Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

Back in 2018 I got into a serious car accident. I was driving eastbound on Fountain Avenue when another car blew a red light and t-boned my Miata at full speed, crushing my entire driver's side, causing my car to spin 540 degrees, take out a stop sign and land on the front lawn of a nearby apartment building.

I got out of my car, dazed amid a cloud of air bag dust and miraculously unscathed. I was wearing my seat belt and had my convertible top and windows all the way down. I otherwise would surely have ended up with a face full of glass.

The other driver -- about a block away -- also got out of their car. They took a glance at me, got back into their car and sped off. Their car had no plates.

I called 911 and Deputy Penate of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department arrived on the scene. His attitude toward me was immediately hostile.

I was in a completely traumatized state and had just experienced the scariest moment of my life. As I was on the phone trying to arrange a tow, he approached me and said: "Do you think we could hurry this up? I'd really like to have some dinner tonight."

A few minutes later as we were waiting for the tow truck, he got out of his patrol car and approached me again, making sniffing noises: "Why do I smell marijuana right now, sir? If I search your car am I'm gonna find anything I'm not supposed to find?"

I don't smoke marijuana. There was no contraband in my car, which had been laying totaled on the side of the road with its top down for an hour.

I had just been the victim of a serious crime and here was this law enforcement officer, trying to turn me into a criminal instead of assisting me in any way.

That experience was a serious blow to my faith in law enforcement.

I once got rear-ended by a young-ish driver. She was respectful, admitted fault, apologized. Then, the police showed up. At first they were decent, just doing their jobs. Then, almost instantly, their tone changed. Same thing - told me they smelled marijuana (I never smoked weed in my life). Then it turned into an inquisition: "You told me you're going home, which is south, but why are you headed north right now?" "I'm going to my parents' home, which is north of here." "Sounds like you're story keeps changing." One cop said something like, "Are you a mama's boy? Gotta go see mommy?", which was weird, but that's how the tone was now.

Anyway, as I was getting hammered with questions and accusations, I noticed the young-ish driver getting into the back of the second police car. Then, they drove away. I thought they found drugs or something.

Turns out the young-ish driver was the daughter of the chief of police. I spent the next month or so getting harassed by a local prosecutor (the cops smelled marijuana! back in the early-90s, weed was a big crime.). He said the police were "investigating" and he was deciding whether or not to bring the case. Furthermore, my own insurance agent told me I should probably drop my claim because the young-ish driver's insurance company would fight it ("it's complicated because it was dark at the time."), and it would just take a long time so it probably wasn't worth it.

In the end, I submitted the insurance claim, received peanuts (not even enough to fix my car) and dropped State Farm. I didn't care too much because I knew I was leaving town (Modesto, CA). And I've never gone back.

I'm glad you shared this, thanks. Keep sharing it!

They're terrified of losing their blank check to behave this way. The more that people suspect that police are extremely dangerous and stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, the more chance we have of changing how they operate.

When I moved to the US, a friend's dad, a high-powered attorney (and former prosecutor) in our region, told a group of us: "don't ever talk to a police officer unless you absolutely have to. They can make your life hell for any reason they want, or no reason, and they'll always get away with it."

Coming from a country where the cops were much, much less violent and much more trusted, this was shocking to me. But that was a long time ago now and I can't honestly say the advice has served me poorly.

This is indeed the best advice: do not talk to the police. It can never help and you are likely to incriminate yourself even if you are innocent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Not that I disagree with this advice, but what are you supposed to do if you're the victim of a crime (e.g., like the comment at the top of the thread, another driver crashed into your car)?

Is the answer that the best thing to do is to let it go - and, in turn, to let go of any possible insurance payout that depends on you filing a police report?

The lawyer who said "don't talk to police" would undoubtably talk to police if he was a victim of a crime. The lack of nuance or thoughtfulness in that video seems to be part of the appeal to folks who like to link to it.

A more reasonable take would be to do a cost benefit analysis of whether an interaction with the police would likely cause trouble for you.

As a random citizen you cannot make that cost benefit analysis. For anything else than a serious crime, you're better off not talking to the police. If you need to talk to the police, only do so after consultation with, and accompanied by, an attorney.

So as a random citizen you can't do a cost benefit analysis of whether to talk to the police but you can somehow evaluate whether a law professor, seemingly unrepresentative of his profession, is giving good advise in a bizarre Youtube video? That's some selective learned helplessness.

If you are too ignorant to evaluate whether to talk to the police then you are too ignorant to evaluate the accuracy of the video.

You do realize attorney's cost MONEY right? And the vast majority of people cannot afford an attorney's assistance. I mean if you are in the 6 figures and up club like most of Hacker News you can probably pay for a legal plan where the attorney can file to get paid a couple hundred bucks for the question you asked but still.....

(this is the part where I get sent links for a bunch of "free" legal resource links, that will totally respond to your email and return your phone call. Totally)

I have filed police reports for stolen bikes for instance, that's fine. Especially if you can do it electronically. But never agree to talk to them without an attorney supervision, under any circumstances.

If you are a victim of a severe crime, please talk to an attorney first.

Lawyers always give this advice, because by the time a case gets to a defense attorney, the defendant's statements to police can only be a negative. But in the case of a minor traffic stop, you can often avoid a ticket by being polite and apologizing. Or, stated conversely, you can turn a planned warning into a ticket by being a jerk or totally non-cooperative. (Caveat: I am a white dude. This may not work for all races and genders.)

I'd rather accept the higher likelihood of a ticket and preserve my rights than have to kiss ass just to be given decent treatment as a human being. Fuck the police and fuck talking to them. Also white male with plenty of money for lawyers.

The point is you never know what police is looking for. What looks like a simple traffic stop to you can be police looking for a suspect, and by being cooperative, you risk incriminating yourself. It's not worth it, never.

Even if the intention is a simple traffic stop, police is incentivized to bring their numbers up, so anything you say during a traffic stop can and routinely will be used to pin higher offenses on you. Again, it's not worth it.

My experience in Canada wasn't that different.

Car was stolen, I found it a few blocks away. Cop showed up to take a report 12 hours later and immediately accused me of driving drunk, forgetting where I parked, then smashing up the steering column to create a cover story. Was very aggressive about it (see my story would change) until I looked him in the eye and told him I'm leaving if he wasn't going to help.

Similar experience in the US. Victim of theft from my garage, cops show up and pretty much don't care but are more interested in poking around.

Latest experience in both countries is utter indifference unless it's a violent crime. Last time my car was broken into I don't even both making a report.

Not LA County, but SFPD - I was hit by a car that ran a red while out for a run. Hard enough to knock me down but not break anything. I managed to remember half the guy's license plate before he drove away, so I called SFPD. An hour later two officers showed up to my house and took a report. They said someone would follow up. No one ever did.

A couple of weeks later there was a report of a hit and run on an SFPD officer. Very similar circumstances - he was not in uniform, he just happened to be a police officer who was hit by an inattentive driver. Hard enough to knock him down but not break anything. They caught the guy within a couple of hours.

Cops care about cops. If they can protect the citizens that they're supposed to, that's a nice little bonus, but given the choice between protecting other cops vs. non-cops, they'll always choose other cops.

That’s a bizarre conclusion. Do you not believe in the efficacy of technology like video cameras? In the second case you mentioned it’s easy to imagine they got a full recording of the event and thus had more to work with than half a license plate number.

Where in the parent's comment did you get the idea that:

>"In the second case you mentioned it’s easy to imagine they got a full recording of the event and thus had more to work with than half a license plate number."

It seems like you're deliberately imagining circumstances favorable to the police.

SF police have bodycams last time I checked, which almost guarantees the presence of one recorded video at least. And also many locations in SF are heavily covered by cameras? Like the downtown cores of many cities?

>...he was not in uniform...

Why would the officer have a body cam if not on duty? GP is correct, you're ignoring what was written and fabricating details.

Isn’t the presence of cameras on buildings in the second case and not in the first case also easy to imagine. Unless you believe that’s implausible in SF? It’s interesting that you ignored addressing the second part of my two part comment while also throwing the same accusation.

You don't get credit for throwing crap against the wall, even if some of it might hypothetically stick ("hypothetically" being the key word, you are still imagining details that weren't in the original account). That's indicative of bad faith.

Making an accusation of bad faith is different from giving credit. The standard behaviour on HN for disagreement is not to immediately jump to accusations of bad faith but to have a polite discussion without necessarily giving credit. I can make the same accusation of bad faith against you but that leads nowhere.

Your first scenario is unlikely given that he wasn't otherwise uniformed, the second we could assume for both scenarios.

They don't wear body cams while off duty, in plain clothes.

Another one on duty could have been nearby? Anyways I’m not saying that is how it happened since obviously it’s just someone’s story on the internet, but the point is that there are so many possibilities for more solid evidence in a hit-and-run than half a plate number in a city like SF.

Beat cops aren't really empowered to do what a normal person would consider an "investigation". (their "investigations" are stopping people and asking them questions) They write citations and reports of incidents they directly witness to and statements by people they directly talk to.

No way in hell 2 patrol cops are gonna do all the paperwork or are encouraged to go track down the various video footage to find out who hit you. They might refer it to a detective. Who wont action something that will likely result in a misdemeanor offense or very light straight to probation felony at best. Especially when you consider detectives workloads. It makes a certain degree of sense when considering prioritization. The detectives supervisor would probably lambast them for deciding to spend the half day to track all that down when more serious crime could have been pursued instead.

Meanwhile the detective has way more incentives in his social group to prioritize finding the person who hit the SFPD detective. The detectives supervisor might even tell them to drop everything and prioritize to help internal office politics!

Right - that's the point. If it's a low priority crime, fine. I understand they can't track down everyone and prosecute everything.

But the same crime shouldn't get vastly higher priority because the victim is a cop (situations in which a cop is targeted because they're a cop excluded, but that wasn't the case here).

I recall reading an article written by a former cop who said 20% of cops are excellent people and 20% are really horrible people. The remaining 60% are doing a job and will be approximately average most of the time but depending on the day or the culture of their department or other circumstances could be a hero or a villain.

I realize its an oversimplification on many levels but I find it useful sometimes in trying to think about cops as people, something which often gets lost.

Didn't that just (roughly) describe a bell curve? And isn't 20% of cops being horrible people way too much? Less than one standard deviation away from the norm and you're already in "make up fake drugs charges" territory?

Did the article talk about what the 60% do about the 20% who are horrible? This is the question that tends to be avoided in discussions that take this line or similar ones. If those numbers are accurate, the majority of average cops outnumber the horrible ones 3:1 and also have the 20% of excellent cops to refer to as examples. I think that's a more useful framing than one which positions the majority of cops as victims of "the day or the culture of their department or other circumstances".

You’ve lived your whole life with LAPD federally indicted under the RICO Act, reserved for literally gangs, and you held that cartoonishly juvenile view of police the whole time “until they came for you”. Amazing.

Pay attention to the ACAB graffiti written everywhere next time. Imagine some of those people either had a similar experience as you, or don't need to personally have one to perceive reality more accurately.

Because ACAB is a dumb, reductive, poorly thought out slogan; and people that are dumb enough to spray paint on random property completely unrelated to the police aren’t people I’m going to listen to. And I’m certainly not alone in that. There are much better examples out there of the dark reality of policing, that’s a child’s tantrum.

It is overly reductive, but one point that it succinctly highlights is that the well behaving community driven and collaborative police are accomplices to sheltering the more dangerous ones. And that the incentives to do that can be modified.

Yes, but a huge amount of people don’t jump to that. They jump to “I have a friend/neighbor who’s a cop and their not a bastard, so you’re wrong”. And those are people you need to win over.

> Because ACAB is a dumb, reductive, poorly thought out slogan;

It's not though.

I mean “All cops are made bad independent of their personal ethics by the structural defects of the system of policing” is both more precise and more accurate, but it really doesn’t work as a slogan.

It is though, because it doesn’t at all communicate that message to most people who aren’t already inculcated into that line of thinking. To a large portion of Americans, it just sounds like a personal attack on people doing a necessary job. And you can say “well they need to educate themselves” or whatever, but if you have to say that then it’s a bad slogan.

Seems like the person that hit you knew not to stick around for a police presence, especially if their vehicle was still mobile.

Why do I have to think about the desert scene in "Fear and Loathing"?

This sort of scene happens all the time. The police pulled over my brother in a car full of other young people. That was enough to give him probable cause to search the car, which in practice meant taking all their belongings and throwing them blithely along the shoulder of the interstate.

It was their friend obviously.

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