George Costanza
A Friendly Liberal
- Thread starter
- #141
No, the police officer does not know that the driver is fleeing a minor traffic offense. The officer only knows that the driver is fleeing. They do not have any clue as to why.
Yes, he does. In the OP hypo, it is the officer who observed the running of the stop sign that red lighted the red car and then elected to pursue it when it did not stop.
It can be argued that most normal people would not run from a simple traffic stop, that there is an unknown underlying reason of which the officer should be suspicious of. I wished we could find a study on something like this.
Of course. This makes common sense. The problem is, unless the officer KNOWS why the guy is running, he is not allowed to (and should not) "assume the worst," and treat the fleeing suspect as if he had just robbed a bank or killed someone (or both).
In actual practice, we know that the main reaosn most folks refuse to yield for a traffic stop is that they have a warrant out for them and don't want to get arrested on the spot. The warrant is usually for another traffic violation which they forgot to take care of or a misdemeanor of some kind. Sure, sometimes the warrant is a murder warrant and sometimes they actually do have a dead body in the trunk, but in the vast majority of cases, this is not the situation.
You can bet the first thing a cop does when he is initiating a traffic stop, is run the plate of the car he is stopping. That tells him a lot. If there is a warrant, he will know what it's for. If there are no warrants, that tells him something as well.
Once again, my friend - I am not against high speed chases. They are most certainly necessary some times; just not all the time. And that's really what this thread is about, in a way.