What Every Cop Wants From the People They Pull Over.

I sat in a dark police car on the side of the road and stared at the white line marking the stopping point for a stop sign. It was sometime around 2 a.m.; bar closing time. My purpose was to use this stop sign to identify intoxicated drivers before it was too late.

Headlights appeared and a car approached the sign, a little too fast. The car’s red brake lights activated briefly, and the car slowed as it passed over the white line. It did not stop but continued into the intersection and turned. I took a breath and my heart sped up, because I knew it was time to stop this car.

I activated my lights and sent a flood of red and blue into the dark neighborhood. I informed dispatch of my stop, threw my vehicle into park, and was on my feet. I approached the car’s red break lights with my own lights dancing behind me. Like every nighttime traffic stop, I had no idea who I would encounter in this car. The driver could be a man or a woman, drunk or sober, or a violent criminal with no intention of being apprehended.

I placed a full handprint on the rear of the vehicle, evidence for my colleagues to process should I be killed on this stop. The driver’s window was down, and I saw a well-dressed young man inside. I relaxed a little. Clean car, no suspicious odors, and the young man appeared professionally dressed and groomed. My hypothesis: this man was coming from work. But something was off.

I immediately identified myself and my reason for stopping the man. I asked for his identification along with the vehicle’s documents. The man’s hands shook as he fumbled with his wallet. It is normal for most people to shake a little in the initial moments of a traffic stop. It is a side-effect of the adrenaline released into their blood upon seeing emergency lights go on. It is different from the shake of prolonged fear. My own adrenaline was starting to clear, but something about the man set off alarms in my brain.

He clenched his jaw, and his breathing was of the ‘I need to run away’ variety. He wouldn’t look directly at me. His fear response went above what I knew as normal for the situation. My hypothesis yielded two possibilities. One, he was hiding something, and this situation was about to get wild. Two, he believed all the things being said about cops in the media.

Mainstream and social media were flooded at the time with negative narratives painting police as malicious. These narratives pumped fear and animosity into most of my daily encounters, and I wondered if this was the same. I had to see if I could get the man to relax. I needed to know if his disproportionate fear was caused by these narratives or something else. These narratives made my job harder and more dangerous. Getting him to relax would make us both safer.

“Coming from work?” I asked. I offered a forced smile, but he didn’t look at me.

“Yes,” he confirmed in a small voice.

“I’m almost done myself,” I said. I wanted him to know I was working. He didn’t respond and continued looking for one of his documents.

“I watch that stop sign because sometimes drunk drivers come through here,” I told him.

“I don’t drink,” he told me immediately. Not defensive, just as a matter of fact. His divided attention was normal, and I suspected no alcohol use.

“I can’t find my insurance,” he said glancing up for a moment, but quickly looked away. He continued to breathe heavily and shake. His fear prevented him from finding his insurance. This amount of fear was not normal for the situation.

“That’s fine,” I said. “You can pull it up on the company’s app in most cases. Try that.”

He stated something to the effect of knowing he could pull it up on his phone and started fumbling with his phone. His voice shook and he had difficulty getting the words out.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m looking for impaired drivers tonight. You’re clearly not impaired, but you rolled through that stop sign pretty fast. If everything else checks out, I don’t intend on writing you a ticket.”

He took a breath and relaxed a bit but stared into his app’s loading screen as he said, “I have never been pulled over before.”

I sighed and relaxed completely. He was not a criminal. He was not hiding anything. He was afraid of cops, even though he had never dealt with one.

“Traffic stops don’t have to be a big deal,” I said. “Mostly, they are an opportunity to make the roads safer while also looking for criminal activity. If you are not a criminal, there is really nothing to worry about. Keep checking, and I’ll be right back.”

I went to my car to check his information and returned. I felt like saying more but feared saying too much or sounding like a fool. I wanted him to know why I was doing the things I was doing. I wanted him to know, I was human too.

“All is good,” I reported upon my return. “No tickets, as long as you don’t run anymore stop signs.”

“Thank you,” he said, making brief eye contact. He was still afraid.

“They say a lot of things about cops online and in the news these days,” I told him. I wanted to passionately declare that these sources were created by dishonest people for the sake of pushing a political agenda. Instead, I said, “It’s not true. Cops are regular humans, like you. I hope you judge us all in the future based on this interaction and not on what they say about us.”

He finally met my eye. He relaxed a great deal. He thanked me and shook my hand.

I smiled, “I can’t guarantee you will go ticket free every time.”

“Sorry, about that. I’ll be stopping at every stop sign from here on out,” he smiled back, changed by stress and relief.

I made some joke regarding his first time being pulled over. He laughed and added a funny line to the joke. He knew I was just another human. I wasn’t some malicious agent looking to lock him up or kill him. I wished him a safe journey and returned to my vehicle. I wanted everyone to know what he now knew. I wanted them to know cops were human too.