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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Good. I understand that deception is necessary in cases like undercover investigations, but the practice goes far beyond those scenarios. Not just interrogations, either.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/michigan-case-offers-pub...

> Brian Chaney says he asked for a supervisor during his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and Police Officer Richard Lindquist told him that another officer present was in charge. The problem: That second officer was not a supervisor or even a member of the Keego Harbor Police Department. Lindquist was never disciplined and his chief says that while a suspect has the right to request a supervisor, what the officer did was OK.

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This is speculative and based on a possibly not-representative sample, but what I've noticed from watching bodycam footage is that when the suspect asks for a supervisor, the police give negative/discouraging replies to the suspect while they are also calling a supervisor in the background.

I assume the intention is to comply with the letter of the law while maximizing the chance that the suspect will abandon the request and not force them to wait until the supervisor arrives.

Cops, in general understand the law very well, which makes them even more culpable for their abuses of it.

You see this quite often in the cases where the suspect wants to stop talking and speak to their attorney, and the detectives do the "Oh, yes, we'll let you call them in just one second, but first answer _____"

Why does the subject of an interrogation have the right to request the presence of different cops?

Ask the police chief; I'd imagine their department policy is that you can request one, given he's stating they do indeed have such a right.

If he wanted to make a "there's no right to a supervisor" argument, he should have. "You have the right, but we'll fake it" is the worst of both worlds.

If it exists, it must be a local thing in Keego. I'm from the same county and I've never been given the advice to ask for a supervisor, only to ask for an attorney.

That's not the problem. If the police don't want to comply with a suspect's request for a supervisor, they can say "no". They shouldn't need to lie to the suspect about who they're talking to and what their roles are; that's an abuse of their position.

Clearly you're not aware of the corruption in the small town government and justice system. If your neighbor is a friend of cop and they don't like you, plenty of cops are willing to put you through harassment and plenty of PDs, local prosecutors and judges who are willing to turn a blind eye towards it.

Essentially, unless you believe every single cop is pure at heart and incapable of making a mistake, you should be wanting a presence of more than just 1 cop.

There isn't one single cop anywhere in America who can go five seconds without saying something false. That's why I don't understand the marginal utility of more cops in the room. The person you want in the room is your attorney.

Ding ding ding ding. Not just that, but you have to affirmatively and unambiguously invoke your 5th Amendment rights. As in, "I wish to invoke my rights under the 5th Amendment of the United States Constitution to remain silent while my lawyer is not present, and I wish to explicitly invoke my 6th Amendment right to counsel." No weasel words, no maybes or I dunnos. Invoke your rights, and if they persist, invoke your rights again, and again, and again. It's the only way to save your ass before the lawyer arrives because the police are simply seeking to catch somebody, not the right person necessarily, and they will literally outsource the lying to the jailhouse snitch to make it happen, amongst other tricks. You can't explain your way out of a situation where the police feels that you are their best shot at getting a perp walk arrange ASAP. Your lawyer can though.

And goddamn the cops will lie to you about how much worse your life is going to get for invoking the 5th. Most people do not have the experience or fortitude to stand up to an authority figure like this, they've been taught just the opposite, and cops know how to abuse the hell out of it.

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