I had to read the whole thread, chuckling at different points...
Working at this police dept for 25+ years, I have seen good officers
and not-so-good officers come and go. The good ones stay, get promoted, and are still here. The bad ones don't last long, and probably
agency-hop like any other profession does.
I have NEVER seen a cop with a bad attitude keep his job for long.
And yes, the investigation he did by questioning you the way he did, getting close enough to smell your breath, checking your engine temp, etc, is all
good street investigating. They are trained in how people will respond, and most generally, they know regular nerves from guilty nerves. And you weren't detained, you were free to go at any time.
Here is the most common type of stop, the officers refer to as a "Terry Stop" defined on Wikipedia:
In the United States, a
Terry stop is a brief detention of a person by police
[1] on
reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity but short of
probable cause to
arrest.
The name derives from
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968),in which the
Supreme Court of the United States held that police may briefly detain a person whom they reasonably suspect is involved in criminal activity;the Court also held that police may do a limited search of the suspect’s outer garments for weapons if they have a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the person detained may be “armed and dangerous”.When a search for weapons is authorized, the procedure is known as a “
stop and frisk”.
To have reasonable suspicion that would justify a stop, police must be able to point to “specific and articulable facts” that would indicate to a reasonable person that a crime has been, is being, or is about to be committed.Reasonable suspicion depends on the “totality of the circumstances”,and can result from a combination of facts, each of which is by itself innocuous.
The search of the suspect’s outer garments, also known as a patdown, must be limited to what is necessary to discover weapons; however, pursuant to the “plain feel” doctrine, police may seize contraband discovered in the course of a frisk, but only if the contraband’s identity is immediately apparent.
In some jurisdictions, persons detained under the doctrine of
Terry must identify themselves to police upon request. In
Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, 542 U.S. 177, the Court held that a Nevada statute requiring such identification did not violate the
Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, or, in the circumstances of that case, the
Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self incrimination.
