Saunders: You don’t forget a police officer’s gun pointed at your head

I know what it feels like to almost get killed by a cop.

In nearly 40 years of driving, I’ve been pulled over by police easily more than 100 times, sometimes deservedly so. Three times they have pulled weapons on me.

On this particular bright Saturday morning 30 years ago while driving up Broadway in Gary, Ind., where I was a newspaper columnist, another car cut me off. I tooted my horn – inoffensively, I thought – but the driver took offense.

He saluted me, using one finger. Me, being young and stupid, returned the salute.

In my mind, the incident was over. My nemesis had other ideas, though. He slowed down in front of me, causing me to slam on my brakes. The woman beside him in the passenger seat bent down out of sight and he appeared to reach over into the glove compartment. I figured, correctly it turned out, that he was reaching for a gun, because he pulled next to me and waved it at me.

I zoomed around him, but he remained behind me. Through my mirror I saw him talking on a CB radio and immediately feared he was calling his buddies to come and waylay me.

That’s when I got scared and reached into the secret compartment of my Volvo and pulled out my legally registered handgun. I eventually lost him in traffic, or so I thought. I pulled into a bank’s parking lot and then up to its drive-thru window.

Within minutes, I heard what sounded like every police car siren in the world.

How oblivious was I? This oblivious: My first thought was: “Oh boy, somebody’s robbing the bank and I’m right here to cover it.”

Not exactly. Within seconds, I was surrounded by police cars, and one officer jumped onto the hood of my car, his gun pointed down through my open sunroof and right at my head.

One never forgets a day like that, and I remember my first thought being “Man, I didn’t know I was going to die today.”

On TV, whenever cops point a gun at a suspect, they shout “Put your hands up!”

Most. Superfluous. Statement. Ever. When police point a gun at your head, your hands go up automatically. The officer then told me to give him my license. I looked at my wallet, which was on the passenger seat beside my legally registered gun, then looked at him. “No sir,” I said, feigning calmness, hands still raised. “I know what you’re going to do. If I reach for my wallet, you’re going to say I’m reaching for my gun and you’re going to kill me.”

The teller at the bank, a kindly sounding older woman, said through the intercom, “Don’t worry, baby. I’m watching everything.”

In the officer’s defense, there is no telling what he was told by the guy who called him after threatening me. In retrospect, I’ve come to actually applaud his restraint, because if he’d shot me, I’d have been just another in a long line of “justifiable” shootings of brothers.

What happened in Elizabeth City to cause police to descend upon Andrew Brown Jr. with enough weaponry to storm Fallujah is still unknown, since they’ve shown Brown’s family only a snippet of video footage. Police say such an overpowering show of force was necessary because Brown had been charged previously with resisting arrest.

Did he truly pose a threat to them that warranted his being shot to death?

We don’t know. What I know, though, is how easy it is to catch a “resisting” charge: if an officer bends your arm behind your back in an unnatural way, your natural and reflexive instinct is to pull it forward. That’s resisting arrest.

Want to know the two scariest words in the English language?

Stop resisting - when you’re not resisting.

My greatest regret about that Indiana incident, besides not staying at home in bed that morning?

Never going back and thanking that bank teller for possibly saving my life.