Don't Talk to the Police (2012)

I'm sure that there are situations where this is good to consider, but real life isn't a Criminal Minds episode where the lady's slowly getting lowered into the Pit of Misery while the police frantically try to get there in time. If you have important information, it can wait a day while you get your affairs in order.

If it really is that urgent, yes, I would say something. Any other time? It can wait.

You can (and should) help out, but with a lawyer present.

Did you not watch the video?

Even if you tell the absolute truth, the cops _might_ be able to twist that against you somehow.

Don't give them any ammunition. Sure, if the cop wants to be a hard-ass, let him haul you in. He probably won't because of all the paperwork.

The point of the video is that it's the cop's job to try to haul you in. Don't do the cop's job for him - he's much better at it than you are defending your innocence.

For an example, watch "My Cousin Vinnie". The sheriff accuses the defendant of shooting a clerk. The defendant responds incredulously "I shot him?" How do you think that reads in court in a deadpan voice?

Right, telling someone to "say the bare minimum" doesn't mean saying nothing at all and treating the officer poorly. Don't act superior because you happen to know your rights, that's basically as bad as being a two-bit criminal in their eyes. Police don't recruit people based on their sensitivity and grasp of common sense, they are people who enjoy the power dynamic the job gives them and for the most part 99% of the time people go out of their way to respect them (for better or worse) and whenever someone doesn't they over react, like a slighted bully in elementary school.

Police culture and training promotes this toxic type of no-common sense approach to handling situations, it trains them to be assertive and the 'alpha-male' in all situations, so any type of rebellion against this idea to them is treated as sacrosanct, at least by the average (aka dumb) officer.

And yes, for the most part if you are respectful and non-confrontational you won't have any problems.

Some people reject this entirely and think they have rights so they should assert them always. But ultimately these are social situations in which one party is given a significant imbalance of power, that goes well beyond the rational/common-sense "I didnt do anything wrong" context, and which goes well beyond the rights you do actually have - in a courtroom in front a judge.

The simple fact is police can make your life miserable without crossing any legal/employer boundaries. The bureaucracy, political culture, and power structures allow this to happen.

So if you care about this try to focus your energy on changing politics, police training, and the accepted police culture at the society/community level. In individual moments it's probably not worth the energy.

But that said, never ever say anything you don't want to reveal to a police officer, even (or especially) if you broke a law, and never trust a single thing they say about it being "the best thing for you to do at this moment". Be polite and listen to what they say in terms of behaviours, but if you are pressed repeatedly after not wanting to say something, then say you want a lawyer present because you don't feel comfortable in this situation. And yes sometimes that requires you being a "dick" to be assertive, but that's because the police have an incentive to make you feel that way. As long as you are a good citizen otherwise they have nothing on you and the truth will come out in court, if they can prove you did anything to get to that point.

Yeah, like, it's as easy as not responding with an answer when they ask you if you know how fast you were going. It's not that hard and if you're polite and you're white you're probably going to be okay.

"I'm just asking to see if you tell the truth. If you don't answer I know you're guilty". And end up arrested.

Who is annoying who? You are not required to answer any question. You might as well be non-polite too (I'm not suggesting it).

Yes. All the time. They get annoyed. Sometimes they shout or make empty threats. Eventually they tuck their tails between their legs and run off, realizing that I have no interesting in giving them any ammo against me.

> I grew up in a very privileged white world, with an attitude that I could always talk to the police because they were never interested in me. I felt that there would be unlikely to be an outcome where I got in any real trouble even if I had been breaking the law in some childish but “not actually bad” kind of way. Doing some dumb stunt or smoking a little weed - “nothing serious”.

What you describe as the "very privileged white world" sounds exactly how the citizen/police interactions ought to be.

It is a fragile balance that has been built and maintained by your society. The way you describe such as legacy is problematic, as people often see 'privilege' as something 'unfair', something to distance ourselves from. And by saying that the correct citizen/police interactions are a privilege, you push for everyone to average down, rather than make a better world for everyone.

You should instead focus on making sure everyone has the best chance of having a decent civil society. The best start is by using your everyday language as a way to anchor the correct interaction as the goal, not something to be avoided.

Ex:

"Last Friday night two officers brought me to my parents. I was a little too 'agitated'. It scared the shit out of me, but they let me go with a warning. I tell you man, I'm happy to have such friendly officers in my city." (<--- anchor it as a goal)

"My friend from a different place got in trouble with the police last week. It looks like it's a pattern. Hopefully we'll find what is causing this friction soon and stop this shit." (<--- point out it's an unwanted consequence and that something has to change.)

There is no such thing as asking for a lawyer prematurely. Cops are allowed to lie , mislead anyone they want basically. Always make sure someone unaffiliated with law enforcement is around as a witness because they will lie for each other.

Demanding a lawyer, and refusing to answer questions, explicitly should not make you look like a suspect in the eyes of the law. (The eyes of the investigating officer may be different, but they must follow the law in the end.)

Or its a balance between the moral imperative to help and the risk of harm to yourself? Maybe the urgency of a stolen baby is more important to you then fairly small risk of accidental self implication?

> Sometimes refusing to answer a simple question is going to get you arrested

This is not true. To arrest someone (in theory sure a rogue cop can do anything) police need probable cause. Probable cause is not 'refusing to answer questions'. If they have enough to arrest you answering questions is not going to make them decide to not arrest you. Why? Because why would they believe just what you say verbally if there is no easy way to prove what you are saying?

> As long as you're willing to risk arrest and expensive lawyers, don't say anything.

Lawyers are not automatically expensive. In fact, a decent lawyer can often save you money. It does require that you have the resources to pay for the lawyer in advance, and if you cannot then you have my sympathy, but my default position is yes. I get a lawyer for everything, even simple driving violations.

In the kidnapping scenario described above, I would definitely have tried to help the responding officer by describing what I saw and where the person fled, but anything beyond a very cursory exchange and it's 'I would like to help you but I have no further comment without speaking to a lawyer first'.

When the words of some lawyer in a YouTube video fly in the face of common sense, you should probably go with common sense, regardless of how emphatic the lawyer is. (tzs and I both believe it to be common sense that you should talk to the police here, although others may disagree.)

Edit: Currently there are some downvotes and no responses, so if anyone has a reasoned moral argument for why you should say "I will not answer without a lawyer" in tzs's example (for example, citing risks explained in the video and weighing them with the possible benefits of stopping a kidnapping), it would be great to hear that perspective. (Or any other criticisms of my comment are welcome.)

It's also thought of as obstruction of justice. So, you aren't looking out for yourself in this situation either.

A good rule of thumb (I teach all of my children relatives this) is that if you approach somebody they're probably ok. If they approach you, watch out.

In your example, you reached out to the police. If I called the police, I'd talk to them, as they'd be predisposed to like me. Otherwise, if they just come up to me and start asking random questions, I'll tell them to go away politely unless they had a warrant.

The police can't arrest you without probable cause. And just saying nothing is not probable cause.

You are talking as if not talking to the police is by itself a moral abomination, but there's a lot of points you're not considering.

a) Odds of getting into that situation are a million to one, against.

b) Odds of your information helping to find said baby are a million to one, against (and even that is very optimistic I would say)

c) Odds of a police officer asking you that question because they want to have someone to blame for the crime are low, but significantly higher than 1/1e12

So I think that both on moral grounds, and on legal grounds, you should say something evasive first, and if the officer doesn't go away at that point you definitely should say the "any question you can send to my lawyer, and we will do our best to answer as soon as possible" line.

And, by the way, your lawyer will be angry if you do anything else.

More generally I would encourage you to think about the role of the police in a society. Not in the "the state is right and absolutely moral" way you seem to be stuck in. A state is fundamentally unjust. No matter how democratic, no matter how well it's going economically. I have worked as a consultant at a ton of "high" state organisations and I guarantee you, a month at any of them is enough to cure anyone of the notions you have.

At best, states are a necessary evil. They make some necessary things happen that would otherwise not happen. The police are their enforcers. Like any other power structure, they give ego-satisfying perks and social status to their enforcers, and so you can imagine the kind of person and motivation that a police officer generally is. And if there's one thing that can be absolutely guaranteed, it's that there is no just way to use violence to resolve situations (but a few good looks at the law will quickly absolve you of the notion that they're just, or even intended to be just). The state is not your friend. And especially the police is not your friend.

And I realize this point is contentious, but have you ever thought about how arrogant it is to assume there is a single "just" system at all ? There's many models of morality, from natural morality, to utilitarianism, to the various religions, to ... Important to remember is that they're all different, conflicting and self-contradictory.

Surely any country with citizens having this conversation is close to collapse, no?

The point is that after you have requested a lawyer they are obliged to refrain from questioning you.

I always wonder this when people bring this up. Am I a weirdo for not having a lawyer on retainer at all times? That doesn’t sound like something that would be affordable for most people. And quite frankly, I don’t even know how I’d go about looking for or evaluating a lawyer.

For the purposes of your invoking your right, it doesn't matter. You have a right to a lawyer of some kind, and the purpose of saying that is to make them stop asking questions. You could just as easily say "I want to speak with my lawyer," if you've already got one, or, "I want to speak with a public defender," or something similar.

> What lawyer do I get? A random public defender? A private defender?

Generally speaking, somebody who's arrested falls into one of these categories: A. They have a lawyer already, and will contact that person or instruct the police to contact that person B. They don't have a lawyer, but can afford to retain one, and can contact someone who will take care of that for them or do it themselves C. They don't have a lawyer, and can't afford one, in which case they will be given a public defender

Courts generally won't give you a private attorney if you request a lawyer and can't pay for one - that's what public defenders are for. (Sometimes, private practice attorneys work with the public defender's office and take cases that way, but in that case, you still are not necessarily the one paying them.) In any of those cases, a person is always free to fire their counsel, retain different counsel, or represent themselves.

The basic rule - don't talk to police without a lawyer - applies no matter which case you fall into.

The way in which those rights are legally secured (in addition to the rights even conceived of) differs from one country to another, even in countries we'd generally consider as those which respect human rights and the rule of law.

Citation needed.

False, since 2013, when the Supreme Court held that remaining silent wasn't sufficient to invoke your right to remain silent.

"suspect did not sufficiently invoke the right to remain silent when he stubbornly refused to talk:"

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...

[citation needed]

Article 8 of the ECHR seems to require a court orders of some kind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv...

Not all European countries have the same exact rules as the US, some have stronger privacy in some areas and some have weaker in some areas.

But the US isn't exactly a poster child for privacy. Granted US rights on unlawful searches are for the most part decent.

Thank you very much I've always wondered. Anywhere else I can read about my rights as an EU citizen? Its a lot harder to get information about it compared to the US I feel

'What does "say little" entail...'

I'm guessing, saying nothing infers guilt whereas saying 'I can't remember...' (or similar) leaves room for manoeuvre at a later date?

He's specializing in use of force for self-defence, not necessarily shooting. The argument goes like this:

"Many people advocate that in the aftermath of a defensive use-of-force event you say literally nothing to the police except that you want to speak with your lawyer. And that 'Say NOTHING' approach is one way to go.

At Law of Self Defense, however, we suggest you consider an alternative, the 'Say LITTLE' approach -- meaning, saying a few very specific things, then asserting your rights to silence and counsel. Among the things we suggest saying, even before having your attorney present, is that your use of force was an act of self-defense.

One reason we suggest this is that most claims of self-defense are simply BS claims by bad guys, and these are often fabricated after the fact while they're sitting in their holding cell. If you defer claiming self-defense until hours after your first interaction with the police, you begin to look a lot like one of those fabricators. And if you DO, you can rest assured that this fact will be brought up in trial."

There's more details in his book and classes that are not freely available online.

You can talk about rights and due process all you want, I’m not disagreeing with any of that, that’s great for people who can afford it. I’m talking about the practical outcome of this for average Americans.

The practical outcome is that for every 1 time this advice prevents you from accidentally incriminating yourself, there will be 20 times that it just makes officers dislike you and abuse their authority over you, especially if you’re young and especially if they can tell you’re poor.

imagine a man face down on the ground with his hands behind his head and his legs crossed in a narrow hallway. the man is sobbing in terror, and drunk. two cops are pointing assault weapons at the man and screaming at him from 20 feet down the hallway. eventually, they shoot him.

I watched the video and read some background, basically my understanding is that the entire series of events went like this, at a high level:

The guy in the hotel room had been showing someone his pellet gun. Someone saw this through the hotel room window, thinking it was a real gun, and called the cops.

The cops arrived, expecting someone armed and dangerous. They seem really amped up on adrenaline.

A woman and the man come out of the hotel room, and the cop with the assault rifle screams at them to get down on the ground. They comply, but seem scared and confused. The cop asks if they are drunk, which they deny. He asks if they'll be able to understand all his commands, and they say yes. He keeps screaming at them and cutting them off when they try to talk.

The woman follows instructions and is successfully cuffed and taken away. The man tries to comply, but is sobbing and appears drunk. The cop gives him some (what seemed to me) not entirely clear instructions, and then tells the man to crawl toward him. After about 5 feet the man seems to lose his balance and try to pull up his pants, at which point the cop repeatly shoots him.

At the end the two cops try to get in to the hotel room, but the key cards they are given don't work. The second cop drops a key card after trying it a handful of times, picks it up, and keeps trying, seemingly extremely agitated. The video then cuts out.

As the suspect was crawling toward the police, he moved his right arm to adjust his pants. Bang, dead. None of this would have happened if the sergeant hadn't given many contradictory instructions to the drunk victim. The team was allegedly afraid of an ambush from the adjacent room, but they throw any caution to the wind straight after that. That video is a masterclass in incompetence. Neither the sergeant nor the shooter received any meaningful punishment.

Verify the firearm and attempt a non-lethal solution.

easy. the kid was pinned down, face down, from the very start of the video.

officer 1 advances to cuff, officer 2 covers. so fucking simple.

They should put a higher priority on "don't kill an innocent person" than on "immediately eliminate anything that could be a threat". Police officers should be trained based on the principle that the loss of an officer's life, while awful, is still less of a tragedy than the death of someone who could be an innocent bystander. They should be trained that when confronting a suspect, an outcome in which the officer and the suspect are both badly injured but alive is better than an outcome where the officer is unharmed and the suspect is dead. It should not be the role of police officers to kill anyone unless that person is unambiguously attempting violence or is planning imminent violence and cannot be deterred in any other way.

So applied to this case, the police officers should not have shot the suspect until they unambiguously saw a gun in his hand. Does that mean that they would be running the risk that the suspect had been faking his sobbing terror and his panicked, confused attempts at immediate compliance for the past three minutes, and that he had in fact decided to pull out a handgun to attack an entire team of police officers who had rifles aimed at his head? Yes, it does mean that they would be running that risk. By waiting until they could clearly see a gun in his hand, there would indeed be a chance that a suspect irrational and suicidal enough to try that could get off one or two hastily aimed shots in the general direction of the officers before being killed by their overwhelmingly superior firepower. But in the actual situation, and I suspect in a great many similar situations, an unnecessary death would have been avoided.

Take two steps back, calm down and command themselves and the situation.

Moment you start yelling you've lost control of yourself. For a police officer with a weapon drawn that's a dangerous and career ending situation.

Most of these cases would be trivially solved by police taking two steps back hiding in safety behind a corner while the situation calms down.

Or here is a new idea: take a risk, after police here is to protect others, NOT themselves.

Where are you not?

The right not to self-incriminate is pretty wide-spread :)

In Germany, after §163 StPO and related the police may interview you as part of an investigation but if you are a suspect you must be told so prior to any interview. You are allowed not to make any statements, which is not considered any crime. Additionally, any statements you make may only be used for discovery of the truth but are not in of themselves considered actual proof or evidence in absence of anything else, word of mouth is not fully sufficient with a few minor exceptions outside the scope of the StPO.

The sentiment re. the police in germany is much different than in america, so my initial assertion does not at all equate to "what you say can't be used against you", rather "the police is in general trustworthy and non-malicious", which does not seem to hold true for america.

You should consider that not all countries think like americans and do not hold the same sentiment as americans. People in other countries think different, not the same.

In most countries the police does an independent investigation, and what you say to them can also be used in your defense.

The police can be called to testify on your behalf; just as well as they can testify against you.

Not always a reason to talk, but it makes it less dangerous to help the police. After all we do want to help the police catch criminals don't we?

I think omission of information makes it aiding and abetting or accessory or something. Not a lawyer either, but a lawyer once told me that this was a notable exception to the rule in this video.

How do you know what you are and are not accused of?

Good point, thanks.

"There was a shooting. Please send police and ambulance" and then hang up?

Won't the police show up expecting an active armed gunman? Is there anything you can say to show that there is no new danger of violence without implicating yourself?