So the cop’s story is that he has to run their IDs to see whether they’re committing a crime. Obviously, they’re not committing a crime, or they would have been arrested right off the bat by this power tripping tyrant. The validity of their IDs obviously has no effect on whether they’re currently committing a crime.

What they do when they give him their IDs is to open themselves up to arrest for something they may not even know about. Maybe they have erroneously had a warrant attached to their ID (that happens quite often). Why even risk it by handing over your ID voluntarily?

As I’ve said before, a truly meaningful way to show gratitude to veterans is to tell a cop to bug off.