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Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

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Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#161

Post by mplanchard »

tyingq wrote: post #160
mplanchard wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is true that you are physically at their mercy, provided you survive your encounter with the police (not by any means a guarantee in this country), you CANNOT be incriminated in a court of law for invoking your right to remain silent. You CAN be incriminated in a court of law for literally anything else you say. The winning move is clearly not to give them any more ammunition than they already have.

I think we all understand that part. It's the part where they can say anything happened and it's suddenly your word against theirs. So, irritating them can have consequences. The tactic feels fine for an interrogation room, where's everything is on camera. In the outside world, it's trickier.

Yeah that is true, although most police have bodycams these days, and they’ve also got a recording going from their car, so there’s generally going to be some evidence in your favor. It is also always a good idea to start recording at least audio on your phone before talking to police.

A lot of people seem to think that not answering questions is going to aggravate the officer, and that’s not generally true in my experience. Assuming you’re asserting your rights calmly and not being belligerent, it’s well within the normal scope of behavior that they expert to encounter.

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#162

Post by PaulHoule »

ccooffee wrote: post #106
jcranmer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, all you need to do is shut up to exercise the right. Actually, as I understand it, SCOTUS has said that merely being silent is not the same as invoking your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. I think this jurisprudence is complete bananapants, but the argument is that you have to explicitly and unambiguously invoke your Fifth Amendment right for it to kick in, and being silent isn't an unambiguous invoc…

Correct. You MUST EXPLICITLY invoke your fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. (Okay, there may be some edge cases where invoking the fifth is implied, but SCOTUS has merely acknowledged that these edge cases could exist, but to my knowledge has never given rules for when it applies. Better safe than sorry.) e: see Salinas v Texas[0] for example [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-246#wri…

In a courtroom, yes.

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/07/18/archives/krough-pleads-5t...

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#163

Post by thethimble »

mplanchard wrote: post #152
thethimble wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 some…

Thanks for the continued insistence!

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#164

Post by some_random »

avgcorrection wrote: post #109
some_random wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so funny reading this after scrolling past a bunch of Western Europeans (what I assume you mean by "around the world", since that's almost always what's meant) talking about how they can be arrested for not carrying identification on them at all times. As an American, it sounds like your judges and politicians haven't even tried to keep them in check.

> a bunch of Western Europeans (what I assume […] As an American, it sounds like your judges and politicians haven't even tried to keep them in check. Wait, what? You don’t know if this is a Western European thing but you just took that “from the rest of the world”? I guess I could do the same: (1) I’m not from America (the majority here), (2) I haven’t experienced bully police asking for id, so (3) I’ll just assume…

As a white American I also haven't really had any bad experiences with cops, it's something commonly referred to as "privilege". If you'd like to read about other peoples experiences with police in Western Europe, here's the start of that thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36372948

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#165

Post by credit_guy »

mplanchard wrote: post #152
thethimble wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 some…

> 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?

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#166

Post by mplanchard »

thethimble wrote: post #163
mplanchard wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

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 :)

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#167

Post by kmoser »

everybodyknows wrote: post #52
sgjohnson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another topic that everybody should know about is juror nullification. Jurors who are aware of jury nullification are routinely dismissed.

Is it indeed routine to ask prospective jurors if they are aware of the term? Anecdata: I can see how it might be possible, based on my own jury duty callup last month. Hundreds in the waiting room, when individual trials did "go to jury", a secondary lottery chose from the hundreds a batch of more than 60 to go for interview. So, the lawyers would be further weeding out some 80%.

Lawyer: "Are you aware of the phrase 'juror nullification?'"

Potential juror: "I am now!"

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#168

Post by everybodyknows »

mplanchard wrote: post #131
everybodyknows wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sure, in case it’s necessary, the advice above applies mostly in regards to talking to or being questioned by the police in situations where they are acting in their official capacity and in which you are not directly seeking their immediate assistance. It also applies when talking to police who are not acting in their official capacity about any real or alleged crime that you may be involved in in any way, no matter…

And what about witnessing a crime committed against some complete stranger? Considering separately both the cases of a crime in progress, and one recently completed?

Also considering whether the crime is accidental e.g. hit-and-run, or professional, financially-motivated actors. Recall that among the latter class are the white-collar criminals capable of retaliation against witnesses, and the reason we have white-collar whistleblower protection laws.

Re: Don’t Talk to Police (2012) [video]

#170

Post by mplanchard »

credit_guy wrote: post #165
mplanchard wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

> 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.

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