If there is one thing that "triggers" an American police officer the most, it's if they signal a car to stop, and it doesn't immediately stop.
Note that in most states this is indeed against the law, but it's just a misdemeanor. Not much worse than eg. refusing to show ID when lawfully required to do so. While it may technically speaking be a crime, it's a relatively small one, as it's just classified as a misdemeanor (assuming that the delay in stopping the car is not reckless and does not cause danger to anybody).
Yet, even though it's just a misdemeanor, most American police officers immediately treat it like the driver is an extremely dangerous armed-to-the-teeth hardened criminal who is fleeing from a mass shooting scene where he killed ten civilians and twelve cops, with the car full of illegal hard drugs and stolen money.
You might perhaps think that I'm exaggerating a bit there. I'm not. When the car finally stops, guns will usually be drawn and the driver will be commanded extremely aggressively to exit the car and lay on the ground, as if he were some kind of extremely dangerous armed criminal.
In fact, some cops will be so "triggered" by this that they quite literally go into a murderous rampage. I wish I was exaggerating. They become complete maniacs.
Even when the stop proceeds relatively peacefully (and nobody gets killed), what really drives home how much the event "triggered" the cops is how they behave after they have established with 100% certainty that the driver is not some kind of dangerous armed criminal. That's because in a good majority of cases the cop will go into full retaliatory mode. Even after seeing that there is zero danger, instead of calming down and proceeding to issue the proper traffic violation citations, they will start retaliating against the driver in multitudes of ways.
You'll be lucky if you get away from the situation unharmed. Heck, you'll be lucky if you get out of the situation alive.
Even if someone were to argue that treating the driver with extreme caution (ie. draw guns just in case) were justified, the retaliatory aftermath is most definitely not justified. This is where outright police abuse, even police brutality, kicks in.
Here are some of the most egregious cases of this that I have seen:
1) A middle-aged woman was signaled to stop by a traffic cop, and she did not immediately stop. She later testified that since they were in the middle of a busy highway, with concrete barricades on both sides, she wanted to find a safer place to stop on the side of the road or elsewhere, rather than there in the middle of busy traffic (especially since there were barricades on both sides, stopping cars from pulling over fully to the side of the road).
After a minute or so the police officer proceeded to outright try to murder the woman by doing a PIT maneuver on the car. The car veered to the side, collided with the concrete barricade, and violently flipped on its roof. It was a miracle that the woman was only slightly injured in this, but otherwise walked out of the situation alive. Needless to say, this stunt by the police officer not only put the woman in extreme danger of death or serious life-crippling injury, but also put other cars in the busy highway in danger.
If it had been anybody other than a police officer, the culprit would have been sentenced to jail for attempted third-degree murder (intent to harm, accidentally killing the person), if not outright attempted second-degree murder (non-premeditated murder with malicious intent). But of course since it was a police officer, nothing happened to him. The woman was extremely lucky to have survived this attempted murder.
2) A woman in her late 20's or so did not immediately stop when signaled to do so. Instead, she drove very calmly and slowly to the parking lot of a convenience store that was nearby. Again, she later testified that she just wanted to find a safe place to stop, especially because she was pregnant and she had two other children in the back seat. She didn't want to stop on the side of a busy road.
Not only did the police officer approach her with his gun drawn, but after he had established that it was just a pregnant woman (who, once again, had driven very calmly and slowly to a parking lot), with two other children in the back seat, he went into full retaliatory mode, took her out of the car by pulling her hair, and took her to the back of his police cruiser, handcuffed, all while screaming to the poor woman like a complete lunatic. The small woman was pregnant and posed absolutely no danger to the officer. There was literally no reason to do this. The woman was lucky she got away from the event uninjured.
3) An army veteran did not stop immediately when signaled, but kept driving some distance to the parking lot of a well-lit gas station, where he calmly stopped the car. He later testified that he didn't like that he was signaled to stop during the night on a road with very poor illumination and, as a black person, he was wary of police officers, and thus he wanted to go to a better illuminated place (and somewhere where there were more probably security cameras).
The two police officers in the police cruiser pulled their guns on him and shouted for several minutes for him to exit the car. The man put his hands out the window and asked them what the stop was about, and that he was too scared to exit the vehicle (no doubt because as a black man he was afraid that they would just shoot him, as they were pointing their guns at him). After some minutes of them just repeating the same things over and over, the police officers finally got the courage to approach the car, all the while aggressively shouting at him, and proceeding to give him conflicting orders, grabbing his arms making it impossible for him to open the door, while demanding that he open the door, and so on and so forth. After a while of this, one of them started pepper-spraying him, while he was still inside the car, with his hands being held by the other officer.
It was literal torture. The man was lucky he got away from the event with just whatever damage the pepper spray did to his eyes (which was quite severe). There was zero reason to do that to him.
4) A more elderly woman (66 years old) did not immediately stop when signaled to do so, in the middle of a busy highway. When she finally stopped, not only did several police officers threaten her with their guns, but they violently got her out of the car, and even though she posed zero danger, they proceeded to violently handcuff her and, essentially, torture her by keeping her sitting on the ground even though she repeatedly told them that the handcuffs were too tight and were hurting her. The demeanor, tone of voice and words of the police officers made it very clear that they were outright punishing the woman with physical torture because she hadn't stopped immediately. She was in no way a danger to anybody in that state, yet they kept torturing her. She was lucky she got away from the situation with just minor bruises.
5) A truck driver did not stop when signaled by a police car, and continued to drive for about 20 minutes before finally stopping. As of writing this it's not clear why he didn't stop. Note, however, that he continued to just drive normally, not eg. speeding or in any way trying to escape from or evade the police. It's not unlikely that he just didn't notice the police car, or notice that it was signaling for him to stop (the truck was really big).
After the truck had finally stopped, the police officer pointed a firearm at him from the distance. And not merely his service pistol, but an outright fully automatic combat rifle.
At this point the truck driver panicked and continued driving. He later testified that as a black man he got extremely scared of a police officer pointing an automatic rifle at him, and he feared for his life and panicked. He still didn't drive recklessly and never even exceeded the road's speed limit. At no point did he endanger anybody else's safety.
After more police cars joined the pursuit, he finally stopped the truck once again, and this time he obeyed the commands to step out. He exited the truck with his hands up. A nearby K9 unit ordered him to go to the ground or he would release the dog. Other police officers at the scene were shouting to him to not release the dog as long as he had his hands up. The K9 officer ignored these commands and released the dog anyway.
The dog proceeded to repeatedly and aggressively bite the man's arm, causing severe injury, blood loss and extreme pain, requiring immediate medical attention.
As of writing this it's still unknown to me if the worst that happened to him because of this event was just the extreme pain of being maimed by a dog. (Dog bites can be extremely dangerous because of infection, something that may only exhibit later.)
In this case the man was more guilty of an actual crime than any of the other examples above, but deliberately torturing him with a biting dog was a punishment way out of proportion, especially since he posed no danger to anybody at that point.
At least in this case the K9 officer was actually fired from his position. But, ironically, not because of releasing the dog, but because of false testimony he gave afterwards. (Good enough, I suppose.)
6) A dog gets hit by a car, and the dog's owner and his family get on a car to take the dog to a veterinarian.
A patrol officer sees the car speeding and signals it to stop. Because the car takes a whopping 30 seconds to stop, the police officer goes into full berserk mode, takes his service pistol and points it at the driver, and orders him to exit and to back towards him. The officer completely ignores the man's pleas that his dog is dying and that he needs to take it to the vet, and instead keeps yelling at the man in an extremely aggressive tone. When the officer has handcuffed the man and the man says that his dog is dying, the officer shouts to the man "I don't give a fuck!"
After he has taken the man to his car, he proceeds to go back to the family's car and orders the underage son to likewise exit the car, and he proceeds to handcuff him as well, all the while ignoring the mother's pleas that their dog has been hit by a car and is dying.
The heartless psychopathic police officer then proceeds to bicker with the father for like ten or fifteen minutes, all while the dog is bleeding in their car. The police officers shows no mercy, no remorse, no leniency, nothing. When other officers arrive to the scene, the man is eventually released and allowed to go on his way.
When the officer then walked towards his supervisor's car to explain what happened he tries to mute his bodycam microphone but inadvertently fails to do so. He can be heard saying "fucking bitch" while walking.
The dog died in the end. It's very possible that it died precisely because of the delay.
The officer later went into full CYA mode by egregiously lying in his report of the incident (by eg. claiming that the man exited the car clenching his fists and disobeyed his orders, even though this clearly contradicts his own bodycam footage.)
And all this because the car took a whopping 30 seconds to stop.
7) A police squad car notices a passing car that has burn-out taillight, so it starts following and signals it to stop. Because the driver was very close to his home, he decided to drive there and stop at his own front yard instead of in the middle of a busy road. He drives slowly and very calmly, using turn signals properly, showing absolutely no sign of trying to flee the police.
When he stops, the cop driving the squad car gets out, pulls out his gun and starts screaming to the driver at the top of his lungs like an absolute lunatic, giving him conflicting orders. He sounds exactly like a clinically insane person having a mental breakdown.
What's worst, he has a service dog, and after the driver is confused by his conflicting orders and doesn't know what exactly he should be doing, the cop releases the dog, who proceeds to repeatedly bite the man's leg to the bone, causing very serious injuries. All the while the cop keeps screaming like an absolute mental asylum lunatic.
All this because of a broken taillight, and because the man didn't immediately stop when signaled to do so. The man was extremely lucky to have survived the encounter. It was probably extremely close that the cop didn't just empty his service pistol on him.
During the investigation of the incident they gave completely asinine and conflicting testimonies, having trouble understanding the questions presented to them, and giving completely asinine statements like "I arrested him for resisting arrest" (which is just your typical American cop logic.)
The man filed lawsuits against the police officers. Unsurprisingly they were granted "qualified immunity".
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