Module 5 · THE FIVE MOMENTS · Lesson 1 of 2
Hands, doors and running
Almost every one of these cases turns on one of five moments. Three of them are here.
Lesson 9 of 12
Start here
Stopped at night. He asks for your licence.
It is in the glovebox, under a stack of papers, and you know exactly where it is because you put it there this morning.
Your hand is already moving. Freeze it there and read on.
Hands
Look at the names again. Diallo reaching for his wallet. Castile reaching for the licence he had just been asked for. Rice, twelve, with something in his hands in a park.
The single most dangerous thing you can do is move a hand somewhere he cannot see it. Not because it is fair. Because that specific motion is what he has been trained on for years, and his body is running the same system yours is.
So the rule is not do not move. It is say it before you move.
My licence is in the glovebox. Can I reach for it.
Nine words. Then wait for an answer. Then move slowly, one hand, and keep the other where it is.
And if you are told to keep your hands where they are, keep them there and say where the thing is. It is in the glovebox, I am not going to reach. Let him get it. You lose nothing.
Doors
Daunte Wright. Expired tags. A warrant came up. During the arrest he moved to get back into the car and he was shot.
Two rules and they do not have exceptions.
Do not get out unless you are told to. Getting out on your own reads as either escalation or preparation, and neither is what you meant.
Never get back in. Once you are out, you are out. Not for your phone, not for your jacket, not for a document, not to close the door. If you need something in that car, you ask, and he gets it or he lets you.
The car is the single most dangerous object in the scene once you are outside it, because everything he cannot see is inside it.
Running
Walter Scott. Brake light. He ran. He was shot in the back.
Freddie Gray. Made eye contact. Ran. Arrested, and he died of an injury sustained in the van.
Antwon Rose. Seventeen. Ran from a stop.
Here is the part almost nobody knows, and it is legal, not moral. In 2000 the Supreme Court held that running away in a high crime area can by itself give an officer reasonable suspicion. Illinois v. Wardlow.
Read that again. Before you ran, he may have had nothing. The running is what created the legal basis for everything that comes after it. You did not escape a situation, you built one.
And the practical side is worse. A ticket becomes a chase. A chase becomes a felony charge in most states. And a person running is the single easiest thing in the world for a frightened officer to misread.
The one exception people ask about. If somebody is trying to pull you over and you do not believe it is real police, unmarked car, no uniform, you do not have to stop right there. Put your hazards on, slow down below the limit, call 911, and keep going to a lit public place while you stay on the line with the dispatcher. That is police endorsed guidance in multiple states. It is not running. Running is silent and fast. This is slow and loud and documented.
Practice, not knowledge
You already knew most of section one. Everybody does.
Knowing it is not the problem. The problem is that all three of these happen inside the ten seconds where your hands are unreliable and your hearing is narrowed, and knowledge does not operate in there. Only habit does.
So this lesson is not finished when you understand it. It is finished when you have physically done it, in a car, several times, with the words out loud.
That is the assignment and it is the whole lesson.
Say it before you move. Do not get out. Never get back in. Do not run.
The workEight questions
Two of these nobody reads. They are marked.
Go back to the glovebox. Write exactly what you say, word for word.
You are out of the car and your phone is on the seat, ringing. It is your mother.
- AAsk him to get it
- BTell him it is my mother and ask what he wants me to do
- CReach in quickly, it is right there
- DIgnore it
Have you ever run? What happened, and what were you thinking in the first two steps?
Explain Illinois v. Wardlow in your own words to somebody who is about to run.
Unmarked car, no uniform, lights, on a dark road. What do you do?
- APull over. It is probably real
- BHazards, slow, call 911, keep going to a lit place
- CSpeed up and get somewhere with people
- DI would not have known I had an option
Your friend is in the passenger seat and you can feel he is about to open his door. What do you say, in the two seconds you have?
If a warrant came up right now that you did not know about, what would your body want to do?
Write the three rules from this lesson as three short sentences. Then say them out loud.
DeeperThree reflections
Nobody reads these.
- 1
Write about somebody you know who ran, and what it cost them. If you do not know anybody, write about why you think people run when they know better.
- 2
Write about a moment where two seconds would have changed your whole life. It does not have to be about police.
- 3
Write out the glovebox scenario as a full story, from the lights to driving away, with you doing all of it the way you want to.
Before you go
Three moments, and every one of them is over in under two seconds.
That is why this cannot be knowledge. Two seconds is not enough time to remember something. It is only enough time to do something you have already done before.
The two hardest ones are in the next lesson, and one of them is the one that killed Philando Castile.
In a parked car, ten times: hands on the wheel, say your glovebox line, wait, reach slowly with one hand. Then get out and practice not getting back in, which sounds ridiculous until the day it is not.