Hacker News Reader

Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

> There is no upside to allowing them in

I get what you are saying, and agree with your decision to not talk to the police, but it isn’t true that there can be NO upside to talking to the police.

For all the bad things police do, they DO also solve some crimes and arrest some dangerous people. If someone killed one of my loved ones, I would hope the police would be able to find, arrest, and successfully prosecute the murderer.

If no witness will speak to the police, it makes solving a homicide much more difficult.

This is why the current approach to policing is so awful. We should work on fixing the system so talking to the police is a good thing.

View on HN

> This is why the current approach to policing is so awful. We should work on fixing the system so talking to the police is a good thing.

Exactly. Addressing your example, as it's a good one: To be blunt, me risking the legal standing or overall safety of my family just to bring your family some closure is not a trade-off I'm willing to make. I'm genuinely sorry because I would absolutely like to help, but the downside risk is too great.

I am in an incredibly privileged position in our society, and I've gotten grief at the hands of the police while I was being a "good citizen" and offering information. Never again. If they want to know something we will be doing it in full view of the public out on the street or with my lawyer present.

  "public out on the street or with my lawyer present."

Isn't a large reason why one shouldn't talk to the police because they may intentionally misconstrue what you say? Being in public won't solve that, hence the lawyer bit.

Completely agreed; I was addressing the concerns of the people who would or wouldn't allow a police officer into their residence.

If I absolutely must speak to an officer without a lawyer present, we will be outside in public, not indoors in private. If that's not acceptable to the officer...well, too bad.

(Though, the hilarity of it is, I am in a position where I can even say no to an officer and the officer will likely respect it. I "look like" I have the resources to push back on police abuse, so police are less likely to abuse me. If I didn't look like that, I probably wouldn't even have the chance to say no, at least not without a lot of pressure.)

They don't even have to misconstrue it. You could unintentionally change some facts in your story from what you had said 5-10 minutes ago, for example. Cops are trained to pick up on little stuff like that, while you might not even realize you did it.

That's why you need a lawyer present.

>> To be blunt, me risking the legal standing or overall safety of my family just to bring your family some closure is not a trade-off I'm willing to make. I'm genuinely sorry because I would absolutely like to help, but the downside risk is too great.

And it's probably even more risky if you are a witness or have useful information. Putting yourself at a crime scene - even if you saw nothing - seems like a bad idea these days. "Oh you were there but you did see anything? Reeeealy?"

Getting back to the headline, I think they need to at least be required to tell the truth in court.

"Don't talk to the police" is a bit of a slogan, rather than really saying zero word when you can help.

I'll be happy to provide the police with any information as long as I'm under the advisement of a lawyer.

I'll willingly testify in a court.

The problem is talking to the police directly by myself, as the police naturally see all related people as suspects. You are a witness in your own eyes; you are a suspect in theirs.

Don't talk, even with a lawyer. Get written questions and give written testimony through the lawyer.

That's why I said "provide information" in my comment. I suppose that my lawyer would advise me on the appropriate medium of communication.

This won't work for most people. Lawyers are expensive, and you only get a free one if you are charged with a crime. You won't be provided a lawyer if they want to question you as a witness.

If the police aren't willing to provide a witness with legal protection, it's their fault that people don't want to talk to them.

If I can't get a lawyer when question by a police officer, I don't answer a question.

(It's different if I'm in a courtroom, obviously)

Ha, in many places, you aren't just given a lawyer. You have to prove to the court you can't afford one. Can't prove it? Judge don't care.

>> There is no upside to allowing them in

> I get what you are saying, and agree with your decision to not talk to the police

They DID talk to the police. (They said, "We'll answer any questions here")

Bringing them inside your home really doesn't have an upside. I don't invite armed strangers inside my home as a rule, and making an exception is unnecessary.

> I don't invite armed strangers inside my home as a rule, and making an exception is unnecessary.

If your trust in a police officer is so low that you put them on equal ground as people who carry guns (criminals or police, in my country) then something is very wrong.

You might be paranoid, you might live in a country where the law is corrupt, a combination of that, or something else. For sure, something is very wrong.

I've helped the police with crime cases. Doing so, makes my society a little bit more safe and just. I also got help from police when I needed them. Then again, not living in USA. My secret is sauce is simple: be honest. If being honest gets you into trouble in your country, something's off.

It's a bit flippant to call a person dressed as a police officer you don't know an armed stranger, but it's factually true, which contextualizes the decision.

I don't know what you think the upside is of letting someone in a police uniform you don't know to come into your home is, no matter how rosy your view of the police.

That does not mean being completely unhelpful. That does not being unfriendly to police officers you know. That does not mean being unwelcome to police officers places that are open to the general public, like your porch, your business, your club's facility, etc. It just means that you keep your private residence private to people you didn't invite in unless legally required not to.

In my country, a police officer knocking on your door is going to be one assigned to your neighborhood. You can ask them for ID before you let them in. If you're on the good side of the law, there is no reason for fear.

Are you aware that one of the largest political issues in the US right now is exactly that: a complete lack of trust and respect in the police and how they go about their jobs? A popular slogan in the US is ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) This is a comment on an article about how cops need to stop lying to people during investigations.

I'm glad you think your cops are great, but we're trying to talk about how to reform them, we already know there is a problem. US police can lie to you in order to get information, in addition to a host of other abuses. Saying "be honest to cops and everything will be fine" feels a bit glib.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. ACAB in my country is forbidden, because its insulting a civil servant in office.

If police are not allowed to lie while civilians can lie, the police are in a severe disadvantage. Perhaps the balance is tipped the wrong way, but the mere notion that police are allowed to lie isn't wrong in itself.

> ACAB in my country is forbidden

The authoritarian worship in this comment really says enough about the totalitarianism of your country.

Police are public servants. As such everything they do or say should be held under perjury. Police, leaders, government officials, lawyers, judges should know more about the laws than average citizens to.

Being in a position of authority and having that power should come great responsibility, so great in fact that you should have to serve 3x the prison sentence for betraying that trust.

Same should go as well for ethics violations for clergy, medical professionals, teachers, etc.

you said earlier if it was your family who was murdered you'd hope the police would do something, no?

What if it was the police who murdered your family? In L.A. the police are in actual "cliques" which are basically "gangs" with special tattoos and other gang related rights of passage.

How do you trust the police when https://reddit.com/r/policebrutality2020 has thousands of links of police hurting people, yet when people in the "in group" that they respect (white nationalists) try to destroy the foundations of our democracy, they step aside and let it happen?

The totalitarianism in my country? I'm from The Netherlands, one of the most free and democratic countries in the world.

With regards to police brutality, its a one sided view. Its an angle from a camera, from one point of view. It lacks different views, it lacks context. A body cam can show the context from the police PoV.

To give an example [1] shows a woman who gets blasted by a water cannon. These are meant to drive people apart. However, at that point, these people were in an area where a demonstration (which was escalating into a riot and pillaging). The area was at that point forbidden to be (which always happens for a reason). If you don't listen to such, you're on your own.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm6IaWXIUc0

The current homicide clearance rate is 61.4% (That’s only arrest, not a conviction).

If resolving the adversarial relationship between citizens and police would improve that then it’s something we should explore. Right now I’m not sure how that could happen, given the deep problems with American Law Enforcement, Correctional, and Justice systems.

> We should work on fixing the system so talking to the police is a good thing.

I don't think I will live long enough to see it, at least in my country. The French police is less dangerous than the US one, but they're still dangerous, even for those that committed no crime, and and not only for minorities. A (white) delivery driver was recently strangled to death by police officers in Paris in broad daylight, despite repeatedly telling them he could not breath. No administrative penalty was applied, though an inquiry has started due to the large popular outcry.

In a broader perspective, the worst terrorist attack in French history was in Paris in autumn... not 2015 but 1961. The French police wanted to terrify the Algerian people (which had French citizenship at that time). Police killed 150-200 unarmed people in a single night. The man in charge (M. Papon), like many other members of the police, had played an important role in the deportation of Jews during WWII. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

There was a recent commotion when French policemen could be heard joking about this event, especially about "drowning the Algerians". Some sociological studies prove that the racist terms dating from the Algeria war are still pervasive in the French police more than 60 years after the war.

Damn, now I see why the French love revolutions lol.

I thought it was bad here in USA, but I guess it's a global problem. We need to stomp out authoritarianism everywhere but heck if I know how to do that.

I agree. Not talking to the cops is an easy policy to adopt if, like most of us, you live in a pretty safe neighborhood with nothing but victimless drug crimes, but a lot of people who have the most reason to fear the police also have the most reason to need them to do their job effectively. It's not so simple for them. If they talk to the police, maybe they go to jail, but if they don't talk to the police, maybe the next house that gets burgled is their mom's. Maybe the next car that gets stolen is theirs. It's a shitty bind to be in.

Police barely ever solve crimes. Murder, the most serious crime, is hardly ever solved. There is no fixing the situation with talking to police, how would you fix the system? It would take decades of action on the part of the police to regain the public’s trust. One wrong move by one cop, one time would reset that back to zero.

That’s overstating things. Most murder cases in the US are solved. 40% aren’t, though.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r...

To be fair, solving a great many murders is probably a simple matter of finding the family member with literal blood on his hands and a history of domestic abuse. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.

60% of murder cases result in someone getting arrested. So we still have to ask: a) how many of those arrests result in a conviction? b) how many of those convictions are of the right person? c) and how many murders result in murder cases?

A murder case basically starts with police opening a file saying "X has been murdered" and goes on from there. So if the death looks enough like accident or natural causes or suicide, no murder case is opened and it doesn't count as an uncleared murder.

Therefore it wouldn't surprise me if the majority of murders (51%, anyway) are unsolved.

Yeah solved with the real killer still out there.

Imagine a life insurance broker that moonlights as a serial killer offing someone's spouse soon after the policy is open. The remaining spouse is going to prison for a very long time every single time.

I can imagine that, but I'm having a harder time imagining it to be common.

just non-negligible

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3566383

Seems it’s only about 22% of serious crimes which are solved. Of course the beauty of these “facts” is they differ wildly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com