YSK: How to interact with US police
YSK: How to interact with US police
I was going to post this as a comment, but it was in an anarchism community, and I figured some sections of it might be unacceptable there. Hence, new post.
Here's a guideline of how to interact with cops. There are more or less three modes, depending on your read of the situation. Cops are not always the enemy or the maniacal whole-job-is-making-evil thugs that Lemmy sometimes makes them out to be. It really is bad for people to get mugged or their cars broken into, and they're the solution our society has come up with to minimize the amount of it that happens. It's not always a bad thing.
If you find yourself talking to the cops, there are more or less three ways:
- They're there to solve a real problem. Someone's car got broken into, someone got beat up. Just talk with them. Tell them what you know, help them figure out the situation. In almost all of the US, their effect on the problem will be positive, and it'll be a lot more positive if they have a good grasp of what happened. If, in your opinion, the person they're trying to catch really did do something that warrants a law enforcement response, then give them a hand. Use your judgement as to whether that's warranted of course, and your impression of the justice level in your local area, since it varies quite a lot in the US.
- They're there for you. Shut the fuck up. Don't say a goddamned word. It doesn't even matter if you didn't do it. Don't explain. Shut the fuck up. Be polite, obey lawful orders, definitely don't fight them or you'll get a felony and might also get injured or worse, but tell them that if you're suspected of a crime, then you'd like to talk to a lawyer, and you have nothing else to say. And then, shut the fuck up and cooperate. Maybe you want to go as far as "Were you shoplifting?" "What? No. That wasn't me, man." But any further explanation than that, just leave it alone. Definitely don't make something up on the spot, to make yourself sound innocent, if you did do it. For the love of God, don't do that.
- They're there for someone who didn't do anything wrong. The reason for this post is, anything and everything with ICE and immigration falls into this category. Some things with local cops will, also. Just be unhelpful and simple. No, I didn't see anything. I don't know. I'm not sure. Be vague. Don't get creative, keep it simple, don't refuse to give your ID or otherwise antagonize them or commit minor crimes of obstruction, but just do your best imitation of someone who just fell from the sky. "So you've NEVER MET your neighbor. Your neighbor across the hall." "Nope." "Are you sure?" "Yeah, I don't know." "I mean, she gave us your name, she said she'd talked to you." "I don't know, I don't remember that." Don't embellish. Don't explain why. Just calmly let the silence linger and the pressure build up, without adding extra words.
Like I said, everything with ICE or other immigration authorities falls into the third category. No exceptions. Everything. The same applies with any type of federal law enforcement, I suspect, for the next few years.
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Bad advice
Don’t talk to cops unless you are legally obligated to do so. Depending on the state you may have to identify yourself, and in some locations and contexts provide identification. You should know your local laws. In my state it is not required even if detained although in practice refusal to identify just means you aren’t going home for a looooong time. You do have to give your license if you’re stopped while driving, of course, but you do not have to answer any other questions other than signing the citation. The aclu has a website clearly outlining what you are required to do in each state including wallet sized cards with the information
Real police advice: if they’re giving you shit shut the fuck up. If they’re arresting you just go with it. You aren’t going to win. They’re going to call in 900 back up units and 2 helicopters with thermal imaging and a tank to track you because they’re basically an army now. The more you resist the more likely you die and become a sad headline that people post and forget about in 20 minutes. They aren’t trained to take you down safely. They aren’t trained to de escalate. They aren’t trained to control their anger. They will often get furious if you resist their authority and take out that aggression on you with extreme violence. They will slam you to the ground, choke you, punch you, beat you with their knock off tonfa, taze you repeatedly, and restrain you in ways that are dangerous and restrict your breathing. They will outright ignore you if you plead for help or become unresponsive. They will let you die, wait 5-10 minutes despite being on camera, then call for medical who will take another 10 minutes to respond to your long dead corpse that could’ve possibly been resuscitated 15 minutes ago if they hadn’t stood around doing nothing like ghouls. They have 0 serious repercussions for this behavior, at worst they’ll get shuffled around
Let them arrest you, shut the fuck up, and fight it in court. Unfortunately you will need resources to do this and pretty substantial ones. I just hired a lawyer to process documents for a subpoena against a client in my healthcare practice. It was a fairly simple case of document review and it cost $2300. Probably took him 45 minutes of actual work, if that. The system is unfair and rigged against you.
Real real police advice as a result: avoid them at all costs.
In the US you're not legally obliged to talk to cops. Ever. Have a lawyer do it.
This is sometimes factually incorrect. You are legally obligated to identify yourself in certain situations and refusal to do so will get you arrested. If a cop “suspects you of having committed a crime” in a state with a statute for stop and identify you legally have to do so. 23 states have these statutes. The statues vary a bit and generally require probable cause but the bar for that can be quite low (eg are you black and outside? Probable cause!)
And of course if you are operating a motor vehicle you are required to identify yourself when stopped
Blanket statements like yours are misleading and confusing. They lead to people getting seriously injured or even killed because they then believe that they truly can legally say absolutely nothing to cops ever with legal impunity, which is often not the case. Cops don’t respond well to people not following the rules correctly. The rules are confusing, likely intentionally
Yeah, driving a car is a valid exception.
Please, for everyone's safety, dont drive a car.
States with stop and identify laws Alabama: Police may demand identification Delaware: Police may demand identification Florida: Police may demand identification Illinois: Police may demand identification Kansas: Police may demand identification Missouri: Police may demand identification Nebraska: Police may demand identification New Hampshire: Police may demand identification New York: Police may demand identification North Dakota: Police may demand identification Rhode Island: Police may demand identification Utah: Police may demand identification Wisconsin: Police may demand identification
There has to be “reasonable suspicion” of a crime for this but again, all this potentially means is a crime occurred “nearby” and you “match the description (eg are black). Guaranteed the cop will be shielded in court 90% of the time
Further, other states cops can demand you identify yourself under the same circumstances although they can’t demand ID
You covered scenario 2 in detail, yes. If someone steals my car, and they go to talk to my neighbor and he says "I don't answer questions. Am I being detained?", then fuck my neighbor, as far as I'm concerned.
if someone steals your car the cops are there to file paperwork for the insurance company, and call the tow truck if they find the burned out shell. They will fill in one (1) form in response and then never think about it again.
Fuck your car, the cops aren’t gonna find it. They’re there to write a police report so you can get an insurance claim.
The only way they recover your stolen car is if the person who stole it joyrides it and abandons it. Your neighbors testimony isn’t helpful in this scenario
If your car was desirable and actually stolen for parts or to be resold it’s long gone and the cops will do absolutely nothing
Similarly if your home was burglarized. Look at the statistics of solve rates for these crimes in your city. If they’re anything like mine they are shockingly low and the only reason they aren’t 0 is because of literal happenstance like the above scenario and not actual “detective work”
However, your neighbor opening their door for the cops does create a host of potential issues for your neighbor. Perhaps they have drug paraphernalia in plain sight in their living room? Now the cops have probable cause to search their home without a warrant because you think those noble officers are going to search high and low for your shitty car (they aren’t). Or they’re an illegal immigrant, the cops are racist, and see an in to send ins later that day. Or your neighbor is rude and standoffish, escalates things with the cop (who are known for their expert de escalation skills) and then ends up getting arrested for “obstruction”
The cops should have thought of that before they started abusing their authority and needlessly victimizing people. If they didn't act the way they do, people would trust them enough to talk to them.
Don't hate the players, hate the game.
Pro tip: They're not going to find your car anyway, and even if they do the only reason was because whoever stole it abandoned it somewhere after wrecking it. In my area they take about 4 to 24 hours to even show up for such calls, so for this example the chances of them actually catching the perp in the act and getting your car back before it's trashed are zero.
I'm just picturing you saying all of this to me while I'm over at your door, explaining that my car got stolen and asking you for access to the security cams or something, and then listening to this whole spiel about how you refuse to cooperate with any type of police investigation, with a pained look on my face, and then saying "Jesus Christ, never mind" and leaving.
I and people I know have interacted in many different types of scenarios with the police in the US. Not every situation and person fits neatly into the fun emotionally satisfying stereotypes that are your favorite stereotypes through which to view the world.
Do you know what? I helped the cops once with some security camera footage many years ago, for something that didn't involve me.
You want to know what I got in return? I got subpoenaed, and this turned into the state jerking me around on the trial date when I was supposed to show up with the dates changing after the fact without them informing me, but every single letter they sent me started in its opening paragraph with a threat to prosecute me if I did not instantly comply.
So yeah, I don't "help" the police anymore. They can fuck off and come back after they learn to do better.
If you want the footage, that's different. But if they cops come to talk to me about it (or anything else) they ain't getting nothing.
It depends on what they were trying to prosecute. If someone got murdered, and your security footage was relevant and they needed your participation in the trial to help put the guy away, and your only takeaway from it was "How the fuck DARE they interfere with my busy life for this bullshit," then I think you need to re-think about it.
If it was drug charges or some similar crap, then yes, you probably should have made them subpoena the footage or something. But weren't you just upset that the cops weren't enthusiastic enough about trying to prosecute people who did something wrong?
Do you happen to know what the charge was they were trying to get the person on? Presumably you do, if you testified.
I did not testify because the accused took a plea deal, which the state kindly did not inform me of (although they wasted in total about $4 in postage threatening to arrest me for no reason) until the day of the trial after it had been rescheduled for the fourth time. The charges were indeed dumb shit. Nobody got murdered.
It has nothing to do with my busy life, it has to do with not enabling bad behavior from the police and state. The police demand respect but give none in return. You do you, but that doesn't fly on my doorstep.
I will not be bullied. By anyone.
If the charges were dumb shit, why did you decide to help the cops with your security camera footage?
It sounds, looking over these comments, like a lot of Lemmy lives in some kind of locality where there is never an actual crime to be addressed, and the only reason someone might ever call 911 and the cops come out is... well, I don't know, I guess the cops just ride around just fucking with innocent people full time for no actual reason. I'm sure there are places like that, but I definitely do not live in one.
Because this was many, many years ago and back then I was naive and thought contributing might have actually made the world a safer and better place. I know better now thanks to experience.
The issue is that it's a case of the boy who cried wolf. Yes, there likely are "actual" crimes out there that need to be solved. But they are in the tiny minority of what the police pursue and prosecute overall compared to petty drug bullshit, harassing people for existing while black, writing speeding tickets, busting homeless people, and jailing people who need to steal to eat on behalf of megacorporations -- crimes for which the police will show up for near instantly when called, whereas if someone victimizes you, Mr. private citizen, they generally can't be bothered.
That's how the cops operate here. I know how the cops work here because I live here. I don't know what to tell you about where you might happen to live, but I'll bet you if you look at it hard it isn't that much different.
Yes, there likely are “actual” crimes out there that need to be solved. But they are in the tiny minority of what the police pursue and prosecute overall compared to petty drug bullshit, harassing people for existing while black, writing speeding tickets, busting homeless people, and jailing people who need to steal to eat on behalf of megacorporations – crimes for which the police will show up for near instantly when called, whereas if someone victimizes you, Mr. private citizen, they generally can’t be bothered.
This absolutely isn't my experience.
The FBI actually keeps statistics about this compiled from a lot of state and local agencies:
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/arrest
I'm having a little trouble making sense of it. I was able to find a better-formatted report somewhere else for a few years back, but this is what I could find easily that's current. If we take what's in "Offense Category," though, it shows 26 million arrests, of which 8 million are "other," 4 million are drugs, and the rest look like pretty legit crime to me, until you get down to the 100,000 category, stuff like "drunkenness." If you consider how much more drug "crime" there is than murder, or robbery, or what have you, it sounds to me like they are working, generally, on some real problems. Definitely the 14 million non-drug non-"other" arrests are not a tiny minority, even if we're assuming that everything in the "other" category is bullshit.
That’s how the cops operate here. I know how the cops work here because I live here. I don’t know what to tell you about where you might happen to live, but I’ll bet you if you look at it hard it isn’t that much different.
I'm not going to tell you that your experience where you live isn't your experience. But I do not think it is representative of the US as a whole, or even close to it. You're saying some stuff that is simply objectively not true, about what percentage of arrests they make for different things and so on. I have a decent amount of personal experience with it, also, in my area.
Your same source also includes charts of reports versus clearance rates (i.e. arrests and prosecution) of all types of crime categories.
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend
Compare how high the grey line (prosecutions) is compared to the reports (blue line) for:
- Drugs
- Shoplifting
- Bribery
- Prostitution
Versus, say,
- Motor vehicle theft (just to name an example for no reason at all)
- Burglary
- Destruction of Property/Vandalism
- Credit Card Fraud
- Theft From Motor Vehicle
- Larceny
- Rape
The clearance rate for shoplifting is higher than rape.
More shoplifters. Get prosecuted. Than rapists. What does that tell you about priorities? Think about it.