Never, ever, talk to the police without a lawyer. They are not your friends.
You can talk to the police during normal goings on just fine. They are not going to interrogate you just for asking for directions. It's during an investigation that you should lawyer up.
He emphatically told me I should never, ever, ever talk to the Police. Even if I witness a hit and run and just happen to be standing there and they walk over to me. Any one of 10,000 scenarios where the Police ask me for something, or want me to give information about something (even if I wasn't there).
They are actively searching for someone to blame, and if you happen to say the wrong words while trying your utmost to be helpful, they'll happily pin it on you.
Also the example is ludicrous, you're saying the cops would try to blame someone for a hit and run that isn't even in a car. No, the cops are not that cartoonishly bad. Some cops in some departments may be, and I can almost guess the cities, but the average cop is not a monster, they're just some person like you or me.
You can construct many "what ifs", but they mainly apply if the police are actively subverting the normal rules of law or incompetent.
There are a subset of cops who are corrupt, or racist, or classist, where merely interacting with the police can lead to serious outcomes, but that's sort of a different problem that has to be addressed more systematically.
Cops in the US barely receive training - the average length is 22 weeks, while Germany clocks in at 2.5 years [1]. Of course a lot of police will be incompetent in the first place given the length and priorities of these trainings, made worse by cargo-culting from "senior" officers and by "killology" training [2].
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-training-us-falls-short-com...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/11/police-trai...
The fundamental problem is that you don't know whether the police officer you are talking to is good or not, and if you find out, it is too late.
Talking to a police officer is like petting someone else's dog. Don't do so unless you've talked to someone who feeds it first.
The average person like you or me who becomes a cop gets chased out of the profession because they wouldn't turn a blind eye to the crimes their fellow officers commit against the public. Everyone left is most likely either just as guilty or complicit and enabling.
It doesn't help that whenever police organize in any capacity, denying and covering up abuses always seems one of the goal. Just look at what FOP says every time there's a police shooting.
> They are actively searching for someone to blame
That seems very, very far fetched.
There are absolutely police officers who are lazy or will power trip or love busting perps. But each officer is not starting dozens of investigations every day. Especially the beat cops you are most likely to run into.
I also briefly worked at a motel in the middle of nowhere and you better believe that regular conversations with police officers is a critical aspect of the job.
If you're the middle class, middle American, nicely dressed, and got that harmless look. Well, expect things to go pretty well. Business owners of non-sus businesses generally have it pretty good too.
Are you a minority? Not dressed well? A youth? Well, things can go sideways for you quick.
If you are getting actively stabbed talking to a police officer might be a sensible decision.
Never talking to police is a much worse advice then "don't participate in questioning without a lawyer present".
> in a way that can't be meaningfully predicted. The stakes are incredibly high, too.
If we're talking about giving people advice for the police, I don't think people are going to need help with "Oh, you're being stabbed as we speak, should you call 911?" That's not the question people need help with. You're not boosting anyone's judgment here by leading with that argument.
However, if police want to ask what you're doing on your property in a friendly way, should you respond or should you say that you want to contact your lawyer? Or if you feel like striking up a conversation with the police to develop warmth, should you?
The right answer might come down to whether you're black, Native American, Asian, man, woman, etc., but without knowing more, don't talk to police is solid advice which has developed through a long relationship between citizenry and police. Even if you're just a witness, it would be naive to think you have nothing to fear. Even when you are the person who needs help, it would be naive to think you have nothing to fear.
If the police of America want to turn around their reputation, that's totally on them. The ball is in their court.
People are conflating two things in this thread - "talking with the police" (aka voluntarily consenting with questioning) and literally just having a conversation with a police officer.
If you have a moral directive to slight the police, I can understand. But just asking for directions or telling them what you saw is not going to increase your chances of having a felony pinned on you more than showing up in random security footage.
If people know that if they get hit by a car or robbed or something like that none of the witness will talk to the police they are going to be way more inclined to support more surveillance.
there are a multitude of legitimate reasons to talk to police without a lawyer. e.g. you are a victim, you are helping a victim, you are being friendly.
The real advice is not to try to talk your way out of a crime because it rarely works.
If they're asking for a description of a car after I watched a hit-and-run, I'm probably not a suspect
Does it negate the utility you can get from talking to the police?
like I said above:
1) Do you think that is good basis for a universal rule?
2) Does it negate the utility you can get from talking to the police?
Anyways, it is impossible they thought they werent a suspect and helping a victim after 9 hours when he was signing a confession.
Here's a different example:
Police have a policy of shooting aggressive dogs, under basically any circumstances. So if you have a pet that is slightly protective of their territory, then any situation that brings the cops within shooting range of you pet can get your pet killed.
That doesn't mean never call/talk to the police. That is a crazy viewpoint driven by hyper focus on risk mitigation.
It is like refusing to leave your burning house because you might be hit my lightning.
The boy was for one, unarmed and they decide to start shooting (eleven times!!) at him? I cannot imagine what those people were thinking.
Other than "nice day, eh?" or "No, as a matter of fact I do NOT know why you pulled me over", don't talk to cops without a lawyer.
For bonus points, quote "99 Problems":
"Do I learn like a mind reader, sir? I don't know."
(that entire verse is quite educational)
In the few situations where I was pulled over for speeding, I asked the cop to show me the reading and also whether the device was calibrated in the past few years, and they've always obliged (after answering "I know how fast I was going" and "I think the speed limit is...". If they have a calibrated device and they show me the reading, I'm not really sure how my answers to those questions affects the decision tree.
What you want to do is avoid creating an unnecessary confrontation by acting adversarial.
Look at the base rate of speeding. When I drive on 101 in the bay area in clear traffic, I'm doing around 65 (the limit)-75 in the right lane and the majority of people are passing me on the left (or tailgating me because they want me to go faster or drafting or whatever it is that causes people to drive too close behind me when I drive near the speed limit). From what I can tell, unless a cop is actively trying to be punitive, they typically don't stop a car simply because it's going up to about 15MPH over the freeway limit.
It seems like in this situation I could have honestly answered "no, I did not know the speed limit".
I mean, where I said I'd know the speed limit above, if it was truly obscured, I think I would be playing it safe and judge things on what the road looked like, whether there was a school there, and the weather and other ambient conditions.
I did not answer any of the officer's questions during the stop, but did identify myself and hand him all the documents he requested. I figured I wasn't going to avoid the ticket using my mouth, so I saved it for the judge.
How did you proceed past the initial questions, IE how did you refuse to answer in a polite way (I'm curious because there is a whole genre of youtube videos of cops stopping people and the driver getting in an adversarial situation by refusing to talk).
Also, just out of curiosity, what was the default limit for that type of road, and what was the posted speed limit? Are we talking "driving 35 in a 25 zone". Any other contextual information, like weather conditions, nearby school, recently changed limit, etc? The cops that park at the school near me usually don't stop people unless they are driving 45+ in our 25 zone.
I watch a lot of those YouTube traffic stop videos (they are addicting), and a lot of suspects in these videos talk themselves into (or attitude themselves into) an arrest. Not to mention incriminating themselves. You know the ones who don't make it onto YouTube? The ones who shut the fuck up and probably end up much better off.
For how fast I'm going, I'm usually checking my speed every 30 seconds or so, but can also tell how fast I'm going simply by looking, how hard I'm pressing the pedal (my car is in "Eco" mode, which means it's pretty pokey all around).
I never drive more than about 15 miles above the speed limit (and then, only on a freeway where folks are driving fast enough that I don't feel safe driving slower, because people frequently come right up behind me and change lanes at the last second if I drive the speed limit on California highways). So I am not particularly worried about the cases you're describing (speeding like that is a misdemeanor, not a felony). I used to drive faster, but over time I concluded that driving slower has a wide range of benefits, both in accidents, as well as fuel consumption. It's not like driving 10MPH faster on the freeway is going to make a huge difference in your arrival time.
I see a lot of armchair lawyers on places like Hacker News who confabulate all sorts of scenarios to justify their adversarial relationship with the police, other folks who assume all cops are racist/classist/whateverist, and other folks who just don't want to follow laws because they don't like authority. I really don't know what to say to folks like that. Collect telemetry and bring it to court, and good luck with that!
If that traffic stop leads to the cop finding something else in your car, and that leads to a crime, a simple question can make the difference between a legal or an illegal stop in a court of law. Since the best case scenario in a traffic stop is "don't get a ticket" and the worst case is "Be confined to a concrete cell with a serious criminal conviction for the rest of your life" I don't answer any questions whatsoever, no matter how trivial. Happens to innocent people all the time.
Getting a $200 ticket you could have otherwise "talked your way out of" is a small price to pay to vs. the risk.
This might not be as significant as you think. My understanding is that many models allow them to set that number directly. If I recall correctly, the source for this was "A Speeder's Guide to Avoiding Tickets", written by a former state trooper.
I don't know if it's factually accurate, but the advice in that book has generally been solid.
Again, if cops are actually going around setting values to get citations, there are larger systemic problems. Also, many vehicles have GPS and other datalogging showing actual speeds, so if the cop is faking the numbers, that's going to start showing up in court.
Unless there's a cloud in the sky. Wouldn't wanna lie to an officer...
Are you telling me that I should have shut the door in his face, and called my lawyer?
I can't believe you would do something so dangerous as to post a message on a message board.
Both getting in a tigers cage and interacting with the police are things that you have many choices in moderating and making the event safer.