Dog Brothers Public Forum

Not much of a police chief either it would appear , , ,

Hard to say, given the utter lack of any sort of detail.

Any pictures available, or would that be a security breach?

http://www.correctionsproductsco.com/prod_keys.html

The term civilian in the law enforcement context means someone who isn't in possession of the powers granted to sworn officers.

A also, do not confuse liability case law with what is taught to officers as an operational model for responding to active shooters.

Someday that might just be the case, especially if we ditch the looters and moochers weighting us down.

Sure, law enforcement in the US is a lot safer than other places. Yes, there are a lot of empty uniforms that can slide by because of that, but there are plenty of warriors in the ranks. Lots of young guys on the job who spent their late teens/early 20's getting sand in their boots in much less safe environments.

In my neck of the woods, a good portion of the population is quite well armed and grew up shooting and is quite supportive of the sheriff who has a very competent SWAT team and an MRAP.  The left coast invaders snivel about the MRAP and the guns that the local population owns.

I'd put both the country boys in law enforcement and the general population around here against sicarios anytime.  The Japanese were said to be concerned about "a rifle behind every blade of grass" on the US mainland during WWII. That description still applies here.

The cartels are much more careful and quiet operating in el norte. Why?

It was last tried in large numbers in the 60s/70s. It was the start of SWAT.

I'm not getting what you find objectionable here.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/05/daniel-zimmerman/cops-mraps-and-the-heartbreak-of-police-operator-syndrome/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2643344/Horror-SWAT-team-throw-stun-grenade-toddlers-CRIB-drugs-raid-leaving-coma-severe-burns.html

 http://pjmedia.com/blog/swat-tragedy-that-burned-an-infant-could-have-been-avoided/

Dealing with Evil is the name of this thread. Here we see a good first step.  Arrest it!

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/02/a-story-we-wished-could-have-been-told-the-day-before-sandy-hook-and-the-night-before-columbine/

Columbine changed how law enforcement looked at potential threats and pushed most agencies into being proactive in addressing the potential for mass casualty homicides. Of course, this resulted in the cries of "militarization" from some.

Oklahoma Postpones Second Execution After First Is Botched
What was supposed to be the first of two executions in McAlester, Okla., on Tuesday was halted when the prisoner, Clayton D. Lockett, began to twitch and gasp after he had already been declared unconscious and called out “man” and “something’s wrong,” according to witnesses.
The administering doctor intervened and discovered that “the line had blown,” said the director of corrections, Robert Patton, meaning that drugs were no longer flowing into his vein. At 7:06 p.m., Mr. Patton said, Mr. Lockett died of a heart attack.
Mr. Patton said he had requested a stay of 14 days in the second execution scheduled for Tuesday night, of Charles F. Warner.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/us/oklahoma-executions.html?emc=edit_na_20140429

http://www.oklahomalegalgroup.com/news/appeals-court-upholds-death-penalty-for-ponca-city-man

Before anyone gets too teareyed over Lockett, read up on why he got the death penalty.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=728872463822149&set=a.256913927684674.62537.254620607914006&type=1&theater

I think the cameras are a great idea.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/03/20/illinois-supreme-court-unanimously-overt

Good.

I'd suggest working at the line level as a C.O. in the prisons with the inmates that earn their way into solitary would be more educational than this little publicity stunt. Now, there are mentally ill inmates caught up in the system that need treatment that often doesn't happen, but that's a separate issue.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2_EU1T-o-g&safe=active[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2_EU1T-o-g&safe=active

Easy to carry and use to keep the red stuff inside until EMS is on scene.

A PBT (Preliminary Breath Tester) isn't the same as a Brethalyzer used for a forensically admisssable analysis. The PBT can be used for part of roadsides but it's reading alone isn't admissable as they are more prone to error where as the one you'd find at the local PD/SO is calibrated and is admissable in court.

There are other smaller details that are debatable. The biggest thing is don't be stupid or confrontational. Follow the orders given. If you politely clarify things, like "Am I free to leave?" to establish your status, that's fine.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/02/poor-

In many ways, probation for profit seems worse than private prisons.

Then again, the ACLU and HRW are free to create non-profits that could perform those services.

Is it OK that LAPD SWAT arrested the career gangster that kicked Bryan Stow over and over?

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_1_policing.html

William J. Bratton and Paul Romer

Public Safety and Democracy

A dialogue on the evolution and future of policing

Winter 2014

 

DAMIAN DOVARGANES/AP PHOTO
 
Sophisticated crime mapping allows police to direct resources to where the bad guys are.
 
PAUL ROMER: Across the world, public safety is the most important task facing city governments. In many poor countries, crime holds back the kind of urbanization essential for economic development. Closer to home, Detroit shows us that if they can, people will flee a city that fails to provide basic public safety.

Cities with crime problems should be able to take advantage of what we have learned about the policing strategies that reduce crime. Unfortunately, they hear too often from academics and other opinion shapers who still seem to think that policing strategies can have no effect on crime rates. This perception is totally at odds with the new understanding that has emerged among people like you, who have been in the trenches, experimenting with new approaches, and bringing down crime.

WILLIAM BRATTON: Yes. In a democratic society, the Number One obligation of the government is public safety. And the criminal-justice system is the entity charged with that responsibility. The police, through their behavior, are entrusted to enforce the law. A key challenge is to do it constitutionally. You can’t break the law while enforcing it. And in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, police were breaking the law quite a lot. So that’s why we ended up with a lot of constitutional guidelines for police activity.

ROMER: What was your experience with the changes that came after the 1960s, when we tried to bring policing in line with the protections of the Constitution? One of the reasons that so many people today seem not to understand the connection between policing and crime is that they do not remember, or perhaps never knew, how crime increased in the United States starting in the 1960s and then came back down in the 1990s.

BRATTON: I joined the Boston Police Department in 1970 and came to New York to take over the Transit Police in 1990. Those 20 years were a time of phenomenal change. We were in the midst of an extraordinarily unpopular war in Vietnam. We were in the midst of the civil rights movement. There was great social turbulence—the Democratic National Convention riots, the Kent State shootings. It was an incredible time in American history. That’s the world I came into, all 155 pounds of me. I had my six-shot revolver, my six spare rounds, a set of handcuffs, a pen, and a parking-ticket book. They didn’t even give me a radio. Just six weeks of training, and I was on the streets of Boston.

ROMER: Looking back, it is hard to believe that you received so little training. These days, we understand that policing is an extremely difficult, high-skill job. Now we expect that police will be well educated and well trained.

BRATTON: I was very fortunate because as part of a push toward professionalization, the federal government for the first time was paying for police officers to go to college. It was the best thing that ever happened to me because I didn’t get wrapped in the “blue cocoon” as I was beginning my career. The kids I ate with at the college cafeteria in the morning would be demonstrating against the war in front of the federal building in the afternoon. And I’d be there, too, on the other side of the lines in my blue suit.

ROMER: It seems to me that prior to the 1960s, police were powerful but were largely unaccountable to the public. They did keep crime in check but sometimes did so in ways that the public increasingly found unacceptable. One impetus for this change came from the civil rights movement, which highlighted the many ways in which local governments and local police mistreated people of color. In response, we brought in controls to limit the abuse of police powers and pushed for better training for members of any police force.

BRATTON: I’ve spent my life in the police profession, and I’m proud of that. But I am also very cognizant of the profession’s limitations, its potential for abuse, and its potential negative impact. Policing has to be done compassionately and consistently. You cannot police differently in Harlem from the way you’re policing downtown. The same laws must apply. The same procedures must be employed. Certain areas at certain times may have more significant crime and require more police presence, or more assertiveness, but it has to be balanced. If an African-American or a recent immigrant—or anyone else, for that matter—can’t feel secure walking into a police station or up to a police officer to report a crime because of a fear that they’re not going to be treated well, then everything else that we promise is on a shaky foundation.

ROMER: When we first tried to limit the potential for abuse and professionalize policing, which were clearly important things for us to do, we may have gone too far and made it impossible for police to do what had historically been their primary job: preventing crime. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we sent the message that police could get into trouble if they tried to anticipate and prevent crime, and we gave them a justification for simply waiting for crime to happen and then reacting to it. We developed a new theory about what caused crime—the so-called root causes—and a new view about what the job was for police. Because they could not change the social and economic factors that were thought to be the root causes of crime, the police could not be expected to prevent crime. All they could do, and all we expected them to do, was to clean up after it took place.

BRATTON: After the 1960s, as social movements evolved and America was changing, society felt that the role of the police also needed to change, to become more professional and better educated, in terms of forensics and training.

What changed in the 1990s—and I’m one of the principal advocates of it—was that the role of police became first and foremost about preventing crime. I’ve always embraced decentralization, empowering a local precinct commander to work with his or her community. In a city the size of New York, you can’t expect the police commissioner to be aware of what’s going on down, say, on West 3rd Street all the time. But the precinct commander there, through involvement with the community, should be aware of deteriorating conditions in the area and be able to address them. This approach allowed us to identify the problems that were creating fear, disorder, and, ultimately, crime. Given that the police have limited resources, the question then becomes: What do we prioritize? What do we focus our time on?

That was the purpose of the Compstat process that we developed in 1994 to track crime. We needed active intelligence so that we could rapidly respond to what it was telling us. But we also needed an environment where all the police commanders came together to talk about what was working and what wasn’t. And in that process, part of the effort was to reduce falsification. Because if you’re in there with all your peers, they’re going to detect very quickly when something’s wrong or doesn’t add up. We would do auditing, so if any precinct reported a percentage change in crime that was outside the standard variation for the rest of the department, it would be audited to find out what was really going on.

ROMER: Describe the changes that followed from this return in New York to the traditional view that the job of the police is to protect public safety by preventing crime.

BRATTON: Many New Yorkers are too young to understand what the city looked like when I got here in 1990—the graffiti, the decay, the crime, the social disorder. The police were not expected to do anything about these quality-of-life issues—aggressive begging, encampments in every park. When I came in as police commissioner, almost 300 people were living in the park across the street from the UN. At the time, we didn’t focus on that, though. There was a perception that the police really couldn’t do anything about that kind of disorder. We thought that we were focused on serious crime. What we really didn’t understand until the late 1980s and early 1990s was that the victim of all the abhorrent behavior on the streets was the city itself.

To give you an idea of how things have changed: in 1990, I didn’t go anywhere without a gun because, as chief of the transit police, I did not feel secure anywhere, including in the subways. In Los Angeles, when I was chief of police there, I also had to carry a gun everywhere, because of the gang violence. I don’t carry a gun now. I haven’t for a while. It’s locked away. I just don’t feel the need for it. And I like it that I can do that.

ROMER: One of the misleading conclusions that outsiders seem to have reached is that police cannot deter a person from committing a crime, so the only thing they can do is find people more likely to commit crimes and incapacitate them, lock them up, and throw away the key. I know that you reject this kind of naive, “get tough” approach to crime. One of the dramatic but rarely noticed successes of the turnaround in policing that you started in New York is that the incarceration rate has fallen. A smaller fraction of the population is locked away, yet far fewer crimes are being committed. This points clearly to the possibility, even the likelihood, that with the right policies, we can prevent crime. We can deter people from committing crimes.

Those same people who look at policing from the outside sometimes describe community policing as the misguided alternative to the “get tough” policies that they support. You have always believed that to prevent or deter crime, police must have a good working relationship with the community—that this is as important in preventing acts of terrorism as it is in preventing street crime.

BRATTON: Seventy-five percent of the terrorist plots that have been disrupted since 9/11 were detected when a community member informed a police officer or when a police officer who had a relationship with the community was able to put the clues together to predict that something was going to happen and take steps to prevent it. So the collaboration that is so essential to successful policing really requires the community to be able to trust that what the police are doing is, in fact, not illegal and not based on racial profiling or targeting the Muslim community. Proactive, assertive policing is effective, but if you don’t have the legitimacy and the trust of the community, you’re not going to get the information that you need to predict and prevent crimes.

ROMER: This same strategy is as important in the fight against gang crime as it is in the fight against terrorism. When you took over as chief of police in Los Angeles, it was clear to everyone that the police did not have a good working relationship with the community, especially with the minority community. Developing a better working relationship with the community was crucial to the turnaround that you implemented there, one that may have been even more difficult than the turnaround in New York (see “The LAPD Remade,” Winter 2013).

One hallmark of New York’s turnaround was a greater reliance on data. In Los Angeles, did you have a way to get frequent updates on how public attitudes toward the police were changing, something that you could use as you used Compstat in New York—as a management tool to see if the officers out on patrol were bringing about the needed changes?

BRATTON: Well, we really had to rely on polling done by entities such as the Los Angeles Times and other institutions.

ROMER: This seems to be an area in which technology should be able to help. Ideally, a police chief should have as much detailed geographical data about the relationship between the police and the community as he has about crimes committed. Do you see other ways that technology and new data sources could change policing?

BRATTON: Through the algorithms being developed by a number of universities, we now have an increasing ability to predict where a crime will occur. It doesn’t mean that we can know exactly when it will happen and exactly what it will be, but we can say that, within a certain time frame, within a certain geographic area, if we don’t put resources in there—meaning, a police officer—there’s going to be a crime committed. So you’ll hear this term “predictive policing” a lot more often, going forward. It will require computing power and intelligence-analysis capabilities. This means real-time crime centers outfitted with the latest technology. That costs money, and, as you well know, money is tight these days.

ROMER: What about new ways for police and the community to communicate? How can you let members of the community know what the police are doing and why they are doing it?

BRATTON: The police have historically had to rely on the media. Sometimes you had to go through them to get to the public—and, not only to get to the public, but to get to the cops as well, because cops read papers. They watch television. Their families watch television. So you needed to use the media. The media hated it when we said that we “used” them, but you had to make yourself available to them. Sometimes it was painful to make yourself available, but you had to do it to get certain messages through.

But now we have Twitter. Now we have all these social media sites. Think about what happened with the Boston Marathon bombing. The news media are erroneously reporting information. Someone puts up pictures of people who weren’t involved and says, “Here are the bombers.” Someone else reports that the bombers have been arrested. It’s all wrong. So what do you do? Well, now the Boston P.D. can instantly put out a Tweet saying, “No arrest has been made. The two individuals identified in the newspaper story are not who we’re looking for.” And that’s that. It’s irrefutable and reaches thousands or tens of thousands of people and then gets amplified through the traditional media.

ROMER: Let me ask you one last question, which is, in a sense, a management question. How can you effectively manage an organization in which a very few bad apples can make headlines for abusing their power and do enormous harm to the legitimacy of the entire force?

BRATTON: A police official once said to me that the NYPD employs more than 38,000 “career assassins”—the idea being that any one of the police officers in New York can, at any time, through inappropriate or criminal behavior, effectively bring about a catastrophe for the whole department. All you have to do is think of the actions of Justin Volpe—the officer who brutalized Abner Louima—to appreciate how fragile public confidence in the police can be. This is particularly true in minority communities. The way you deal with that problem is to make it clearly known that the department does the best it can to recruit, train, and supervise its officers. You have to send a message that those officers who go astray will be disciplined. You have to be honest and transparent at all times.

William J. Bratton is once again New York City Police Commissioner. He has formerly served as Boston police commissioner and chief of police in Los Angeles. His conversation with Paul Romer was hosted by the NYU Stern Urbanization Project and NYU’s Marron Institute.

Paul Romer is a University Professor at New York University and founding director of the Urbanization Project at the Stern School of Business.

A free society is difficult to police, and given the alternatives, that's the way I'd prefer it to be.

In the system envisioned by our founders, there should be a constant tension between public safety and personal freedom, with neither being absolute. No rational person wants to live in a police state. Nor should you want to live in a place without the rule of law. Laws are meaningless unless there is a tangible enforcement of them and real incentives and disincentives associated with individual conduct.

Would anyone look at the failed states on the planet as opportune places to live? Why do I not see big L Libertarians moving to Somalia to avoid America's so called  "militarized police"? 

If one were to examine the limitations on police power in western/english speaking nations, you'd find that American law enforcement has less authority and operates under greater scrutiny than any other nation. We have the only elected law enforcement executives in any country I'm aware of and the vast majority of law enforcement agencies in this country are under local control. Good or bad, the local agencies reflect their communities giving proof to Thomas Jefferson's line that the people get the government they deserve.

I'm pretty certain that only the US has legal firms specializing in litigating against law enforcement agencies or has a large insurance industry focused on insuring individual law enforcement officers against the full spectrum of potential legal jeopardy faced by officers in the US. Due to the massive liabilities associated with law enforcement in this country, the biggest obstacle for police supervisors and administrators is to motivate officers to navigate the real dangers of the job and the legal minefields while cultivating a positive relationship with the public they serve.

It's not easy, as I said before, nor should it be, but I see a deep vein of irrationality in the discussion of American policing today that in no way reflects the reality I know.

As usual, you bring good intel to the conversation.

As I go out into a busy day, let me ask you a two part question:

Must anyone present ID to an officer at any time? 

It depends. What does the state law require? Some states require you ID yourself, some don't. Is it a "Terry stop" or a consentual contact? Are you being cited for a violation?

Why?

Because ID'ing people who may be involved in criminal activity or have outstanding warrants in an effective tool for keeping the public safe.

In Praise of Routine Traffic Stops

 by Daniel Pipes
May 4, 2005
 updated Apr 30, 2013










Today's news includes this item:
 •
Sami Ibrahim Isa Abdel Hadi, 39, was stopped for tailgating on Route 46 in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. When a Bergen County police officer called in Abdel Hadi's North Carolina license plates, he learned that Abdel Hadi had been ordered deported to Brazil in December 2001 and is listed in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database. Even more interestingly, Abdel Hadi has a valid temporary I.D. from L & L Painting to paint the George Washington Bridge (a high-profile potential terrorist target).
 



 
 

Michael Wagner
 


 
 
 
 

Abdel Hadi is hardly the first actual or potential terrorist stopped due to a routine traffic infringement.
 •
In July 2004, Michael Wagner's not wearing a seat belt got him stopped in a SUV near Council Bluffs, Iowa, that had in it "flight training manuals and a simulator, documents in Arabic, bulletproof vests and night-vision goggles, a night-vision scope for a rifle, a telescope, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition."
 
•
Timothy McVeigh was stopped in April 1995 as he sped away from Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 500 because his car lacked a license plate.
 
•
A New Jersey state trooper noticed Yu Kikumura's odd behavior at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop in April 1988 and thoroughly searched his vehicle, finding three powerful homemade bombs. Kikumura, a member of the Japanese Red Army, was sentenced to thirty years in jail followed by deportation to Japan.
 
•
Three members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Walid Nicolas Kabbani, Georges Fouad Nicolas Younan, and Walid Majib Mourad) were stopped by Richford, Vermont's only policeman in October 1987, because he was suspicious of their movements. Indeed, they were smuggling a bomb from Canada to the United States.
 

Comments: (1) It is remarkable how many criminals, terrorist and otherwise, make elementary traffic mistakes. (2) There is no substitute for law enforcement on the ground. (3) If good luck brings in so many terrorist-related individuals, one has to wonder how many of them don't tailgate and do wear seatbelts. (4) I shall record other examples here as I become aware of them. (May 4, 2005)
 •
Semi Osman was driving to Bly, Oregon, on Sep. 30, 1999, when the Oregon State Police stopped him because his car lights were not working, then cited him three more times for other infractions. One of these stops caught the attention of the FBI, which had lost track of Osman. He was subsequently arrested in 2002, accused of "material support for terrorists," plea-bargained, pleaded guilty to a weapons violation, and served his jail sentence. (October 4, 2005)
 
•
"On a damp, gray day in March 2004, the Dutch traffic police stopped a Belgian driver for a broken headlight and accidentally stumbled onto a major investigation of Islamic radicals," write Elaine Sciolino and Hélène Fouquet in the New York Times, telling the story of Khalid Bouloudo, whose name "turned up on an Interpol watchlist, for an international arrest warrant from Morocco charging him with links to a Moroccan-based terrorist organization and involvement in suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003. The random arrest set into motion a cascade of events that underscores the extent of the radicalization of young Muslims throughout Europe - and a rapidly expanding and home-grown terrorist threat." (October 9, 2005)
 

Nov. 12, 2005 update: Apparently, not everyone shares my appreciation for the benefits of routine traffic stops. The Staten Island Advance reports on a meeting between the borough's Muslim community and its police commander, Albert Girimonte, in which the former complained that in four incidents during the past 11 months,
 

cops investigating minor auto accidents or traffic infractions allegedly asked mosque members inappropriate questions about their citizenship status. "The typical question has been: 'Where are you from, where were you born?' … Two questions that are totally irrelevant at an accident scene."
 
In one of the incidents near the Staten Island Mall at Christmastime last year, a female Pakistani wearing a Muslim shawl repeatedly was asked where she came from, he said. "This is an educated woman," [the Muslim leader] said. "When a policeman first asked her where she was from, she told him Staten Island. Then he asked her where she was born. She told him Pakistan." There were other incidents in the spring, he said, including the case of a girl caught crossing against a traffic light in New Springville being questioned.
 
For his part, Girimonte agreed that the interrogation was improper: "Asking a person at an accident scene where they're from is not necessary. Once your proper ID is confirmed, all you want to find out is what happened." He acknowledged being "surprised" by the incidents and promised that traffic stops would not lead to questions about citizenship status. "This is basically a training issue. And we'll address it. The police should not be concerned with the citizenship status of motorists. That's not our bailiwick."
 •
 



Naveed Haq under arrest.
 
Tragic proof that Albert Girimonte is wrong and I am right came yesterday, when Naveed Afzal Haq was driving to the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building, where he proceeded to murder one person and severely injure five others. According to Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, as paraphrased by the Associated Press, Haq had been "stopped shortly before the shootings in Seattle for a minor traffic infraction, and was cited and released. … Haq had a valid driver's license and his actions did not raise any suspicion." That traffic violation was driving down a buses-only lane. Comment: How many more murders will it take for the police to wake up to the danger of Sudden Jihad Syndrome? (July 30, 2006) Apr. 16, 2008 update: Police Officer Glen Cook gave testimony in Haq's trial, providing more details: Haq drove his white Mazda pickup north on Third Avenue at 3:37 p.m., a bus lane at that time of day, Cook pulled him over, took down Haq's license and proof of insurance, ticketed him, and let him go.
 

July 1, 2007 update: The July/August issue of the magazine Crime & Justice International features an article on pp. 4-12 by Dean C. Alexander and Terry Mors, "Best Practices in Identifying Terrorists During Traffic Stops and On Calls for Service." It discusses "how patrol officers can assist in identifying and capturing domestic and international terrorists while undertaking traditional duties, with particular emphasis on traffic stops and calls for service." The author's advice is summed up in a few words: "Police should go on the offensive and aggressively look for signs of terrorist activity or involvement."
 •
The newspaper account does not tell why New Castle County, Delaware, police Officer Thomas Bruhn stopped the car of Amir Al-Kaabah, 21, and a female passenger shortly before 3 p.m. on Court Street near Brandywine Avenue in Claymont, but he stumbled on a minor treasury of criminality: 10 grams of marijuana, a large buck knife, fictitious registration tags, no title to the car, and an identity theft ring. The last became clear when he found expensive jewelry, clothing and shoes, all in their original wrapping in the trunk, all purchased with credit cards belonging to recent customers at the Comfort Inn in Birmingham Township, where the female passenger happened to work. Further inquiry found that Al-Kaabah is a fugitive from Georgia for violating his probation for a conviction of armed robbery, kidnapping and weapons violations. Al-Kaabah was charged with carrying a concealed deadly weapon, possession of a deadly weapon by a person prohibited, possession of marijuana, and driving while suspended. The woman was turned over to Pennsylvania authorities to face criminal charges. (December 18, 2007)
 
•
Four men (Pratheepan Thambu, 22, Lojanand Srianandan, 27, both of Toronto, Sethukavalar Saravanabavan, 35, and Kirubakaran Selvanayagam Pillai, 38, both of London, U.K.) were riding in a rented van in Scarborough, Ont., on Jan. 28, when Constables Scott Aikman and Patrick Pelo watched them run a stop sign and pulled the van over. On looking inside, the officers noticed one of the four desperately hiding something. They also observed that the driver had been drinking, plus the presence of open liquor in the vehicle, giving them the right to search the vehicle, which they did. They found a number of plastic gift cards worth an estimated $250,000, with debit card information on the magnetic strip which police believe was stolen from UK bank customers.
 

Police later searched a hotel and a home and found another 88 cards, all with debit card data from British banks on their magnetic strips, as well as $25,000 in Canadian $20 bills, laptop computers and memory sticks, receipts for money transfers to the U.K., travel documents and passports and what detectives described as "Tamil Tiger paraphernalia."
 
The routine traffic stop quickly exposed an international debit card fraud ring, led to 373 criminal charges, and possibly broke up a Tamil Tiger terrorist fundraising and money laundering operation. Running a light is "not too smart a thing to do when you're driving a van full of stolen bank cards," Detective. Peter Trimble sagely observed. "And they had been drinking and had open liquor in the car, which also isn't very smart." (January 31, 2008)
 •
Police in Matthews, N.C. stopped Sasan Ghazal, 21, of Bristol Ford Place in Charlotte, on suspicion of drunken driving on Feb. 9, and found an explosive device his vehicle. Under state law, Ghazal was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction, as well as possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. A U.S. Attorney will decide if federal charges are warranted. Ghazal is now in the Mecklenburg County Jail on a $101,500 bond. In 2006, he pleaded guilty of carrying a concealed gun and felony possession of drugs. (February 14, 2008)
 
•
 



Najibullah Zazi.
 
According to CBS News, the sequence of events that ended in the arrest of Najibullah Zazi on terrorism charges began with his being stopped for an unspecified "routine traffic violation" on his way into New York: "While entering the city, he was stopped by police for a routine traffic violation on the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey and New York. Suspicious police allowed him to go free but kept a close watch on his movements." The same account, however, goes on to state that "Zazi told authorities he disposed of the explosives once arriving in New York," raising the possibility that the traffic stop may have backfired by alerting Zazi to the fact that he was already being watched by the FBI before this trip to New York. The full story is not clear here. (February 22, 2010)
 
•
Swiss police report that a routine traffic-stop (for unspecified reasons) on April 15 at Langnau thwarted three eco-terrorists of Il Silvestre from blowing up the site of the £55 million nano-technology headquarters of IBM in Europe at Rueschlikon, near Zurich. The police stopped the two men and a woman a few miles from the target with an explosive device primed and ready to go off. (April 26, 2010)
 
•
Pre-Olympic U.K. terror arrests: Police stopped a car on June 30 on a highway in Yorkshire, impounded it, suspecting it was uninsured. They discovered two firearms, ammunition, and other materiel, leading to the arrest of the driver, the passenger and five other male suspects between 22 and 43. (July 6, 2012)
 
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Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson, Arizona, on Jan. 8, 2011; it turns out, according to information buried in thousands of pages of just-released documents, that hours before his shooting rampage, he was stopped on a routine traffic matter. Arizona Game and Fish Officer Alen Forney saw Loughner driving in northern Tucson about 7:30 a.m. that day and stopped him for driving erratically and running a red light. Michael Mello recounts what happened for the Los Angeles Times:
 

When the officer approached the car, Loughner's hand was already thrust through the window, holding his license and registration. Forney said Loughner took off the black bandanna he was wearing. The officer saw that Loughner had a shaved head, something he thought was peculiar. He asked Loughner whether he knew why he had been stopped. He replied, yes, he did.
 
During the traffic stop, another Game and Fish officer drove by, asking whether Forney needed any help. "I gave her the thumbs up at that point," Forney told investigators. "I had no reason to believe anything suspicious was going on."
 
Forney said he didn't notice anything unusual inside the car, but had checked to make sure "the trunk was secure" on Loughner's '69 Chevrolet Nova. "I made the decision not to write a citation. Game and Fish doesn't write a lot of traffic citations … I was also in kind of a hurry" to join [a meeting with] other officers for their patrol at Florence Junction, east of the Phoenix metro area.
 
"I told him, 'I'm not going to write you a citation for this.' When I said that to him, his face got kind of screwed up and he started to cry.… That struck me as a little odd," Forney told investigators. "I asked him if he was OK. He said, 'Yeah, I'm OK. I've had a rough time and I really thought I was going to get a ticket and I'm really glad that you're not … going to give me a ticket."
 
Forney again asked Loughner whether he was OK, worried he would be driving with his emotions out of control, possibly leading to an accident. Loughner then immediately composed himself, he said. "He actually looked up at me and said, 'Can I thank you?' I said, 'Yeah, you can thank me.' He asked what my name was, and he stuck out his right hand."
 
(March 28, 2013)
 
• A routine traffic stop uncovered insurance problems which led to an arsenal of sawn-off shotguns, machetes, knives, samurai swords, elements for pipe bombs, and a nail bomb being found in a car. For details, click here. (April 30, 2013)

I'd think that you'd be a bit more sensitive to the trivialization of the horrors of the 3rd reich. Exactly what fate would one expect for someone who gave the slightest resistance or attitude to a nazi official? I'm pretty sure it would go far beyond a couple of citations.