The only time I've been pulled over to have my identity checked I was in
college. I was taking a girlfriend to a local necking area for well,
you know. On entering the park a police officer pulled me over to get
my license and ask a few intrusive questions, it seems that there had
been a rape reported a couple of days earlier, (from what I understand a
jogger had been attacked). It put something of a damper on the occasion.
E.R.N. Reed wrote:
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.)
--
When you're worried or in doubt,
Run in circles, (scream and shout).
