Originally Posted by
KraneXL
Totally not the issue. This is about unnecessary stops when no LAW has been broken.
And yet he was stopped, detained and questioned? Not nothing after all.
But what are his damages? 10 minutes of his valuable time spent chatting with a couple cops. That's gotta be worth upwards of $15-20 bucks.
The cops could have frisked him, had him sit on the curb, yelled at him to keep his hands out of his pockets, sobriety tested him with bright lights in the eyes and reciting the alphabet backwards. They could have made all kinds of outrageous false accusations against him ("how long have you been involved in illicit child sex trafficking?") and expected him to exonerate himself right then and there. I saw none of that, just a routine stop. Maybe the patrol cop was under orders to check unusual-looking people in the area, maybe a crime had just occurred nearby with a suspect on a bike, maybe the cop thought he recognized the guy from a previous encounter, we will probably never know the exact reason for the stop, but it was probably NOT the light.
Other than the guy's pride being a bit bruised for being detained a few minutes, I see no harm and no foul. Cops question innocent people all the time, it's part of the job.