The answer is no

I’m poaching from TFL this morning, because some times it’s just a fantastic gold mine of bloggable topics. A poster asks:

Ive read a few of the stories on here where some of you have been held at gunpoint by wary police (usually for opencarry or CCW). Some of the more disturbing cases were when its mentioned that the police officer has his/her finger on the trigger! We’ve all seen the mistakes with this one.

Now, I was trying to figure out, is there ever a good way to suggest to a LEO in that situation to ‘please keep your finger off the trigger’ without escalating things?

No. There really isn’t. If a cop is fired up enough to have his gun pointing at you, keeping your damn mouth shut is probably the best idea. There are only two questions you should be asking: 1) Am I under arrest, and 2) If I’m not under arrest, am I free to go?  And even then, you should only be asking those questions when there are no guns being pointed at you.

To make it 100% clear, you cannot talk your way out of an arrest, but you most certainly can talk your way into handcuffs.

10 Comments

  1. I’ve found that being arrested in the middle of the night while trying to sleep in your car in the middle of nowhere when the cops suspect you of armed robbery is not the best time to ‘enjoy the experience’ and smile a lot.

    Seems to piss them off and make ’em handle you harder 😉

  2. Hmmmm. Handcuffed and in a cruiser or some guy pointing a gun at me with his boogerhook on the bang switch? Think I’m going with the handcuffs.

  3. Updated for clarity – if a cop is pointing a gun at you, I firmly believe that now is not the time for any kind of talking.

  4. Nonsense! If his finger’s on the trigger, then until he tells you to shut up, you should be saying as loudly as possible “Please don’t shoot me! Please don’t kill me!” over and over. Someone may hear you and record the event on their phone or camera. Your heirs will thank you.

  5. im not going to tell you how i know… but you most certainly can talk your way out of arrests… cops have a LOT of leeway when it comes to what to arrest someone for…

  6. Chris, I’m a little skeptical of that to say the least. It’s been my experience that if a cop wants to arrest you, you’re getting arrested and there’s nothing you can say that will make you not get arrested.

  7. On the plus side, if the officer is already stopping you without cause, you’ll probably be on the way to a good deal of money after the officer decides that you “talked your way into handcuffs”. We have a few local OpenCarry.Org members that have become familiar with this pattern in the city of Norfolk.

    From their descriptions of their encounters, I would say that any officer that is so ignorant and arrogant that they would point a gun at you, with their finger on the trigger, when you’ve done nothing illegal, saying something may improve your chances of survival, but it will definitely increase your chances of being arrested (unlawfully, but arrested nonetheless).

    I would

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