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Comment by thethimble | Hacker News Reader

It seems like there’s a practical approach and a literalist approach here. I never understood the insistence of “don’t talk to the police” in relation to the questions above. If you can give the “right” answers, why wouldn’t you?

I understand how this might be compromising fundamental rights, but at the same time I just want to get home. Is this wrong?

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The problem is that you don’t know what the cop is doing. They might just be pulling you over for the reasons they stated, or they might be investigating some crime in the area and looking for suspicious people. Even a right or true answer can incriminate you in a certain light. Everything you say can potentially bite you in the ass later.

Better to be a little inconvenienced and take longer to get home than say something that can later be used in a court of law to implicate you in something you had no knowledge of.

I really want to emphasize that ALL of my police family gives this same advice.

Thanks for the continued insistence!

Haha I don’t know if this is sarcastic, but I get it if so. Someone else said I was too indignant.

I apologize if I’m coming on strong. I’ve talked to one of my uncles in particular, who was a police officer for a long time and who now works for DHS, about the tactics that he’d use once he stopped people to try to get them to admit to something he could arrest them for. He obviously always felt like he was just doing his job: if he could get them to incriminate themselves, then he just nabbed a criminal. But he’d do a lot of really tricky stuff! And there are a lot of things that are technically illegal that they can get you in if they’re suspicious of you for some reason.

Anyway as a result this a thing that I feel pretty strongly about :)

> Everything you say can potentially bite you in the ass later.

Even if they didn't read you your Miranda rights before? My knowledge of legal affairs comes only from movies, but I got the impression that things you say before they read you Miranda can't be used against you. Are all the movies wrong?

They do not need to read you your Miranda rights to question you, no. They only read you your rights if you are being detained. But they are free to use anything you say before or after if for some reason you wind up in court.

Here’s a corroborating source: https://www.lawinfo.com/resources/criminal-defense/when-must...

Movies are often really wrong about lots of things in the criminal justice system.

Thanks for the link. It makes sense.

Hopefully I will never need to put my newly acquired knowledge to a test.

Miranda is for when they're getting read to arrest you. Before that it's just a convo between you and the cop, which can be used in court, that's why people say to keep it to talk about whatever they pulled you over for. You don't have to tell them where you're coming from or where you're going for example.

> Better to be a little inconvenienced and take longer to get home

How much longer? In my jurisdiction the cops can hold you for 24 hours (or something like that) without formally charging you.[1] I do not believe that this is very different to other places.

TBH, the only reason they don't usually do it to the wrong guy is because cops like to have a decent set of evidence before detaining someone. If they waste their time on someone who probably isn't going to get convicted, then they aren't looking for the person who probably will get convicted, and their comparative statistics looks bad.

So, yeah, there's a fine line.

Piss off the cop for no good reason and you'll get home ... eventually.

Be polite but say as little as possible and you'll not waste more than 5m.

Be talkative and there's a good chance you'll incriminate yourself of a crime you never committed.

[1] After which time they have to either charge you or let you go.

You need to watch the videos.

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