Just Giving the Cops Your ID Might Be Wise
Re “We All Lose if Cops Have All the Power,” Commentary, June 24: What Larry Dudley Hiibel doesn’t mention is a lot. Hiibel was parked at the side of the road, arguing with his daughter, when he “heard sirens and all of a sudden a police car drove up.” Hiibel states: “Eleven times [the police officer] demanded my identification. I refused to give it to him each time.”
Did it ever occur to Hiibel that a police car may have been dispatched to his location because a concerned citizen who witnessed the argument phoned police fearing that the argument was escalating, possibly toward violence?
Police have a right to investigate suspicious activity. Simple compliance and cooperation by Hiibel in offering his driver’s license/identification to the police officer would have spared him an overnight stay in jail. There are two sides to every argument. In this commentary, we don’t have the police account of Hiibel’s behavior.
Greg Belluomini
Hawthorne
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