To the guy downvoting every time I comment - do you feel powerful doing that? I even got a downvote for simply stating the country I live in. Dude, I live in a van and I get harassed by cops. I’m just trying to get some advice from people (like that Youtube link @David_Eight just posted) Keep downvoting, you’re not going to make my life any worse.

Watching it now, thanks! It sucks that you have to study the law for rights you already have but “it is what it is”.

like no shit you would use a different vehicle if you had access.

Thanks for stating that! It’s like when there’s a cold snap below freezing and some homeless guy freezes to death from exposure and someone says, “Why didn’t he just go rent a hotel room for the night? It’s just one night”

Yeah, that is a good idea. It would probably work best on a VW van like the kind surfers use. I suppose with enough stickers strategically placed it could look like you were into rock climbing, or surfing, or something involving the outdoors.

Yeah, you are right. Once I opened the door when I got pulled over by Border Patrol. I opened it because my power window was broken. They did not like me opening the door.

If I see them approaching from far away and hop out of the vehicle am I then a pedestrian and no longer count as being in my vehicle?

I have a ghetto van. It does not blend in. The campground was one incident. There are many more which have happened in parking lots where other people are also sitting in their cars. Since the invention of smart phones a lot of people sit in their cars for various reasons and look at their phones or use laptops. It’s not illegal nor suspicious to sit in your car. - Anytime you vent online people look for an angle to blame you. I just want to exist without being harassed like everyone else.

Yep, I agree with you. I do move around a lot. But I also paid for a spot at a campground where you’re supposed to be able to just chill and I still got harassed.

different towns…also the incident at the campground happened and there were other people camping. The cop didn’t go check in on any of them. His specific “reasonable suspicion” was that in the past at that campground they have had trouble with “riff-raff”. Great! So be it, then why not go ID check all the other campers then? I was being profiled and targeted because of the vehicle I was driving. If you don’t understand then that’s because this hasn’t happened to you 10 times or more. It gets tiring.

Well, go buy a shitty minivan and drive it through some small towns and then after you get harassed you might get fed up a little. Maybe I was too ambiguous with the post title…I should have posted “what should I do” rather than “what do you do”

Are you living out of said van?

Yes, I am.