stop and demand identification from (or even frisk) anyone they want for any reason, completely ignoring the necessity of reasonable suspicion of a crime, or banking on the public’s ignorance of such necessity. Moreover, many officers routinely demand individuals identify themselves when there is absolutely no reason to.

Most of us have no problem telling the police our names or even providing them our ID, but rarely would we do so for a stranger on the street, and we should ask ourselves why that is. Why do the police want to see our ID or know our name if we’ve done nothing wrong and haven’t witnessed a crime? Good questions, indeed.

I once attended a Firearms & Legal Use of Force presentation by a police lieutenant. When the topic of “stop and question” came up, he affirmed his right to demand ID from anyone for any reason. I challenged him on the notion of a non-suspect simply walking away (this is not a Stop and Identify² state) and asked hypothetically, “Well, am I being detained?”

Up till that point, this had been a light-hearted classroom setting full of constitutional carry³ advocates. But my question challenging his constitutional and legal justification for demanding ID must have touched a nerve, because he got serious and responded in a completely different, almost angry tone: “Well if its gonna be like that, we can discuss it with you in cuffs in the back of my squad car.”

It’s noteworthy that this was supposed to be a class on deescalation.

And yet my simple question triggered an immediate and unnecessary escalation of temper in a high-ranking cop with over twenty years of service. If that was a veteran officer, and a Christian to boot, imagine how under-trained cops react on the street in fluid situations and we’ll start to get a grasp of why so many Americans see the cops as the bad guys.

Knowing the law and understanding its intent takes law students years to ingrain; cops simply don’t have the time (or often the inclination) to study the laws governing their conduct, and most Americans don’t know them, either.

During the same Legal Use of Force presentation, the officer mentioned that he once had a lawyer attend his class, and that, “It didn’t go well.”

I can’t imagine why.

The propensity toward tribalism is as prominent with the police as any group, and given the dangerous, often thankless nature of their job, is rather understandable. People who routinely interact with the worst of society aren’t always the most charitable souls.

That doesn’t excuse a**hole cops, though.

With the badge comes (or should come) a responsibility to selflessly serve the community, and not merely when the bullets are flying. Good cops have thick skin and treat everyone (even the punk kids and crack heads) with respect. Bad cops have even thicker skin and lord authority over whomever they please. When the police themselves don’t understand the limits of their power, abuses happen, and have happened for as long as police forces have existed.

Let’s take a look at another, more recent landmark case:

Hiibel v. Nevada (2004)

On May 21, 2000, Humboldt County, Nevada Sheriff’s Deputy Lee Dove received a report that a witness had seen an individual striking a female passenger inside a pickup truck. When Dove approached, Larry D. Hiibel was standing outside the truck with his minor daughter seated inside. Based on Hiibel’s mannerisms, speech, eyes, and odor, Dove believed he was intoxicated.

Deputy Dove asked Hiibel to identify himself eleven separate times and Hiibel refused, at one point placing his own hands behind his back and challenging Dove to take him to jail. Dove handcuffed him and placed him under arrest.

Hiibel contested the arrest on grounds of that it violated his 4th and 5th Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure and against self-incrimination.

Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Fifth Amendment: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The question for Hiibel—and for Jaime Guevara, the police, and for you and I—was this: Do the police have the right to demand that we identify ourselves for any reason? And, may they arrest us if we refuse?

The case went to the U.S. Supreme court, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority:

Although it is well established that an officer may ask a suspect to identify himself in the course of a Terry stop, it has been an open question whether the suspect can be arrested and prosecuted for refusal to answer…In Terry, Justice White stated in a concurring opinion that a person detained in an investigative stop can be questioned but is “not obliged to answer, answers may not be compelled, and refusal to answer furnishes no basis for an arrest.”

— Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty., 542 U.S. 177 (2004)

However, the Court in a 5-4 decision affirmed that the police do have the right to demand identification but—and this is the part all cops need to understand—with limitations:

Justice Kennedy concluded:

It is clear in this case that the request for identification was “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified” the stop...The officer’s request was a commonsense inquiry, not an effort to obtain an arrest for failure to identify after a Terry stop yielded insufficient evidence. The stop, the request, and the State’s requirement of a response did not contravene the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment.

It needs to be noted that this was in Nevada, which (as of this writing) along with twenty-six other states have Stop and Identify laws on the books. Were this interaction to happen in a state where the police are not granted Stop and Identify powers, they would be required to have reasonable suspicion of a crime (Terry v. Ohio) to avoid a lawsuit.

Stopping crimes is supposed to be the goal of the police, not harassing kids who give them the finger or preventing people from filming their activities. Simple fact-finding inquiries by the police need to be justified and conducted in adherence to the law: state, municipal, and federal.

Many cops—indeed most Americans—don’t understand the laws that exist where they live. My guess is that most people reading this don’t know whether or not they live in a Stop and Identify state, or whether or not they live in a One-Party Consent⁴ state when it comes to recording private conversations. That aforementioned police lieutenant didn’t, nor did anyone in the classroom.

I certainly don’t have the state statues dialed-in and neither do most of the cops in my community. I’ll guarantee that, because the law is absurdly complex and the application of it changes from year to year, judicial ruling to judicial ruling.

I once tried to purchase a print copy of the Alaska State Statutes that they provide to the Legislature, only to discover that since they change so frequently, it’s almost pointless to keep them in print. And since they’re so voluminous it would cost over a thousand dollars every year. Think our cops can keep up with all of that? And that’s only the state statutes.

It may be unreasonable for most officers to understand the complexity and nuance of case law, much less keep current on it. That is why police officers understanding the spirit of the law is so vital, by not going around seeing everyone as a potential criminal, whether they look sketchy or not. The basics are what they should focus on: being kind and professional, instead of assigning everyone in sight a threat level designation.

Also, sacrosanct is embracing the concept of innocent until proven guilty. But countless interactions—documented by thousands of Americans who advocate on the matters—show bodycam footage of the police scrambling to try to find a potential crime to justify detainment after they’ve stopped someone without reasonable suspicion.

Usually these interactions are all about ego, and yes, sometimes prejudice, and not necessarily related to race. We’ll tackle this issue more in Part 2.

The police have a hard, deadly, often thankless job, and most people take them for granted until they need them for something, which is why calling them all bad guys is as absurd as backing the blue unequivocally.

To Protect

Over the years our family has many interactions with the police, some helpful, some perplexing, some aggravating, and even some that resulted in apologies on their part. Perhaps the saddest aspect of evaluating the police is that there is such a wide disparity between the good cops and the bad. The institutional inconsistency from one department to the next, from one officer to the next, is unacceptable.

Unless we can reestablish proper, universal training about basic, constitutional rights, and teach our law enforcement officers how it applies to daily interactions, we’ll continue to have two generalities about police. We’ll either exalt them as the good guys or disparage them as the bad guys. The unfortunate reality is that sometimes both statements are true.

[This is a two-part edition to my series The Bad Guys. Please subscribe to be notified when The Bad Guys: VII, Cops (Part 2) is released.]

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This is part of an ongoing series titled, The Bad Guys. Previous articles:
The Bad Guys: Part I, History.
The Bad Guys: Part II, Abortion…and Cobra Kai.
The Bad Guys: Part III, The Feds
The Bad Guys: Part IV, The GOP
The Bad Guys: Part V, Intelligence Agencies
The Bad Guys: Part VI, The Courts

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If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy these as well:

1. Officer Romo eventually cited “daytime loitering” as his reasonable suspicion, found in the city of Long Beach, CA’s statue 9.58.010 – Prohibition against juvenile being in public place between the hours of ten p.m. until six a.m. the following day. A. Curfew. It is unlawful for any minor under the age of eighteen (18) years to remain in or upon any “public place,” as defined in Section 9.02.090, between the hours of ten p.m. until six a.m. the following day. However, this is mitigated by subsection B. Exceptions. The provisions of Subsection A of this Section shall not apply when: 8. The minor is exercising First Amendment rights protected by the United States Constitution.

2. Stop and Identify states are those where a person suspected of committing a crime is legally obligated to identify themselves to authorities. In states without Stop and Identify laws, a person is not legally required to show their ID to police officers. Even in states with a Stop and Identify statute, a person is not required to provide identification without a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed, a crime is currently being committed, or a crime was committed. The specifics of when the law applies often varies by state.

3. Constitutional Carry (sometimes called Permitless Carry) refers to state law wherein anyone legally authorized to own a firearm may carry them concealed or openly (subject to state specification) in that state, or in other constitutional carry states (known as reciprocity) without having a permit to do so. As of this writing there are currently twenty-nine constitutional carry states.

4. One-Party Consent states permit individuals to record conversations to which they are a party without informing the other parties that they are doing so. As of this writing there are thirty-eight, one-party consent states.