So when a patrol officer approaches a large physically imposing man who is declining to provide identification and refusing compliance directives, isn't it reasonable that the officer might feel genuine apprehension, might feel his safety was at risk? Raymond looked at Donner with the expression of a man who can see exactly where the trail is going and is not going to pretend he can't. I was declining to provide identification. I was not legally required to provide, Raymond said. Lawful compliance directives must be lawful.
Directives based on manufactured probable cause are not. The training you're describing would clarify that distinction for any officer with adequate preparation. Donner adjusted his approach. Sergeant, you intentionally concealed your police identity during the entire confrontation. You made a decision to withhold it, which had the effect of prolonging the encounter and escalating the risk to both parties.
Officer Puit created every escalation. Raymond said my decisions were responses to his. I escalated nothing. I threatened no one. I touched no one.
My decision to wait was the same decision that anyone who does not have a badge to produce makes in every one of these encounters. They wait and they hope and they try to survive the interaction without being harmed. Donner tried several more angles over the next 90 minutes. He attempted to frame Raymond's physical presence as inherently intimidating. He suggested that Raymond's legal knowledge was a form of deliberate provocation.
He attempted to paint the situation as one that Raymond, with his training and rank, could have diffused at any moment and chose not to for personal reasons. Raymond answered each question with the same measured factual clarity. He did not get angry. He did not get flustered. He did not retreat behind official language when plain language served better.
He sat in the witness chair and told the truth in the specific precise way of a man who has told the truth in difficult circumstances many times before and has found that the truth delivered with sufficient clarity and patience tends to stand up. By the time Donner sat down, he looked like a man who had been climbing a hill for 90 minutes and had arrived at the top to find there was another hill. Raymond looked like a man who could have continued for another week.
He stepped down from the stand, walked back through the well of the court, and took his seat beside Sandra. She leaned very slightly against his shoulder for a fraction of a second that no one else in the courtroom would have noticed. He noticed.