I have not seen an explanation of what exactly made the stop illegal. Generally, if the police can't see your license plate, they can pull you over. I've heard about this threat, but from what I can tell, it was basically the officers accepting that Nazario was just stupid and not bad and trying to cut him a break rather then throwing him in the slammer. I didn't hear anything along the lines of, "if you tell anybody about this, we're coming after you."
I can understand the criticism of some of what they said (like that he should be scared to get out of the vehicle). However, my concern with making Nazario a hero and having a bunch of slimy politicians cozy up to him while the officers get shitcanned and made into villains is that we're basically making it ok and even commendable to be uncooperative with the police in the normal course of their duties. That's going to lead to more incidents like this and many of them leading to violence and eventually a reduction in public safety. It's going to get more dangerous for both police and private citizens.
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Agree x 1
Last edited: Apr 13, 2021