(no, don’t ‘need answer fast’), and I’ve completely simplified the hypothetical scenario here - but let’s say it’s after dusk one night, on your street, in a typically quiet neighborhood.
You walk outside to check the mail, and you notice three police cars right across the street, with the blue-and-red-lights illuminating the neighborhood - giving some potential ‘perp’ a complete turn through the ringer (he’s sitting on the sidewalk in cuffs, they’re going through his car with a spotlight, etc).
1 - (in the spirit of IMHO) - would you stand outside in your yard and be tempted to just ‘watch’? (somehow I’m guessing - if you’re like me - you certainly would).
2 - would it be within the officers’ rights to order you back inside your own house (even though you aren’t “bothering anyone”, I’m sure they don’t want to worry if you’re some ‘cop-hater’, with who-knows-what sort of weapon in your pocket).
3 - are you obligated to go back inside your house at that point (again, your intent is to not “bother anyone”) - or is there some sort of “this is my property, and I’ll stand here quietly if I want to” loophole that you can claim? What would be the charge, if you refused? Somehow “interfering with a police investigation” seems a bit of a stretch.
I’m sure this is one of those ‘YMMV’ answers, but I’m curious if there’s one general answer.
And since you long-timers seem to have touched on every “what would you do” scenario known to man :D, if there’s a thread where this has already been asked/answered, then please point me to it.
IANAL… My WAG is that, yeah, you have the legal right to stand on your own front porch and watch. It’s your property, and the police shouldn’t be able to make you leave.
However… Sometimes, there are evacuation orders, and I think they have the force of law. So, if the cops escalate the action to a full cordon and evacuation, they might have the legal power to make you go.
They could also get pissy, later, and charge you with a nuisance charge, such as “obstructing a police investigation” or something nitty like that.
Give 'em credit: they don’t want you to get hurt, and, even more, they don’t want to get hurt while acting to protect you. If the cop yells, “Get out of here,” the wise thing to do is get.
(It’s a little like the question of whether you should resist an illegal search. If a bunch of rogue cops break in to your house and don’t have a warrant, or the warrant is for another address – it’s happened – you simply do not fight 'em. You watch, sadly, as they toss the place, and your lawyer has it out with them, later, via proper channels. Don’t argue with the nice guy in the blue shirt, even if he happens to be wrong. It doesn’t pay.)
#1: Sure, I’d watch. I’d like to see how the cops in my neighborhood do their stuff, I haven’t lived here that long.
#2: It’s a free country, they can say whatever they want. However…
#3: They’re the ones with the guns, badges, cable ties & handcuffs. Whether or not I get arrested if I don’t do what they say is a decision they get to make, not me.
You have a right to watch at a safe distance and take photographs. But can you afford to vindicate that right in court when the police mistakenly decide that you do not and wish to enforce their will?
It seems that police commonly don’t want witnesses seeing what they’re up to.
And some jurisdictions, apparently, have passed laws or ordinances prohibiting citizens from photographing police in public. (I don’t have any cites at my fingertips. But I’ve seen articles from time to time about this. It’s very controversial, of course.)
I would not stick around during an arrest, unless it’s a relative or a close friend. If the guy is in/near his house and that house has enough firepower to take the Persian Gulf, I’m sure you’d rather be someplace else.
One morning I was getting ready for work at around 2:00am and a gentleman had led police on a pursuit which terminated in my front yard. I glanced out the window to see his car in my lawn and the police giving him a field sobriety test on the sidewalk so I finished breakfast and went outside. An officer told me to go back inside, I told him I had to go to work and asked if they would have me blocked in for long. He said no and moved his car a few minutes later so I could go.
Yes, the police can order you to go back in your house. Whether or not you are legally bound to obey that order is the question. They can charge you with some kind of ‘interfering’ if you don’t obey, and then there’s the question of whether that charge is legitimate. Make your life easier, go inside and look out the window, with your cell phone camera recording everything.
I think a good part of it is they don’t want to escalate the situation. Yeah, the guy is cuffed but maybe they don’t want him getting pissed off at the gawker and trying to get up and create a problem, maybe they just think it’s rude to do that to someone who’s already having a bad day. I’d listen to the officer - and stand inside with my camera if I thought there was reason to do so.
I’ve been in a similar situation once, except that it was broad daylight and I was coming home for lunch. No one told, or even asked me to leave, but I would have had they done so. I just sat in my driveway and watched two officers carry a guy kicking and screaming to the police car parked in front of my next door neighbor’s house.
Turns out he had just tried to rob a nearby convenience store at knifepoint. He cut the cord to the cash register (cutting his own arm in the process) and tried to run off with it. Unfortunately for him he didn’t notice the uniformed officer who was there to get coffee. He dropped the register in the parking lot and ran off on foot, making it about a two and a half blocks before being caught near my house.
On YouTube there are plenty of videos of people watching and videoing the police. The police try to stop it, try to get the people to ID themselves, but they don’t really have a leg to stand on and most know it. The only video I saw where the person got arrested is where they yelled “Nazis!” at the cops as they were leaving. That was after the the cops had stopped a young woman, searched through her car, and a male cop frisked her all over for weapons. All this was observed by the videoer standing in his garage/yard, but then he felt the need to yell an insult as the cops were walking to their cars.
There is also a group of people called Cop Block that stand on public property and video the police at road checkpoints and inform people of their rights. I haven’t seen any of them get arrested.
Ultimately it seems like police could arrest you on the charge of something like obstructing justice, but if you keep your mouth shut and it’s worth it to you to exercise your rights you will likely beat it in court.
Putting myself in the shoes of police, in addition to dealing with criminals all the time it would be annoying having random people video you while you’re working. And it could complicate an already complicated situation. But with the power the police have and the “cops vs civilians” attitude many of them develop, they need to understand that they are not above the law and ultimately answer to the taxpayers, not directly but indirectly.
I’m not a lawyer but I would imagine in most jurisdictions police can’t force you to do anything on your own private property if you’re choosing to stand in the yard while something is going on. They could definitely make you stop doing stuff if you were in any way interfering with their valid police activities (like imagine shining a bright spotlight in their face as they’re trying to arrest someone.) But I’d be a little surprised if it’s a valid police power that they can force you to stand inside your house versus outside your house just because they are scuffling with a suspect nearby.
Now, I imagine many police will yell for bystanders to go inside both for officer and bystander safety. There is a fear the bystanders might be relatives of the suspect and might rush the police if the scuffle gets out of hand, or there is a fear the suspect in some way may endanger bystanders. But I think that’s more along the lines of “police yell that for good reason, but you probably can’t be legally penalized for disregarding it.”
If an officer gets really insistent about it, it’s always best to listen. Better to listen to an illegal police command in the present tense and report his actions later than it is to get into an altercation with police.
There is a YouTube video of a guy who was videotaping police from his driveway, they get angry and demand he stop. It escalates very quickly and they end up roughing the guy up and arresting him on the spot. He ends up getting charged with something that I believe is almost immediately dismissed and the officer involved is either fired or punished, but he still would have had a much more pleasant evening if he had just gone inside and made his complaint after the fact.
I’d probably go back inside whether I was told to or not.
When I lived in the city the police did a drug bust just outside my fence. I watched long enough to see what it was and went back in.
Several times I had my truck blocked in my driveway while they were making an arrest, I went back inside, called work to tell them I’d be late and waited.
You don’t know what kind of crazies the police are dealing with, who’s on drugs or what kind, who’s armed, or how violent it can get. You don’t know what friends or family members may show up and start trouble.
I don’t want to be anywhere near it.
Although I was somewhat amused that the big bad drug dealers busted behind my fence were crying like babies begging the police to let them go.
Nobody believes that a complaint about police abuse, made after the fact, is going to do any good. We need police to maintain order, but who will bell the cat? As much as we may need police, we also need for the police to be watched. And take pics. Pics or it didn’t happen.
My wife and I were farting around in our driveway getting ready to do some yard work. My wife said, “look over there.” It was a DC SWAT team creeping down the alley into our neighbor’s back yard. A cop waved us to get inside so we stepped into the garage and watched from there. They arrested our neighbor for something or other five years ago and he just started showing back up in the neighborhood, which has changed significantly in his absence.
If it was on my property, I’d not only not go inside, I’d go out and take pictures, to forestall any liability I might have as the property owner in case the perp decides to sue the cops and me jointly and severally.
I have no reason to retreat on my own property at all, cops, arrest or whatever.
If it was in the street, I’d stay on my own porch and watch. However, if the SWAT team was creeping up, I’d probably not want to blow their stealth, so I’d sneak in and see how I could peep out the windows without being obvious.
That’s a great question OP. It’s state specific, but some police around here will charge you with “obstruction of justice” for not doing any old silly thing they tell you to do. Our state supreme court has made it clear that any citizen has a right to peacefully approach a police officer and politely question him as to why is he doing what he is doing without risking arrest. Persistent inquiries? Not so much.
On a personal note, it’s a problem I’ve had clerking in a law firm. It’s such a vague statute that IMHO is unconstitutionally vague. It doesn’t put a citizen on notice as to what he is/ is not allowed to do. It can’t be “whatever in the fuck the police tell you to do!” because that would make us Communist China.
I can’t imagine that sitting in your own yard or standing my your mailbox is obstructing what is happening across the street. But, around here you might get arrested if you ignore an order to go back inside. One of the things we are fighting right now.
It really depends on how much you want to spend in legal fees ‘being right’. If a cop tells you to go inside and you refuse you could be arrested for failing to follow a lawful order, on the other hand you could argue such a charge because the officer had no lawful reason to give such an order. Then you can cross your fingers and hope the court finds in your favor after all the facts are available.
It would suck to be you if the police can demonstrate you being outside was a public safety issue and you put officers in further danger because you decided to make a nuisance of yourself.
The police can prohibit people from even their own property if they are doing so in pursuit of solving a crime. If someones murdered in your house they get to secure the premises and throw your ass out even though it’s ‘your private property’
Officers get a fair amount of leeway in doing their job and juries aren’t very sympathetic to those that get in the way of that.