Police officers have extraordinarily difficult jobs, and go to work each day knowing there is a chance they might not return home to their families and loved ones.

Any cop will tell you there is no such thing as a “routine” traffic stop. When an officer pulls a car over and walks up to the driver’s side window, he or she never quite knows what may happen next.

That said, the officer who pulled ex-UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones over in Albuquerque, N.M., last week for allegedly drag racing allowed a situation to escalate far beyond what it should have.

Jones was needlessly belligerent, and under no circumstances should he have called the cop “a [expletive] liar.” Having escaped a potentially disastrous situation a little less than a year ago, when a car he was driving ran a red light and hit another vehicle that happened to be driven by a pregnant woman, Jones should be wise enough to try not to draw needless attention to himself.

Jones has a rematch with his arch-rival, Daniel Cormier, scheduled for April 23 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas that is set to be the main event of UFC 197. It will be his opportunity to regain the title that was stripped from him after his hit-and-run last year.

Incredibly, Jones was also pulled over in February for driving without a license, proof of registration or insurance.

All of this was entirely preventable by Jones.

That said, the situation turned ugly, and the video of an angry Jones sneering and cursing at the officer who made the stop turned up on TMZ largely because of the officer’s attitude.

The police officer involved could easily have de-escalated the situation, but chose to banter back and forth with Jones.

View photos Former UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. (Photo by Josh Hedges/Getty Images) More

Put yourself in Jones’ shoes for a second: You’ve already lost a lot after the 2015 traffic accident. You were ticketed for the driving without a license charge, you have a major event in your personal life coming up and now you’re being given five tickets you don’t believe you deserve.

It’s probably not fair to say most, but many drivers would be irritated and snap at the officer.

And the odds of that happening would increase if the officer acted smug and continued to make smart remarks.

Jones was ticketed for drag racing; revving his engine and making unnecessary engine noise; a loud exhaust; driving outside of his traffic lane; and having his license plate holder obscure the registration sticker on his plate.

Curiously, he wasn’t ticketed for speeding even though the officer tells Jones he saw him speed away from a stop light with another card.

The video doesn’t show the incident, so it’s impossible to know whose account of what happened is correct.

When the officer ran Jones’ plate, he knew who he was dealing with. Jones is a major celebrity in Albuquerque and be sure that the city’s police officers know him very well.

The officer also would have seen Jones’ record. Jones had a DUI conviction in New York in 2012 and the accident in Albuquerque last year.

Jones, 28, has made a point of talking publicly about his sobriety. He said prior to becoming sober in the last few months, he hadn’t been sober since he was 17.

In the video, he did not appear to be under the influence of either alcohol or drugs, and the officer let him drive away after issuing the tickets. Given the way the officer was acting toward him, had he smelled as much as a drop of alcohol on Jones’ breath, he wouldn’t have let Jones drive away.

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