Why are law-abiding citizens avoiding police interactions?

Criminals have always looked for ways to avoid police, but now law-abiding citizens are finding creative new ways to avoid police interactions. It seems like every day there is a new video on the internet of a citizen refusing to roll down the window at a checkpoint or asking, "Am I being detained?"

Some law enforcement officers see this desire on the part of innocent citizens to avoid police interaction as a problem and are responding with aggression, strong-arm tactics and even violence. A deeper look shows that the desire to avoid police interactions is only a symptom of a deeper problem and these responses only make the root problem worse.

Fear of police starts early for many.

For most citizens, the earliest memories of police interactions tend to be scary. Being pulled over for a traffic violation can be a nerve-wracking experience especially for teenagers whose problem is going to be exacerbated when their parents find out about a ticket.

Many parents, including this writer's, tell their children that the police will take them away if they misbehave. People grow out of that, but the niggling fear of police-related consequences for non-crimes is never completely gone.

Police and citizens view arrests differently.

For an innocent person, the experience of being handcuffed, transported in the back of a police car and then jailed is just as bad as the same experience is for a guilty person. A policeman who arrests a driver for failing a DUI field sobriety test only to find later that breathalyzer at the jail revealed a true blood alcohol content (BAC) below the legal level has already punished the citizen for a crime he did not commit.

If the citizen is fortunate then he is released on bail or his own recognizance and the case is thrown out before it goes to trial, but the citizen has already suffered the indignity of being arrested, having his car towed and spending a night in jail.

For the innocent, being arrested means guilty until proven innocent.

In a worst case scenario, the case goes to trial and the defendant is forced to pay thousands of dollars to hire a defense attorney. For many, that option is cost prohibitive and many are faced with the prospect of defending themselves against a battle-hardened prosecutor because the courts assume that people with even menial jobs do not need court-appointed attorneys.

For the innocent citizen, arrest, jail and legal defense fees aren't the worst part of being arrested. These are all horrible consequences, but the worst part is still to come.

Arrest records harm innocent citizens.

Even when the deposition of a case is acquittal, the arrest record remains in public records for prospective employers to find. The opportunity to work in many government jobs is suddenly and irrevocably lost to people who have broken no law.

While it is illegal in some States to discriminate against candidates based on arrest records, they may still be prohibited from working in some industries like healthcare and financial services. The policeman who arrested the innocent citizen has already forgotten the arrest, but for the citizen the punishment has only just begun.

New media creates a new perception.

Prior to 1991, Americans who had not experienced brutality at the hands of police refused to believe that any American could be the victim of police misconduct. Like the Loch Ness monster, only a small minority of Americans had ever seen excessive force or knew anybody who had.

The fact that most reports of brutality are found to be unsubstantiated made it easier for citizens to dismiss any accounts of misconduct off hand. Before America watched four police officers mercilessly beat Rodney King, the consensus was, "Because this never happens to anybody else, it can never happen to me."

Compliance no longer guarantees safety.

Watching the rain of blows falling on a prone Rodney King, one cannot help but think, "Why do they keep hitting him? He's already down." In Stacey Koon's book "Presumed Guilty", he writes that the beating continued because King's small movements were considered "resisting" and that he instructed his subordinates to continue hitting King until he was perfectly still.

Videos of police beating compliant citizens while shouting "Stop resisting!" number by the thousands on the internet today. Social media networks make viewing these videos a daily occurrence for many.

Driving is not a right!

Some police are convinced that drivers are second-class citizens to whom constitutionally-guaranteed rights do not apply and, when drivers ask that their rights be respected will bark, "Driving is not a right!" This misconception is based on the belief that citizens automatically waive all rights because driving is not included in the Bill of Rights.

On the contrary, the constitution is never suspended in America. Citizens should expect to have their constitutional rights protected by police in every situation--even when randomly stopped.

Random stops are a violation of constitutional rights.

Many law enforcement professionals (and some citizens) mistakenly believe that random stops for things like DUI checkpoints are not violations of the constitution. The supreme court, in a split decision, ruled that roadblocks did meet the Fourth Amendment’s definition of an unreasonable seizure, but that they were a necessary means of protection against drunk drivers.

This doesn't mean than the forth amendment is automatically waived at a DUI checkpoint. It means that the fourth amendment right is automatically violated at DUI checkpoints.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided to leave it to the States whether or not to violate the Constitution. Twelve states have decided to refrain from violating constitutional rights; in those states, citizens are not subjected to unreasonable seizure.

Random DUI checkpoints don't save lives.

The reason that many citizens are quick to defend unconstitutional DUI checkpoints is that "They save so many lives." If this were the case, then alcohol-related traffic fatalities would naturally be lower in states that allow DUI checkpoints.

Mississippi allows its police force to run a DUI checkpoint every week and has the highest number of alcohol-related fatalities at 1.167 per 10,000. Minnesota has less than a third as many while forbidding its police force to operate sobriety checkpoints.

DUI arrests do not save lives.

The misconception of saved lives is carried forward into justifying DUI arrests for citizens caught with a blood alcohol content above an arbitrarily low level of 0.08%--most of whom have harmed nobody. The draconian punishments dished out to citizens for this imaginary crime seems justified if they save lives.

Again the math proves the concept wrong. If DUI arrests prevented alcohol-related traffic fatalities then, when looking at alcohol-related traffic fatalities, the number of people who have never been convicted of DUI would naturally outnumber the people who were.

The opposite is the case; the number of people who have been convicted of DUI far outnumber the people who have never been convicted of DUI. How much? By a factor of 7 to 1.

How can police avoid making it worse?

Remembering that a random stops and DUI checkpoints are a violation of the unalienable rights granted to citizens by the constitution is a great way to start interactions with citizens. Citizens whose liberties are being curtailed are justified in feeling that their rights are not receiving the respect they deserve and officers should not retaliate if that lack of respect is reciprocated.

It might be very easy to hear, "Am I being detained?" and conclude that a citizen is being obstinate out of a sense of entitlement. That conclusion is correct; citizens are entitled to know if they are being detained and, if not, entitled to go freely.

The officers in this short film admit that this citizen is being mistreated and that his car is illegally searched because "he's perfectly innocent and he knows his rights." This cavalier attitude towards law-abiding citizens and their constitutional rights epitomizes the callous, fascist attitude that drives citizens' fear of police interactions.

To date, this video has been viewed more than five million times. Because this officer retaliated against this citizen for being less than immediately and unthinkingly obedient, millions of citizens are now more convinced than ever that DUI checkpoints are just an excuse to detain people and violate their constitutional rights.

There is a right way to handle this situation.

There is no reason to detain law-abiding citizens who are not breaking the law. For many, avoiding police interactions is the whole point of obeying the law.

The officers in this video, upon realizing that they had no reasonable suspicion, waved these citizens on. People who watch this video see police who are professional and respectful and who do not unnecessarily detain innocent citizens.

The internet opened the floodgates.

In 1991, there was only one video of police brutality and few people had a copy. Today there are tens of thousands of videos online and, because of the nature of the internet, everybody has a copy of every police brutality video that has ever been made.

It would be incredibly easy to post a video here of police misconduct or any number of stories of police interactions having gone wrong, but that ease is a key component to the root problem. Instead, an image of a policeman blocking traffic for a mother cat is included to make a point.

The imaginary danger outweighs the real danger.

People form conclusions and opinions based on what they experience and observe. Law-abiding citizens form faulty conclusions based on these videos and these conclusions lead to irrational fear.

This conclusion of seemingly justifiable fear is not based on confirmation bias; citizens are not misremembering what they saw in the videos. The flaw in the conclusion stems from biased reporting in news and social media.

By not dealing with police each day or seeing stories about regular police interactions (positive or negative), citizens are left with little ability to form any conclusion except one that instills them with fear. This fear drives innocent citizens to avoid police interaction.

Interacting with police is safer than you think.

It is impossible to know what percentage of acquittals are actually the result of innocence, but the likelihood of being arrested for a non-crime is negligible. Even less likely is being the victim of excessive force.

In the same way that people will believe in Global Warming regardless of how much data they see, numbers cannot be used to convince people that police interactions are nothing to fear. Despite the math being in favor of "good cops", citizens will always have a faulty perception.

It's the viewpoint of the citizen.

This writer is not in law enforcement, but I hear enough conflicting opinion from police to know that there is another side to this. The recurring opinion is that immediate, unthinking obedience and the waiving of rights is the only way for law-abiding citizens to survive a police encounter without being arrested, injured or killed.

That autocratic, domineering attitude is the number one reason why citizens are afraid of police interactions. And for those whose mantra is, "You shouldn't judge police until you have been one," my response is "Please don't judge this writer until you have been one."