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Comment by pweissbrod | Hacker News Reader

QUESTION for Americans: If you approach a police officer and ask for directions (or any context where youre not a suspect) and the police officer asks for your ID can you legally refuse to comply?

*Edit: This has happened to me before. After politely asking 'why do you need my ID?' things escalated. I complied out of fear of being detained.

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> If you approach a police officer and ask for directions (or any context where youre not a suspect) and the police officer asks for your ID can you legally refuse to comply?

Often, yes, the police ask for ID in conditions where they have no legal authority to demand it and you are perfectly free, legally speaking, to refuse. [0]

Of course, the officer asking for the ID may not be aware that they lack legal authority to demand it, and may not care if they are aware.

I think this depends on whether the policeman has probable cause and if the state has any statute or common law speaking to the question.

If you challenge the policeman's (assertion of cause and) lawful order, what a policeman can do is take you before a neutral magistrate and have them decide if you refused a lawful order. This usually involves handcuffs and jail so you cannot abscond beforehand. And more punishment if you are wrong. But again I think this depends on the statute/common law of the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes#Con...

Yes, legally you can refuse, but then the cop will come up with some reason to detain you so you can't refuse. If you approach a police officer, you've already made a huge mistake and pretty much are fucked. Don't do it. That's the only thing you should care about. If you're already interacting with one, you fucked up really bad. Pray that you get out alive. I'm really NOT exaggerating. Being white helps tremendously, so be white if you can.

The police officer is a person, so they are free to ask you whatever they want. In most circumstances, you are free to decline to answer.

Some states do have a "duty to identify" law making it illegal to decline to identify yourself to a police officer. If you're traveling I would imagine it's incumbent upon you to know whether or not you're legally required to present identification if asked by a police officer.

Yes, in most states, you could refuse legally. Whether or not the Officer will accept that, and whether or not you actually want to risk potentially having to fight the legal fight to prove you were within your rights is a completely different question though.

Legally: under most circumstances, you can refuse to comply.

In practice: you never want to escalate an encounter with police officers here, it can quite easily with loss of life. You did the prudent thing.

IANAL, answers based on my life lived in the US...

The risk involved greatly depends on context including race. This is where the term 'white privilege' becomes highly salient

This is a fun thing to talk about in Hacker News. I'm outa this thread.

Yes, of course. You are under no obligation to share that information in such an encounter.

Thanks. The police officer made it seem quite to the contrary. It's a shame that one of the police officer's core duties _isnt_ clarifying finer points of laws even when it works in criminal's favor.

The ELI5 is that the police officer's duty is to enforce the law, not explain it.

The slightly (but not much) more nuanced explanation is that 99% of police officers do not know the finer points of laws because they don't need to. They know just enough to get an idea of whether or not a person has broken a law. Once they get enough information to arrest someone, it's up to the DA if a law was actually broken and if they want to pursue charges.

It's not generally relevant to the police officer's day-to-day interactions with the public to have enough knowledge about the law to clarify the finer points of it to a layman, as they're mostly laymen themselves.

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not saying this is the ideal, just that this is how it is currently in the US. The police pack the pipeline to the DA and the DA decides which cases to pursue (press charges) and which to ignore (release).

Based on the details of the encounter, I would disagree. The police repeatedly (apparently) asked for his ID and escalated the encounter. Based on those facts, I would not assume that I was not being detained and was free to go.

The Supreme Court has held that even if the police have a flawed understanding of the laws and rules they are enforcing, their flawed interpretation governs the interaction on the street. So what the office believed matters, and that in turn guides his/her behavior. If you're in the right, you can usually be vindicated after a brief trip through the criminal justice system (arrest, jail, court). But it's guaranteed to ruin your day.

Safest bet would have been to ask "Am I free to go?" to find out.

> The police repeatedly (apparently) asked for his ID and escalated the encounter. Based on those facts, I would not assume that I was not being detained and was free to go.

Even if one is detained, one is not legally obligated to produce ID (even if one has it in one's possession, which also is not required.)

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes ?

I would think there is some overlap between reasons to invoke those statutes and reasons to detain.

Is it simply the case that none of those laws require production of a document?

Stop and identify statutes apply to detentions (they are not merely overlapping), but AFAIK the only one requiring identity documents considered by the federal courts was struck down as unconstitutional.

Reiterating a point from my comment (and others here): you can be right legally, but you may have to risk jail to prove yourself right.

In practice, this means that you may assert your right to the police officer, who stridently disagrees based on his misunderstanding of the law. You will then be put into handcuffs and taken into custody (at best) and be jailed. Your arrest mugshots will be posted to the public Internet, handily available for any employer doing a background check on you. You will get someone to come to the jail and post bail on your behalf. You will spend money on a lawyer to defend you. Your charges may be summarily dismissed, but you may not find that out until the day of your court appearance (so you had to hire a lawyer anyway).

You will have proven your point.

It's far easier to ask "Am I free to go?" in an encounter like the one described. Even better: ask a civilian for directions.

Generally good advice, of course.

However, I note as a counter example that the last time I asked a member of the public for directions it was in the US, in Baltimore, the morning before a riot. He directed us to a station far from where we needed to be and in an area of town which looked a bit dodgy.

> "The Supreme Court has held that even if the police have a flawed understanding of the laws and rules they are enforcing, their flawed interpretation governs the interaction on the street."

Gee, how convenient. And not consistent with the constitution, particularly according to this case, the fourth amendment doesn't have an exception for "cases where the agent of the state is confused".

Another example of "Don't talk to the police."

I don't know what police agencies expect to happen. A certain number of grenades in babies cribs are going to happen, but if these things go unpunished and merely asking for directions (or calling 911 because your kid is suicidal resulting in cops showing up and executing him) results in a negative outcome, how can they expect continuing public support?

I go out of my way to avoid the police and for most cases where I might be the victim of a crime, I'm just not going to involve the police, unless it's something on the order of murder. And even in that case I expect there's a good chance if they feel they can pin it on me they will, without regard for the evidence or truth. The cost of defending myself would bankrupt me.

The system is broken.

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