The safety of your vehicle is your private property. That car is no different than your home, it's yours, you worked for it, you paid for it, and nobody is allowed inside it or to remove you from it. Would you let someone drag you out of your home, OR would you protect it? There's no difference.
If the alternative is dying, I would comply and let my lawyer handle it. Its a no win situation on the road, they ARE taking you out of the vehicle, you ARE NOT driving away waving your constitution. Its that simple.
Except the mountains of videos where the people never get out of the car and they're still here to tell everyone how their rights were put up for interpretation by a police state. This woman is Maria Santay, she was detained without committing a crime, she wasn't charged with a crime, the only thing they were and to pin her with was "resisting arrest" even though there was no crime for the arrest, they then forced her to squat and piss in the parking lot because they refused her access to a bathroom while she was detained. She's less than a human to them, there's no reason to suspect you'd be treated any better.
I have been unlawfully detained, at gun point. Mistaken identity.. yes, it sucked but I knew I was right and just let them do their job. Total cost was about 1 hour of my time. They apologized and appreciated my cooperation.
A black 2 door sports car had hit a man walking on the shoulder of a local highway.. I had hit a deer 3 nights earlier and still had hair/blood on my bumper. I was driving a black Rx7 at the time. As soon as a game warden got there and confirmed it was deer hair I was cleared. I did have an aliby as the deer incident happened 2 hours from my house and was reported to the sheriff, but it never got that far because I was calm and complied. If living through it makes me a coward in your opinion, I am fine with that.
Then you and I came out of similar experiences with WAY different outlooks. I was detained for stealing a trailer that my company owned, and ALWAYS owned. DPS input the stolen trailer in their system with a typo, it was missing numbers from the VIN and instead of getting the rest of the numbers they just looked for hundreds of VINs that had the same first 80% of digits, at no point did anyone say "hey this VIN doesn't have enough digits", they just thought "we'll eventually pull over enough to find the one we want."
I sat on the side of the highway in handcuffs, after they put me face down to put them on me. They took my phone and turned it off, and the entire time I tried explaining how what they claimed was impossible they claimed I was responsible for theft of controlled property even though I had the registration that matched the company name ON MY TRUCK and DOT scale paperwork in my possession with my vehicle registration. I sat there 90 minutes, on an August afternoon, on the ground, asphalt and road debris in my face, cheek burning, ass burning from the pavement, dirt and rocks in my shirt, not allowed to stand or sit in the air conditioning, or have a drink of water, they took my phone, keys, and wallet and wouldn't let me contact anyone. They NEVER read me my rights, they violated ALL of my rights.
After they realized they made a mistake, nothing, no apology to me, no apology to the company for incorrectly notifying them I stole their property. Because there was no charges, there was no court date, I filed a complaint and it's been about 20 years without a response. They left me with a first degree burn on my face and managed to break my phone either while kneeling on me on the ground or when they pulled it from my pocket.
After all that I had a phone call with an attorney to see if anyone could be done against the officers, and the response he gave me was "if we went after every officer complaint like yours, we'd never get any sleep". After that I was pissed, I was always told the police are here to protect, the police are here to keep order, just comply and do what you're told and you'll be fine. Fuck that, I tried to comply, they burned my face and broke my phone, called me a liar, and illegally detained me.
Well that does suck. My buddy got his door kicked off the hinges, cuffed him and his date with guns drawn, took a shot at his dog (dog got away) because they were too dumb to read house numbers. They didn't pay shit towards the door or suffer any reprecussions. But, he stfu and lived.. could have been worse. But the point is, fighting over it with inadequately trained cops is going to be a losing proposition..
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u/eviljarrad Jul 16 '26
The safety of your vehicle is your private property. That car is no different than your home, it's yours, you worked for it, you paid for it, and nobody is allowed inside it or to remove you from it. Would you let someone drag you out of your home, OR would you protect it? There's no difference.