I previously wrote a blog post about the Finnish police which, while there is a small fraction of them who are rotten to the core, in general are really professional, fair and genuinely friendly, actually caring about the citizens (rather than thinking that all citizens are potential enemies, like American cops are trained to do.)
One notable and notorious example of where this difference can be seen is the fact that American cops, especially traffic cops, are very keen on "fishing" for crimes.
Ask pretty much any American lawyer about it, and he will tell you that you should never answer a cop's questions during a traffic stop, no matter how innocent and "friendly" those questions are. Even if the cops is just asking something like "where are you driving?" your default answer should be "I do not answer questions." Pretty much any American lawyer will strongly recommend this.
Is this just reactionary anti-police activism? No. Lawyers and other legal experts strongly recommend this for a good reason.
This is because, in general, when cops ask you questions during a traffic stop, they are trying to trick you. They are trying to fish for crimes. They are trying to pin anything they can muster on you, based on the flimsiest of excuses. They consider it an achievement and a badge of honor if they can write you a fine or, better yet, arrest you. And if they get a flimsy excuse to search your car, that's a jackpot!
Almost anything you say to their seemingly "friendly" and "innocent" questions could and will be used against you, no matter how flimsy the excuse. Where you are coming from, where you are going, what were you doing, how much you had to drink... it doesn't matter. If they can muster a flimsy excuse to "suspect" you of some kind of infraction, they will happily write you a ticket or even take you to jail. The latter has the extra bonus that they then get the excuse to search your car, and there is only one fetish that American cops have that's stronger than searching your car (and that's, of course, getting your ID. Which they already got because they stopped you.)
And American cops can completely safely do this. Most people don't have the legal knowledge to fight it, and even for the microscopic minority of people who do, even if the ticket is dismissed in court, that doesn't matter from the cop's perspective: Nothing will happen to him. It's your problem, not his. He will receive no consequences from this. (On the contrary, his proficiency as a cop is likely to be measured by how many fines he gives and people he arrests.)
In contrast, it's pretty safe to talk to the cops in Finland. In the vast majority of cases they are not fishing for crimes. They are not trying to pin on you any crime they can conjure. In the vast majority of cases they don't even care about your ID. Even during traffic stops they won't ask for your driver's license unless they actually need it (ie. to write you a ticket). If you didn't actually do anything wrong, or even if they let you go with just a warning, usually they don't demand your driver's license. They usually just ask it if there's an actual reason for it. And if they ask you friendly questions during a traffic stop (or anywhere else), it's pretty safe to engage in conversation. (There are of course the rotten cops, as mentioned in that other blog post, but the chances of encountering one are quite small.)
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