Yeah, and I've faced a couple of those potential nightmares... unfortunately, my experience has been: the cops act a lot worse when you have "anti-cop tech" visible in your car, for instance I got the most bogus speeding ticket of all time when a radar detector was visible. Times I've been "at their mercy" where they could plant anything, claim anything, do anything, no witnesses around just me and them, they've always been more decent - almost never wrote anything up, just waved me on about my business after the stop.
For awhile, I ran around with 10 old registrations in the trunk but "couldn't find" the most recent one, even though the sticker on the tag was updated. I must have gotten 3 written warnings for "no valid registration" when I thought I was going to get a speeding ticket. They got a free look inside my trunk, got to write something up, and didn't have to hit me with a speeding fine. It's far from ideal, in the ideal world everything is on audio/video record and we base everything on the actual truth, but cops being human (and subject to human pettiness) sometimes having that record just makes them want to show you everything they can do to you without you being able to effectively fight back - including dragging your ass in to court for no reason whatsoever, they don't even bother to show - or maybe they do and they lie when they get there and they know (and in some towns are related to) the judge... If they know they have nothing of substance to present in court (like that radar detector cop) they just don't show up.