Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck (21 page)

Should you move to a new neighborhood, it’s wise to find out about the parking culture, if any, by asking a neighbor or two whether there is one. And if you’re annoyed that one of your neighbors seems to be ignoring your neighborhood’s parking, just gently mention in the course of general conversation that there
is
a parking culture, explain what it is, and add that they “probably didn’t know.” Leave it to them to take the reasoning to the next step—that you’d like them to follow it—which makes them less likely to defiantly do the opposite, as does having some previously-established friendly relationship with them. Of course, there is one surefire way to control who parks right in front of your house, and that is to buy either an island or a gated mansion set back a mile from the street.

Sign language: The wave, the horn, the flipped bird.

Obviously, laying on the horn and flipping the bird are not examples of the best in adult manners. Also, it’s good to remember that giving in to these impulses can make another driver suddenly drop all their life goals in favor of turning you into roadkill.

The wave, on the other hand, is an important tool for keeping the peace on the road, both by acknowledging when other drivers do something nice for you and also after you do something idiotic and endanger them or unwittingly do something that seems piggy. If you just wag your hand apologetically to them—conciliatory body language that’s readable even a car’s length away—it tells them that your cutting them off wasn’t intentional. Ideally, that’s also the truth; you didn’t just have second thoughts after looking in the rearview mirror and noticing that they look like they’ve done time.

•Traffic cop stops: Drawing the line between politeness and self-incrimination.

There’s this thing called the “California stop,” referring to how just about everybody in California (or at least Los Angeles) either can’t be bothered to stop at stop signs or simply feels too stupid being the only one doing it. (I know—Jersey, Georgia, and a host of other places claim this, too.) So, when you, like everybody else,
alllmosst
come to a complete stop, and then see flashing lights behind you, it’s easy to vault right into Bad Attitudeville and imagine that you’re being singled out for persecution, probably because the officer hates middle-aged women in Hondas.

Obviously, it pays to keep your interaction with the cop snippiness-free, but one school of thought says you should say nothing at all. In civil liberties circles, there’s a much-viewed YouTube video by Regent University School of Law professor James Duane, titled “Why You Should Never Talk to the Police.” Yes, Duane’s position is “Never.” He explains that by answering a police officer’s questions—even if you are innocent, even if you got pulled over for something minor like an unsafe lane change—you can incriminate yourself, giving the police evidence to use against you in court that can maybe even be used to send you to the slammer.

Duane’s thinking seems legally sound, and I would follow it in many situations—for example, if cops wanted to question me in respect to some crime that had been committed, even if I had nothing to do with it. But in regard to traffic stops, I had my suspicions that his advice would play poorly outside a law school auditorium, in the auditorium of real life, so I reached out to a few cops and a civil liberties lawyer whose judgment I respect. One of these cops is a Washington state patrol officer with twenty-one years on the job who asked me not to use his name. He says he’d probably find it really odd, even suspicious, if a driver he’d stopped refused to say a word. “It’s almost impossible for a human being in that situation to not get a little bit overly gabby. Their heart rate’s up, they’re nervous, those red and blue lights are heating up the back of their head, and we have a tendency to stammer in situations like that.”

Retired California cop Tracy Ambrico agreed. Ambrico, a thirty-year law enforcement veteran who spent eleven years as a patrol officer, says that by saying nothing, you “set off certain warning bells in an officer: What’s wrong with this person? Why aren’t they interacting?” It gets the officer “way up on their guard.”

First Amendment lawyer Marc J. Randazza likewise finds the advice to just clam up seriously unrealistic. Randazza is both a civil liberties bulldog and a guy who appreciates fast cars—and not just from behind a velvet rope as a lingerie model dusts them at car shows. He drives his “to their tolerances, not the law’s tolerances,” when he’s on the Southwest’s desolate desert highways.

“I get pulled over going arrestably fast on a regular basis,” Randazza told me. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was pulled over for speeding and wasn’t going fast enough that the cop
should have
taken me to jail.” So, when a cop comes up to him and says “Do you know why I pulled you over?” he knows better than to say, “Nope, no idea.” Recognizing that people hate being lied to and treated like they’re stupid, Randazza will adopt a sheepish tone and concede to the officer, “Yeahhhh … I was speeding a little bit there, huh?”

Randazza explains, “That is legally inadvisable because you are making an admission and right there you got rid of your ability to plead not guilty.” He acknowledges that “the textbook legal response is ‘I have no idea why you pulled me over, and if you want to charge me with something, it is going to be your burden to prove it.’ That’s all well and good on a law school exam and nice if you want to write a legal guide. But, let’s be practical. And let’s be smart.” Unless you look like a typical felon, the cop “probably didn’t pull you over to see if he could make something up.” The cop probably already knows you were speeding and probably has evidence of it, too—on radar or by estimating your speed—a technique Randazza says holds up surprisingly well in court.

The Washington cop confirmed what Randazza said about not straining credulity. “I don’t expect everybody to [say], ‘You’re right. I was doing forty-eight in a twenty. Why don’t you get me out of the car and I’ll do some push-ups?’” But to have him maybe go easier on you, “owning what you did is a good start—accepting responsibility.”

Of course, attitude management is essential in minimizing a traffic stop’s bite. Randazza advises that it’s especially important to be congenial if you have something to hide: a roach in the ashtray, a dead hooker in the trunk. “You’ve already behaved very impolitely if you have a dead hooker in your trunk. You’re probably off Amy’s ‘nice people who say fuck’ chart. But, you want to minimize the chances of a search … or the impoundment … of your vehicle,” so: “Smile! Be nice!”

The Washington cop says that he, like many cops, gives many more warnings than he gives tickets. “The tone of the stop is often set by the driver as we walk up to the car,” he explains. “For example, if we get you on radar doing seventy in a thirty, you’re going to get a ticket. If we walk up to the car and you’re maybe ten, twelve over the speed limit and it’s a pleasant beginning—‘Hi’ or ‘I know, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see the red light’—there’s time for decision-making in the officer’s head.”

Ambrico echoes his remarks and notes that an officer may intend to give a warning—until a driver starts arguing with them. Since we aren’t able to listen well when we’re angry, “they think you’re not going to understand the warning, so they ticket.”

Crying can sometimes soften an officer’s heart—if you’re a teenage girl and it’s your first time being stopped by the police. “If it’s a twenty-five-year-old meth addict whose driving status is suspended and who has a glass pipe on the dashboard, it’s not gonna slow me down much,” the Washington patrolman says. In fact, not surprisingly, faking it is likely to backfire. Ambrico explains that cops “become adept at figuring out whether someone is crying because they had a really bad day. If an officer feels the person is trying to manipulate them, they are more likely to get a ticket.”

A wiser approach is actually
asking
for a warning, in a way that reflects respect for the officer and for whatever traffic law you just broke. The Ticket Assassin website advises you say something like: “I’m always a safe driver, officer, and now that I see that sign [or understand this law], I’ll certainly never violate it. Would you please give me a warning as a reminder?”

When an officer’s looking to check your cavities—and not the ones the dentist fills

Say a traffic stop is going badly—badly in that the officer asks to search your car. Even if you have nothing illegal in your vehicle, allowing a search may be a bad idea, considering the increase in recent years in civil asset forfeitures—the term for when the government seizes property or money on the grounds that it
might
have been used to commit a crime. Disgustingly, in these cases, it’s guilty until proven innocent—with the burden of proof on the person whose asset was seized to show that it could not have been used to commit a crime. Those without the means to mount a costly legal defense sometimes find themselves waving goodbye to their cash, home, place of business, boat, or car.

Ambrico, acknowledging that you have every right to refuse a search, points out that there are times when allowing one might make sense. For instance, she says, if your vehicle is subject to being towed, like if you’re driving on a suspended license, that officer can take your car on the spot. But “in most cases, if you are cooperative and let him do what he’s going to do,” he’ll give you the option of having somebody other than a tow truck operator get your car out of there.

Keep in mind that the officer is
asking
to search for a reason: He has no probable cause—no reasonable suspicion you’ve committed a crime—or he’d already be searching
without asking
. It is your constitutional right to refuse his request. If you do so, Randazza again advises you to avoid doing it combatively: “If they say ‘Well, you got something to hide?’ just say, ‘No, I believe in the Constitution, and with all respect, I really don’t want to give up my Fourth Amendment rights voluntarily. If you’re going to search the car, I realize I can’t stop you, but I want it to be on the record that it’s a nonconsensual search.’”

In
Arrest-Proof Yourself
, ex-cop Dale C. Carson advises declining a search by giving a plausible reason that you need to leave. He suggests saying “Officers, I apologize for the traffic violation,” noting that you have cooperated with them, and adding “However, I am late and urgently have to be going” and then explaining why—for example, you are diabetic, asthmatic, or otherwise ailing and must go home to take your meds; your spouse or child is sick, and you need to go care for him or her. He notes that cops may call to verify your reason, so don’t give an excuse that can get you caught in a lie.

A prelude to a search is often a series of prying questions. Though it seems a good idea to be politely forthcoming when asked things like “Do you know the speed limit on this road?” the cop may also try to get a little more personal, asking you where you live, how you feel about our drug laws,
etc.
He probably is doing this not because he finds you fascinating but because he’s trying to find something incriminating. You don’t have to answer these questions. You will need to wait for him to give you the citation before you drive away, but in response to his attempts to probe you further or get you to agree to a search, you can say these magic words: “Are you detaining me, or am I free to go?” (Unless you explicitly announce that you want to leave, the law considers your continuing encounter with a cop voluntary.)

But, again, let’s get real. An unscrupulous cop can use your exercising your rights against you, as did an Idaho officer who pulled over one of my blog commenters for speeding (going seventy in a sixty-five zone—wow). The officer asked this guy—a twenty-two-year-old poli-sci major at the University of South Dakota—to stick around and answer a few questions. This guy, who told me he’d viewed his share of civil liberties videos, asked, “Officer, am I being detained?” The officer said no. The guy told the officer he was going to leave and walked back toward his car. The officer then told him he
was
being detained and called in other officers to tear apart his vehicle in a search on the grounds that his refusal to answer questions was “suspicious.”

Where people go wrong is in thinking they’re powerless to fight back against an abusive cop. Ambrico says that if an officer does violate your rights or is rude or otherwise out of line, it’s important to recognize that you have recourse—
just probably not there
, while the stop is taking place. She does say that you can ask for a supervisor to come out during the stop or go afterward to the counter at the police station and ask to file a complaint. Ambrico suggests keeping in mind that officers are being videotaped and audio-recorded during traffic stops. “Nobody does anything anonymously anymore.” (Check your state or locality to be sure.) She says the cop’s supervisors and the DA “are going to look at tape [and] listen to the audio recording” to see whether your rights were violated or the cop behaved inappropriately. “The DA will not [bring a court case against you] if the search is bogus.”

I think it’s also a wise idea to protect yourself by making your own recording. Steve Silverman, founder of the nonprofit Flex Your Rights and co-creator of the film
10 Rules for Dealing with Police
, wrote for
Reason.com
in April 2012 that it is legal to record the police in every state but Massachusetts and Illinois. That said, it’s probably best to turn on your cell phone recorder or video camera and place it discreetly out of sight well before the officer gets to your car. Even the most fair and even-tempered officer is unlikely to be charmed and amused by the notion that he could soon go viral on YouTube.

Traffic stop etiquette basics: How to set the right tone, even before the officer gets to your car.

When you get “lit up” by a police cruiser, put on your blinker or flashers and look for a safe place to stop nearby. With emphasis on “nearby.” The Washington patrolman says, “I don’t want to follow for a mile and a half while someone looks for the perfect spot to pull over, because that makes me think that they’re swallowing four pounds of methamphetamine.”