Simon says keep your hands where I can see them.
"License and registration, please." It's what we expect to hear when law enforcement stops us for a moving violation. But today, many motorists ask themselves when the appropriate time is to reach into their glove box, purse or back pocket for the information. The Department of Public Safety (DPS) recently purchased some Not-Reaching Pouches, which were created by Valerie Castile in partnership with Jacquelyn Carter, to help reduce deadly force encounters between law enforcement and citizens during traffic stops.
Though devised by Valerie Castile, the mother of a Philando Castile—a man thusly executed by Minnesota cops—it's not getting a very warm reception from people who would prefer it if cops instead stopped executing unarmed motorists in their cars.
Many of the critics argued that showing license, registration, and proof of insurance was such a standard part of a traffic stop, that the obligation needed to be on police to figure out how to handle it without shooting anyone, and not rely on a gimmick device. Others expressed concerns about identity theft or other security issues related to keeping documents with such personal information in a visible area of a car's interior, not to mention the impracticality of remembering to take one's driver's license out of your wallet and put it in the pouch and then remember it when you got to your destination, and so on.
Personal identifying infotmation including driver's license and auto registration in every car window! It's absolutely brainless, the whole idea.
The most likely outcome of this is cops being preemptively hostile and itchy-fingered when they don't see it. The pouch ain't empty, it's full of qualified immunity!
