Shel Belinkoff wrote: (among other things -- snippage for space)
My experience is quite different. In Peru, for example, I - and numerous
other motorists - were pulled over for "routine" checks, where police or
soldiers with military rifles stood guard around the vehicle while an
officer checked papers. ...
I - and no one I know - has ever just been pulled over and questioned by
the police here in the US for no reason. I'm not saying it doesn't happen,
but I've travelled through 37 of the United States and have never
encountered what you claim is normal.
I haven't travelled widely, but I have encountered the routine pull-over
check-papers type stop in Jamaica (the only other country in which I've
lived) more than once and never seen or heard of it in the US.
I've only known one person who ever told me about being pulled over and
questioned in the US (Texas, as a matter of fact, just over the state
line from Louisiana) and by the way there was no camera content to that
story. That's one, once, and as long ago as it was I can't be absolutely
certain there wasn't a mention of speeding. Big difference between "has
happened" and "is routine."
I haven't even seen something like the "sobriety checkpoints" he
describes. ( Haven't really spent any time in California, though.)
