CopStories: Don’t Want To Sit Down….
It was just another traffic stop (the best stories always start out that way, don’t they?)
In this case, it’s true. It was just another traffic stop. I’ve made a million of them. They’re memorable for about half a second.
In this case, I had Deputy Amy Reuter with me. She’s a rookie, still training, and so everything is still new to her, still surprising and shocking.
Recently, I put more of our traffic stops on her shoulders. I’d ask her to recognize the probable cause, decide if the car needed to be stopped, figure out when it was safe to stop the car due to other traffic, blah blah blah. Lots and lots of internal poh-leece stuff that bores the crap outta regular people.
But I also decided that she should actually handle the stop. In other words, don’t just watch me, but actually make contact with the driver.
“What?” she said.
“Yeah, it’ll be fine,” I said.
“Uh…what?”
“Just introduce yourself, ask for their license and insurance.”
“Uh…uh…what?”
“Don’t sweat it, chances are nothing crazy will happen.”
“‘Chances are?’” She stared at me and I think if she could have figured out where to dump my body…she would have.
So we found a car and lit it up and made our stop. I followed her to the car and everything started okay.
“Good evening. I’m Deputy Reuter with the Sheriff’s Office. Can I see you license and insurance?”
An older guy stared back at us. His gaze moved back and forth and he seemed really embarrassed. It was just a burned out plate light, not a big deal, but some people get stopped so rarely they actually are embarrassed.
No big deal.
“The reason I stopped you is your registration light is burned out.”
And so the guy said, “Can I get out and look?”
Okay, let’s stop right here for just a second. Letting people get out of their cars on a traffic stop is bad bad bad. As long as I’ve got someone detained, I am their total caretaker. Everything that happens is my concern or liability. The safest place for any driver, therefore, is generally inside their car.
Also, every once in a while, a driver wants to get out so they can shoot you more easily…so, yeah, want to avoid that.
But sometimes, especially in rural areas and when we’re talking about headlights or taillights, people want to get out and see. It’s not that they don’t believe us (though I’m sure some think we just make shit up and stop them based on that), it’s that they’re just curious.
So there are a couple of pros and cons an officer has to weigh. Reuter looked at me and my decision?
Yeah, pretty sure I shrugged.
Top shelf, Training Officer, freaking top shelf. Support your trainee with all your years of experience and wisdom.
“Sure,” Reuter said.
So the guy got out and looked and Reuter said, “Okay, sir, have a seat for just a minute.”
Okay, let’s stop here for just a second. In law enforcement, we see all kinds of things. We hear all kinds of things. Things that make us angry and sad and anxious, that make us long for cosmic justice rather than what might pass for legal justice, that make us want to move Heaven and Hell to help someone, or to make sure they get every single day of prison time they’ve got coming.
We peek into people’s lives with a scrutiny they absolutely would not allow anyone else to have. They impart secrets to us that sometimes they can’t even admit to themselves.
And understand this: people will say anything to get out of a ticket.
“Do I have to sit down?” the man asked.
“What?”
“Well, this is humiliating,” he said.
We didn’t say anything.
Then he said, “Well, just before you stopped me, I thought I farted.”
Again, silence from us.
“Actually, I think I pooped my pants.”
More silence.
“I really don’t want to sit down if I don’t have to.”
I hadn’t known what was coming, but I knew something was. So I watched my deputy. This first time that something sort of surprising, sort of shocking, maybe a little disgusting, certainly embarrassing, came her way, I wanted to see how she handled it.
She never even cracked a smile.
“That’s fine, sir,” she said.
All the way back to the squad? Not a sound.
Ran the guy’s license? Not a sound.
Back to him, finish the stop, and send him on his way? Not a damn sound. Didn’t say anything, didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile.
She was professional, polite, the very picture of a highly-trained law enforcement officer.
And I thought: what the fuck? It was all I could do not to bust a colon I wanted to laugh so hard. I didn’t but I sure as hell wanted to. I mean, I felt for the guy, don’t get me wrong, but I’m pretty sure my heart stopped I was working so hard not to laugh at the situation.
And she never even broke a sweat.
Damn, I thought, she’s really good.
Until…we left.
Then I thought she was going to drive me into the ditch. She laughed and laughed and I think she even cried a little she laughed so hard. She laughed so hard she might have even snorted.
Then she stopped suddenly and wondered if it was bad to laugh.
Hell, no, it’s not.
Sometimes, laughing at the absurdity of it all is the only thing that gets me through the day. Sounds horrible, sounds harsh and hard and that’s fine, I don’t really care if you think it is. But after spending a week learning how to investigate piles of human shit who take pictures of themselves having sex with tied up six-year olds, I’ll take the release of laughing at a guy who inadvertently pooped himself.
By the way, this is exactly how the stop happened…mostly…though I suspect if you asked Deputy Reuter, she’d have a completely different version. Probably one in which the training officer who’s driving her crazy is…somehow…more of an idiot.
That’s all right, ’cause I still got pooper-guy and I’m still laughing about it.
