Man Stopped For Walking With His Hands In His Pockets By Michigan Police

A Pontiac, Michigan, man was stopped by police for merely walking with his hands in his pockets. Although it was snowing and extremely chilly outside, the sight of a man attempting to warm his hands by keeping them in his pockets made at least one Michigan resident “nervous.”

A Michigan police officer responded to a call by the scared resident about 4:30 p.m. last Thursday. The Pontiac police officer recorded the entire exchange on his cell phone.

“You were walking by,” the Michigan law enforcement officer is heard saying at the start of the “stop and frisk” or “Terry stop” video.

After responding verbally to other radio traffic, he was asked by the unidentified man, “Walking by and doing what?”

The officer replied, “You were making people nervous.”

The surprised man then asked, “By walking?”

The polite Pontiac police officer added, “Yeah, they said you had your hands in your pockets.”

Still understandably confused, the man asked, “Walking by having your hands in your pockets makes people nervous and call the police when it’s snowing outside?”

The Michigan police officer then asked the man walking with his hands in his pockets what he was “up to” in the area and apologized for any “inconvenience” the stop may have caused.

The man, seemingly in response to the inconvenience comment and still more than a bit dumbfounded about being stopped for walking with his hands in his pockets, said, “H**l yeah. Just because of the whole police situation going on across the country, this is outrageous. There’s 10,000 people in Pontiac right now with their hands in their pockets, so how many.”

The man is interrupted mid-sentence by the police officer, who says, “You’re right. But we do have a lot of robberies, so just checking on you. You’re fine, you’re good.”

The man stopped for walking with his hands in his pockets then informed the Michigan police officer that he had recorded the stop for both is and the officer’s own safety.

The Terry stop incident ended peacefully with a high-five between the man with cold hands and the police officer. A police officer must have a “reasonable suspicion” that a crime has been or is about to be, committed, in order to engage in a stop and frisk encounter.

Although respectful to the Pontiac police officer, the man did not hesitate to relieve a bit of frustration about the entire scenario, “I’m really mad at the situation and whoever called.”

What do you think about the Michigan man stopped for walking with his hands in his pockets and how the stop was handled by the Pontiac police officer?

[Image via: Shutterstock.com]