I don't see any problem with walking away from police, even running isn't so bad (especially if you didn't start running the moment you saw the police), provided that you stop walking or running if instructed to do so. The important thing is not to cause suspicion by acting like you are fleeing the scene of a crime. Running away by itself is not cause for suspicion, but running away from police when a crime has been committed and failing to stop when instructed to, would be in my opinion.
Doesn't someone have to be suspicious in order for a police officer to have have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a search or make an arrest? [1]
I completely agree that police have to justify their suspicions and subsequent actions (searches, arrests and other actions), but saying that we, as citizens, should be okay engaging in suspicious behavior, just seems wrong.
We should hold those in law enforcement accountable for their actions and the exercise of the authority given to them, but we should also respect what they do and not make their job unnecessarily harder than it needs to be.
This is why a paranoid schizophrenic might become angry at someone watching videos on their phone on the bus. The listener believes himself to be doing a perfectly normal and harmless activity, whereas the paranoid believes that the watcher is beaming mind control rays into the bus driver's skull to make the bus late.
Of late, cops have been acting more like the paranoid schizophrenic, assuming that everyone is carrying drugs or terrorist bombs, and that the cameras and camera-phones used to record them are actually deadly weapons. This makes them supremely unqualified to determine what is "reasonable".
When I drive my car to work, and see someone running along the sidewalk, I do not assume they are running away from me. They might be exercising. Or perhaps that person saw a bee and is allergic to bee stings. Maybe their wife will be occupied for the next hour and their mistress is 3 blocks away. I don't know. I don't really care.
I don't have any reasonable grounds to impute motive to the running. Even if I know that there is a bomb planted in the sidewalk near them, I cannot assume that they are running from the bomb, because I cannot know that they know what I know.
If any reasonable person could conceive a plausible and probable reason for it, the behavior is simply not suspicious. And as a reasonable person, I might assume that people would run from the police in my municipality because they don't want to be confronted without cause, thrown to the ground, and hospitalized for spinal injuries causing paralysis shortly thereafter. It's simpler elsewhere; they just don't want to get shot, robbed (forfeiture), or even just have hours of their time wasted by police.
And you can't lower the standard when a crime is committed, because there is no magic mobile alert that goes out to everyone in the area whenever that happens. I have no way of knowing what external circumstances are in play that may make what I am doing right now seem more suspicious. The police can't beam their paranoia into other people's heads.
We can, and should, make their job harder, and demand higher standards of professionalism from them, right along with removing all the incentives for them to do their work in a lazy and slipshod manner. What they do now is currently so not-difficult that police departments can reject applicants who are too smart for the job.[0] The common functions that people actually want them to perform are also routinely handled by Brink's, Pinkerton, ADT, KBR, Chubb, Booz Allen, Securitas, etc., without any abuse of authority, because they have no more authority than their customers.
I'll respect what police do when what they do shows respect for the public, rather than unreasonable suspicion and violent hostility, with a nasty habit of looking the other way when one's co-workers do wrong.
I'm not sure you've read my previous comments, which indicate that you would need to start running when the police saw you and fail to stop when asked, to seem suspicious.
The circumstances of your environment definitely make a difference in whether a reasonable person would be suspicious of the activity (even if you are unaware of those circumstances). If someone is lying dead in the street and a man was running away from the scene of the crime carrying a knife, a reasonable person would be be suspicious and not be thinking "Maybe he's got some hunting he's anxious to get to". (even if that's a plausible or even probable explanation)
Suspicion doesn't have the same requirements as guilt, which police officers should not be determining. You shouldn't be able to treat someone as if they are guilty, simply because you suspect them of a crime. Reasonable suspicion does give police license to investigate further and detain and do searches when necessary. (and we should definitely hold police officers accountable when they detain or search someone without reasonable suspicion)
As for the comment about showing respect, I think that sort of mindset will just escalate and make the problem worse. Lets demand respect for our rights and accountability in law enforcement, but lets not insult other people's intelligence and assume the worst, especially in broad ways that assume that all cops (or all cops in a certain city or area) are stupid, incompetent or evil.
But the police need reasonable suspicion before detaining you. You can't generate reasonable suspicion as a result of a detention attempt, as it has to exist before that point.
This is why the cop will need to claim in his report that the running individual appeared to match the description of the suspect, however vague it may have been.
"Be advised that the suspect is... human, with a height, weight, skin color, and gender."
"Roger that, dispatch, I see someone matching that description now. Moving to intercept."
In your example, the suspicious factors are "wielding/brandishing a weapon in the absence of a known threat" and "possible suspect or witness to a violent crime". Since the person could be a frightened witness who pulled the knife in self-defense, it would be inappropriate to shoot him in the back 0.5 seconds after ordering him to drop the knife.
If the very same person did the same thing in the woods, near a dead deer, the suspicious factors would be "this is not deer season", "there was no gunshot", and "he isn't wearing safety orange". There are plenty of factors there to justify an investigatory detention beyond the direction and magnitude of a person's motion vector. But they must be relevant to a specific crime.
In the street example, the suspected crime is manslaughter. In the woods example, it is poaching. Without the body, the cop would have to fall back on, perhaps, city ordinances regarding the blade length of knives carried in public. Reasonable suspicion requires that the target be suspected of something specific.
If a cop chases down someone who ran from him upon spotting him, what is the suspected crime? As far as I know (not a lawyer), it is only a crime to flee from police custody if you are already suspected of a different crime, for which they already have reasonable suspicion to detain you. You can't be reasonably arrested solely for resisting arrest, because the arrest cannot occur prior to suspicion for an arrestable offense.
That's why you sometimes see reasonable articulable suspicion. If the cop cannot say why he chose to arrest you at the time of the arrest, it might be a bogus arrest. "Being a suspicious person" is not by itself a crime.
As for respect, the public owes the police respect in the same way that they owe restaurant waiters a 15% gratuity. If the waiter pees in your soup, you shouldn't leave a tip. If a cop fails to uphold the public's mandate for policing, he shouldn't expect any respect. That obligation flows only one way. If the public does not respect the police of a particular polity, it is because those particular police are providing them with poor service. It is not our responsibility to "save their tip".
In the waiter analogy, the customer does not leave a tip, so the next time he visits the restaurant, the waiter pees in his soup AND suckerpunches him in the face, then complains loudly when the customer not only fails to leave a tip, but also declines to pay for the soup.
The main point I was trying to make (and that you seem to confirm) is that the circumstances of what is happening matters.
Also doesn't the reasonable suspicion have to be specific to the length of detention or the breadth of the search? Being stopped by police so they can verify your appearance, see if there is any obvious evidence of involvement (such as blood) or ask any nearby witnesses if they saw you committing a crime should require, in my thinking a lower threshold of suspicion than if they are handcuffing, arresting, detaining and bringing you into a police station for a lineup. (Just in the same way that doing a search for drugs in someone's car doesn't mean that the police can also search that person's house).
As for the person holding the knife and being shot. I am of the opinion that the person should be posing a clear threat to police to justify such excessive force. The police should avoid escalating the situation and should take a defensive stance, if at all possible, to see if the situation can be handled with less force.
I don't think the waiter/cop is a good comparison. You might have a better comparison with a personal body guard, but I don't see someone serving you food and someone who puts themselves in harms way for your safety at the same level, even if they are both being paid for it.
For me, trust is better established and progress happens when both parties try to work together and move forward in good faith. I don't think a "I won't respect you until you respect me" attitude will get us anywhere.
The police are not putting themselves in harms way for me [0], they do quite a lot of things I find to be objectionable in the name of "officer safety".
Police-related occupations are the 15th most deadly jobs in the US, at about 0.0001 workplace injury deaths/worker-year. They face .000035 homicides/worker-year, about double the rate of restaurant managers, retail supervisors, and cashiers, and half that of cabbies and chauffeurs.
The majority of police deaths are, in fact, traffic accidents, as befits an occupation that spends a large amount of time driving (especially with such a miniscule chance of actually getting any moving violations).
So I think it safe to assume that if the cop worked in an open-to-the-public building all day rather than a car, the occupational risk of death for him would be only slightly higher than the waiter. But the waiter is paid $5 per hour from voluntary customers, and the cop may get over $100k/year (including overtime) out of taxes, whether you like it or not.
The burden is 100% upon police departments to monitor public opinion and adjust their behavior accordingly. They are the employees. The public is the employer. When they do not respect their employers, that is insubordination, not just discourtesy.
I'm not going to give anyone a trophy just for doing their job correctly. But I will surely react when they do it incorrectly. Respecting the public is part of the job description. So yes, definitely, they have to show that respect first, and also take it stoically whenever people give them the finger and oink at them. If you cannot remain calm and professional in the face of insults, you are not well suited for police work.
