Surviving a Traffic Stop - One Attorney's Advice: Being pulled over by a police officer can be a stressful experience. Although life is full of such experiences, unlike many other stressful experiences, a traffic stop has the potential to end in a loss of money, liberty or even life. No two traffic stops are entirely identical. Therefore, the advisable course of conduct will vary depending on the situation. However, there are some general rules which can be helpful in many situations. The best piece of advice one can offer is to avoid being pulled over in the first place. A traffic stop offers nothing to be gained. The best case scenario for the driver is to leave as if the stop never occurred losing only some time... (Marc Victor is regarded as one of the top criminal-defense attorneys in Arizona. I think we can presume that a large proportion of his clients may be engaging in otherwise criminal conduct when they are pulled over. Note that he too advises not to try to "schmooze" the officer. Other articles can be located under the Articles tab at the top of the linked page and a must-see video is available at the bottom of his Home page.) http://www.attorneyforfreedom.com/surviving_traffic_stop.nxg --- A Time to Reflect and Plan: Politically savvy power brokers have bags full of model legislation - sample laws they draft themselves, that serve their interests, and make it easy for legislators to introduce - and enact. To preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the freedoms we cherish, this is a page we should have in our play book. These are already drafted. Some are already law. Simply select one or two, and show them to friendly legislators in your state. They'll need to make clerical changes to suit your state, and the important prinicples in the bills will be on their way. http://www.gunlaws.com/ModelLegislation.htm --- From Force Science Research Center: Our readers write: 1. Time speeds up sometimes, slows others. How come? During my civilian experiences and work as a medic, I have often had to restrain people, end fights, use passive restraint and very mild self-defense. When in these situations, or some intense medical/trauma scenes, time sped up and became choppy, leaving me with poor perception during and poor recollection after the events. But in other seemingly similar cases, time would see to slow down and I could move and respond much faster than normal, with total clarity and both physical and mental rapidity beyond my normal abilities. Can you explain why some severe stresses provoke a "tunnel vision" and choppy experience, while other seem to bend time to make it easier to help? And how do you transform the former into the latter? Jesse Beckow President/lead medic Advanced Rescue Consulting Thornhill (ON) Canada Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Research Center, responds: First understand that the human brain does not have a built-in clock that constantly measures time objectively. Instead, the brain uses itself, its experience, and to what and how it's paying attention, as a reference point. So when the more rational, contemplative part of the brain is hijacked in stressful situations by the primitive, emotion-based amygdala or "crisis center", widely differing impressions of time tend to register. Broadly speaking, when you're feeling suddenly overwhelmed in a stressful situation, with too much to comprehend and accomplish in the time-frame available, you're likely to perceive time speeding up. But in a similar situation, if you are sharply focused and drawing on a deep well of training to respond, time may appear to slow down, because your brain has streamlined the situation and is operating efficiently in survival mode. Because your sense of competence, confidence, emotion, and attention can vary among quite similar situations, your perception of time can vary as well. Research conducted by Drs. Audrey Honig and J. Roland and earlier work by Dr. Alexis Artwohl inform us that some 41% to 62% of officers who survive shootings report having experienced a "slow-motion" effect in which they felt sufficient time to respond effectively. Only a minority of survivors (17% to 20%) seemed to experience time speeding up. Either way, we need to remember that officers who've been in stressful events should not be expected to give accurate estimates regarding duration. They may try to do so in response to investigators' questions, but they're only guessing at best. Any officer who is attempting to accurately note time while in the midst of a highly stressful, rapidly unfolding, life-threatening situation might be better off paying attention to other more important matters. ================ (c) 2009: Force Science Research Center, www.forcescience.org. Reprints allowed by request. For reprint clearance, please e-mail: info@forcesciencenews.com. FORCE SCIENCE is a registered trademark of The Force Science Research Center, a non-profit organization based at Minnesota State University, Mankato. ================ --- From John Farnam: 29 July 09 SIG P250 My nine-year-old granddaughter had a great time shooting several handguns yesterday. It is not the first time for her, but her hands are still far too small for most serious pistols. She liked the trigger on my Kahr PM45, but recoil was too heavy for her, and she only fired three rounds from it before handing it back to me. She really liked the small Kahr P380! It fits here hand and recoil was manageable. Trigger is extremely useable, and our only limitation was the fact that we quickly ran out of ammunition! Like the Kahr P380, she liked the size and light weight of my S&W 340PD (five-shot snubby revolver), but its trigger is too heavy for her small hands. She needed two fingers. What was most interesting was the way she took to my SIG P250/Compact 9mm! It is equipped with the smallest of the three frames available, and she was able to reach and press the trigger easily. She gracefully fired round after round, hitting with every one. I had mixed feelings about the 250's trigger when I first started using it, but, after seeing this nine-year-old's rapid progress, I'm starting to like it. Smooth, steady, seamless, with a distinct (albeit deep) reset, there are no surprises, no inconsistencies. And, of course, no manual safety and no decocking lever. The P250 was the one pistol she wanted to shoot the most, and one-hundred rounds later, she still wanted to shoot it more! As a utility, defensive pistol that nearly anyone can be taught to manage well and shoot well, the P250 is hard to beat! (I have never even handled, much less fired SIG's completely modular P250 [http://www.sigsauer.com/Products/ShowCatalogProduct.aspx?categoryid=54]. I am wary of SIG's other pistols due to their location of the slide-release tab at the top of the left grip panel, which makes it very difficult to operate one-handed in the left hand. This was no doubt conditioned by the placement of the one-stage decocking lever on SIG's earlier pistols. Yes, I know "emergency" techniques to release the slide without pressing this tab but they compromise muzzle discipline at a time when I least want to do that. I understand that the slide-release control is ambidextrous on the P250, albeit in the same location. If the rest of the pistol fills your needs, without emptying your pocketbook, go for it but view it as a jealous mistress because you will be reaching for that control in a different location than you would with any other brand of pistol.) 30 July 09 Addendum to "Cookie-Bandit" story. It gets worse! Two officers were involved. The murdered deputy's partner left her service pistol in the beat-car and did not have it, nor any other gun, with her when the two arrived at the location where the suspect was confronted a short time later! The deputy who was ultimately murdered, surprised to learn of his partner's impotent status, quickly gave her his backup pistol (type unknown, may have been a 1911 with a manual safety), with which she was "unfamiliar." Right on cue, the suspect appeared and was immediately confronted and arrested. He allowed himself to be handcuffed behind his back, but then reached for a secreted revolver in his waistband and, still handcuffed, started firing at the two deputies. The first deputy was hit in the strong-side hand and, with the second shot, in the groin. The second shot was to prove fatal, as it severed his femoral artery. He died at the hospital several hours later. His partner was uninjured and attempted to fire at the suspect with her borrowed pistol, but was "unable to work the gun." She fired no shots. In a panic, she handed the gun to her now fatally-wounded partner, who grasped it in his support-side hand and immediately shot the suspect in the head, twice. Suspect was DRT! Comment: With "partners" like this, you don't need enemies! "Police" is not what we do. "Police" is what we are! Who are not serious about this profession, and their place in it, need to find other work, sometime before they get themselves, or their partners, killed. We call dangerous criminals VCAs for a reason. Give them an edge at your peril! /John ("VCA" is Farnamese for "Violent Criminal Actor." The story may be apocryphal but the guy who taught my basic Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor Development School claimed that he once rolled up to a shooting in progress outside a DC housing project. The embattled officer on the scene called out to him, requesting more ammo. My instructor asked him how many rounds he had already fired and was told eighteen. He asked, "You hit anything?" When the other officer said no, my instructor claims he told him that he should try to impregnate himself because, if he could fire eighteen rounds without hitting anything, he wasn't getting any of his ammo. Sometimes we need to be able to assess whether it's beneficial to share scarce resources.) 31 July 09 The problem with "institutionalized incompetence," from a friend with a PD in the Midwest: "One of our patrol lieutenants falls into the same category as the incompetent NM female officer you described. The first time, he unholstered his pistol and laid it in the doorway of the hotel room where we went in to confront a delirious suspect. When another officer discovered it laying there, our lieutenant said he put it there 'because he didn't want the suspect to grab his gun!' Of course, by the time our lieutenant even got there, the suspect had already surrendered, been taken into custody, and removed from the scene. In the second incident, several months later, this same lieutenant went to assist a neighboring jurisdiction with an armed suspect in an apartment. When he finally arrived, another officer at scene noticed there was no pistol in our lieutenant's holster. Our lieutenant responded that he left it locked in his vehicle, '... so the suspect wouldn't get it.' Once again, the incident had been resolved long before he ever showed up. This lieutenant, even when a patrolman, was always last to arrive on any call where there is even a hint of violence. It was invariably long-since over when he finally got there. Sometimes, he didn't arrive at all. Our department issues good, level-two, security holsters. This guy is just a loafer, coward, and pathologically afraid of guns. He is altogether unsuited to police work and never should have been hired in the first place, much less promoted. Because of his position within the department, his inveterate incompetence puts all our lives in peril, every day! As in the NM incident, it is only a matter of time before the lines cross. Our chief readily concedes there is a 'problem' with this officer, but continues to do nothing." Comment: All to common in American public service. When the incompetent/unqualified are elected/promoted to important positions, for invariantly political reasons, public safety is fatally compromised. Unhappily, promoting bungling buffoons for political gain is a grand American tradition, and politicians, of course, couldn't care less about innocent people who are predictably hurt and injustice that is ever propagated, nor do their media stooges. But, we do! Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police need to be extremely adept at saying "no" to political promotions and hiring, and equally accomplished at firing, instead of promoting, the demonstrably incompetent/unqualified/inadequate. If not, when cashing their paycheck, they should be arrested for armed robbery! /John (Unfortunately, I would be surprised if there is anyone on the list who has not encountered some form of this incompetence-avoidance-cowardice continuum in other lines of work, whether public- or private-sector. Often one finds it at the level of department head. As with my prior comment, we need to be able to assess these people as resources before we waste scarcer ones on them.) Aug 09 America in 2009, no good deed goes unpunished: Last Wednesday, a teller working at a Seattle, WA bank was confronted by a robbery suspect. The 29-year-old suspect, a slovenly, unkempt, perpetually-unemployed "transient" (what we used to call a "vagrant"), with a lengthily criminal record, and at the time under the supervision of Washington's Department of Corrections, nervously walked into the bank and demanded money from the first teller he saw. This teller, instead of handing over a wad of cash, lunged at the startled suspect, knocking him backward. He then chased the suspect out of the bank and down the street, where he captured him and held him for police. The suspect was arrested at the scene a short time later. The bank's predictable response was to fire the heroic teller the following day! I'm sure they're petrified that the robbery suspect will sue them for "intentional infliction of emotional distress," so upside-down is our civilization. What caught my attention were the absurd and demeaning statements made by the local PD, as well as the FBI: Advice from SPD: "When confronted by a violent criminal, it is best to comply, unless you feel your personal safety is in jeopardy." Now, when "confronted by a violent criminal," when am I supposed to think my personal safety is NOT in jeopardy? These guys need to listen to what they themselves are saying! From the local FBI/SAC: "You want tellers to be proactive, but you want them to do it safely." Now, how it is possible to be "proactive" safely? How is it possible to take any positive action safely? Once again, this "advice" is self-contradictory nonsense! Translated into plain English, the message is clear: (1) We want all American Citizens to think of themselves only as feeble, helpless victims. Being a "good victim" is your ultimate, civic duty. (2) When violent criminals express a desire to rape, maim, and/or murder you, always wait until it is too late to do anything to defend yourself. Never do anything that has any chance of success! (3) The use of force is the exclusive province of government and criminals. You peons exist only to serve the former, and entertain the latter. (4) Don't be a hero! We don't like heroes. We want only timid, frightened, impoverished victims who think they need us. The real truth is: (1) You are on your own! "Protection" provided by police, or the FBI, is mostly illusion. (2) Go armed. Train regularly. (3) Act at the critical moment! Use force on your own summary command and judgement, with enthusiasm, and without apology. We are Sovereign Citizens and thus entitled to unilaterally protect ourselves via any means necessary. (4) Be a hero! This civilization was built by heroes. Frightened cowards never built anything! /John (When I got my first computer, I used to sign letters and e-mails "Stay safe and stay in touch!" "Stay safe" is a common closing in law enforcement. One day I read a comment from Jeff Cooper that freedom is more crucial than safety. Now I close with "Stay free and stay in touch!") -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .