I ended up the week on Thursday with a fresh relief. I pulled a traffic stop on a vehicle with a handwritten tag showing a purchase date (which is illegal in my state and technically not even a tag).
There were three black males in the vehicle and I asked for ID from all of them. The backseat passenger was extremely nervous and could not get the information on his ID right after I had ran the name and date of birth that he gave me.
I asked for another unit and I was watching the body language of everyone in the car when he pulled up. The two front seat occupants were fine but the guy in the back became even more nervous and began to run his hands through his hair. I walked to car and detained him and told him I was going to bring a fingerprint machine out and find out who he was. He told me he was being honest but was only nervous because of everything that was going on in the news. I put him in my backseat and told him I was only verifying who he was and as soon as I did so he would be going on his way.
I talked to the driver who asked me if he could step out. We ended up having a 20 minutes or so conversation as we waited for my lieutenant to show up with the fingerprint machine. He asked me how I felt with everything on the news and what had been going on around the country. We progressed to basketball and football and how he coaches kids in school and the community to keep them from straying off the path. We came to common ground about how we both wanted to make a change in the community.
Eventually his friend came back to who he said he was and everyone went on their way. It was a simple stop but it led to so much more. Nothing that can be counted on in a stat but that goes a long way to building trust and relationships between the police and the community.
No comments:
Post a Comment