Good Cop? Bad Cop? You Tell Me 

This is, IMHO, a good cop acting badly. Click here.

Here is a cop trying to do his job. But he’s being a bit of a bully. Everything he’s doing, according to a retired cop friend of mine, is within the range of what most cops used to think of as normal. “We were taught that to stay safe you had to take immediate control of every encounter with civilians. And that the only way to do that was to be dominant.”

In recent years, this approach is becoming less common because civilians are getting educated on their 2nd and 4th amendment rights. And they have dash-cams and iPhones to record their encounters.

In this case, you have what I believe is a cop trying to bully his way through an encounter. But the civilian is standing up for himself. Everything the cop does incriminates him and exculpates the civilian.

It’s not going to be easy, but the police are going to have to figure out a way to establish control within the limits of their constitutional power.