Quote:
Originally Posted by XYZ
Actually most cops are merely suspicious by nature... So they look for irregularities, and stop and question those who are irregular.
|
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.
"I'm not doing anything wrong" ≠ "What I'm doing does not match the actions of people who actually are doing something wrong." The problem is the difference between an ideal world and what you don't want to happen to you.
Ideally: If a cop sees you doing something that isn't wrong itself but matches the profile of someone who is, he'll investigate.
Where things can go wrong: When they see you doing something, decide it means you
are doing something wrong and treat you as if they caught you doing it. If you're lucky, they figure out they made a mistake and "only" fine you for the things they used as a pretext to stop you.
In other words, the squeaky wheel gets detained, strip searched and held for the weekend. After the squeaky wheel pays a bail bondsman, lawyer, court fees and maybe manages to get his car back from civil forfeiture, the squeaky wheel can once again attempt to make it to the garage to get greased.
I got stopped once for something that it only looked like I was doing, but a white guy in a nice car who is polite, cooperative and friendly tends to find himself in the ideal world of police encounters. Since there's always a chance things can stray from the ideal world and even in the best case I still can't afford to randomly be 20-30 minutes late on any given trip, I try to be inconspicuous.