I watch a lot of COPS ( the TV show) and something often bothers me. It’s the situations where the police pull someone over for a traffic violation, then sees drugs or something in the car. Then they pull the guy out and start asking lots of questions - “how much weed do you have in the car”, “do you have any weapons” etc. If you watch the show, you know what I mean.
What bothers me is why the cop seems so indignant when the guy lies to him. The guy might say there’s no drugs, but the cop finds a bunch of coke, then berates the guy for lying to him. Is this something that’s put on for the camera, or is there some purpose the police have for grilling the guy by the side of the road?
Now, I can understand that the police’s job is to get information, but why get so indignant about a criminal who just lied to you about a crime that’s right in front of you?
The police say things like “I want to know if there’s anything illegal in that car - now tell the truth, because I’m going to check”. I don’t get it - why not just search the car, lock the guy up, and move on to the next case?
I’ve always thought that expecting criminals to tell you the truth about something like this was silly. Of course, there was the guy who had drugs in his pocket and told the cops “these aren’t my pants.” I think the cops are probably more indignant that someone would insult their intelligence by telling obvious lies.
They can’t just search the car without manouvering the person into making himself vulnerable to them.
For a traffic violation, I believe all he needs to do is provide his driver’s license. The less said, the better, from the person’s point of view; and the more the better, from law enforcement’s.
Well, in one case I just watched, the cop saw a drug pipe in plain view when he walked up to the car - I believe this gives him the authority to search. But, he took the driver out, asked her if she had more drugs (she lied) and when he found more, he berated her for lying.
Is this just blatant intimidation? It seems so to me- if he has cause to search, why does he bother asking? If he asks, why is he so suprised that she lied?
Lol. One of my friends got pulled over today and searched. Her and another girl were driving (speeding) and got pulled over. The cop smelled weed, and asked them if they’d been smoking anything besides cigarettes inside. My friend said “No”. The cop searched the car, found about $5 worth of weed and a pipe. The cop acted all indignant and was telling the girls how disappointed he was in them for lying, since he had been so nice, and given them a chance to fess up. They got off with just a warning (minus the weed and pipe). I thought it was pretty funny myself (especially since I don’t smoke weed), but they were pretty freaked out and pissed off.
COPS has been out with my agency and didn’t get much footage. They’re looking for good television and not trying to provide a representative sample of police work. There are cops who get all worked up and cops who don’t. As several of the posts implied, these are not dispassionate, intellectual discussions. They are unpredictable and confrontational.
Also, cops are human like everyone else and often feel insulted by criminals or just want to talk.
Well sometimes the criminals on COPS are so ridiculous I can’t imagine not being a little ticked off in the same situation.
Like a cop will ask this guy, “so do you have any weapons in the vehicle?” The guy lies then they fied a gun in the glove compartment. I mean, if you’d actually had the gun hidden it would make sense, and then guy will say, “I don’t know where that gun came from.” I’d get pretty insulted at that too.
As it is though it’s like an ex-cop political science professor told me. There are so many different ways a police officer can break you, that in all honesty on virtually any given minor offense the difference between walking away with a slap on the wrist and spending uncomfortable hours in jail with a hefty fine is how you treat the officer involved.
The time to tell the truth is in front of a judge or jury. There is no obvious reason why one should help the executive branch get oneself in trouble. I wish more people were aware of how to properly assert their rights. Shutting up is probably better than lying, but either way, seems like perfectly rational behavior.
Saw an episode tonight, a cop sees a girl walking in an area known for drug dealing and use. So he pulls over and starts questioning her. While taking to her, he decides to “pat her down.” While patting her down, he actually opens her pockets and looks in. Maybe courts think that’s ok now. Maybe the defense attourney has some nice evidence to present to the judge to exclude that crack and dismiss the case.
I have often wondered why the police act surprised and disappointed when lied to by criminals, in the same way I am surprised when the public is “shocked” that a serial killer displays no remorse as he recounts his horrible crimes. He killed 38 people with a Philip’s head screwdriver over a 20-year period, but they expect him to have remorse and compassion as he tells the tale?
I see it differently, if a suspect has a weapon that you (the cop) don’t know about, it seems like you (the cop) have screwed up. In these situations, where the suspect is not threatening the cop, it seems safe to me to either arrest the guy, take him away, then find the gun in the car; or else write him his ticket and send him on his way.
“Do you have a weapon?”, “no”, " well let me take a look"
The cop is going to take a look no matter what the guy says, so why get so worked up when he lies?
In one show, the cop actually pulled a woman out of a car and kept her at the side of the road for about 20 minutes untill a female officer could arrive and search her. To me this was obvious intimidation - if he really thought she was going to pull a pistol out of her bra and shoot him, I don’t see why he should wait for the female officer. If he didn’t think so, he should have let her go on her way.
There’s always the possibility the cop will believe him (or have something better to do) and decide not to search. If one response to the officer’s question gives you a 100% chance of getting arrested, but the other gives a 75% chance, you’d be stupid not to go for the latter.
I also think it’s odd that police officers would be surprised or offended that a suspect would refuse to willingly give up his load of contraband. Police are allowed to use deception when talking to suspects. It should hardly be shocking when criminals lie right back to them.
Every once in a while someone does admit to having something in their vehicle (and sometimes its something that’s well hidden). It only takes a second to ask, so why not do it?
Do you seriously cops should let people go when they suspect someone may have a weapon on them because the weapon wasn’t used on the police officer?
It’s because the job attracts lots of authoritarian, do the right thing types. Keep watching COPS and tell me when you see some hippy type pull someone over…
“Sorry to be a bummer man but I think you were speeding…bet you’ve got a reason why, hey…am I right???”
I’m not bothered by the idea that the police ask - what bothers me is that they get indignant when lied to. If that’s the cop’s attitude, it seems like it would be more efficient to distrust the guy altogether, and skip the aggrivating interrogation.
Well, uh, yes actually, if the person is not threatening anybody. But that’s not the point. I said that if he did not think she had a weapon, he should have let her go.
There seem to be different schools of thought on this. My copy of Boston T. Party’s You and the Police (a great little book) recommends never lying to the police. Rather, he encourages you to make frequent and insistent requests to know whether you are, in fact, being detained, or whether you are allowed to go. He also suggests an assertive approach that makes clear to the cop that you know what your rights are.
When dealing specifically with vehicle stops, his recommended course of action when pulled over is to immediately exit the car and lock it behind you. He concedes that this behavior can make some cops nervous, but if it works the locked car is, in itself, a greater barrier to further search because a cop cannot reasonably argue that the car’s interior is part of your “grabbable area” and thus needs to be searched for weapons.
Why anyone ever consents to a search of their vehicle is completely beyond me. I realize that some of the time the police do have probable cause, and that in such cases permission is not required, but what amazes me is that so many people (particularly those who do, indeed, have something to hide) consent to a police search when they were pulled over merely for speeding or a broken tail-light, or whatever.
Of course, someone will probably soon come back with fantastic “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of” rejoinder. Well, in that direction leads all sorts of tyranny, IMO.
Amen. The bounds of a Terry frisk do seem to be stretched rather beyond the original intention of the ruling on quite a number of occasions.
Sorry if this post has been a little to “IMHO,” but it seemed to me that the OP’s question was never really a “GQ” anyway.
Not necessarily. It all depends on what happened and why.
If the cop can point to specific facts that give rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion of criminal activity, he may briefly detain a subject for investigation. During the course of that detention, he may pat down the subject for his own safety. That’s classic Terry.
Now, if, during the course of the patdown, he encounters an object through the pockets that his training and experience permit him to identify as, say, drug paraphenalia – like a crack pipe – he then has probable cause to reach into the pocket to search. This is the “plain touch” doctrine.
If he simply reached into pockets on a whim, then his evidence is likely illegally obtained.
I remember seeing a cop tell a pulled-over driver, “I’m going to make a voluntary search of your car.”
Is this in any way reasonable? You can’t just throw in the word “voluntary” and have it stand up in court, can you, just because the person didn’t tell you that you can’t do it?
I had always been under the impression that a Terry frisk was for the sole purpose of maintaining the cop’s safety by ensuring that the person with whom he had contact was not carrying anything dangerous like a weapon, and that anything other than a weapon felt during the course of such a pat-down was out of bounds. Apparently i was incorrect.
Isn’t it beautiful how, by small bites, civil liberties are eroded away. The Terry frisk was designed to aid in officer safety, but under the “plain touch” doctrine it becomes a perfect way to search for something that should never have been in the scope of the search in the first place.
I mean, you say that if he “reached into pockets on a whim, then his evidence is likely illegally obtained,” but reaching in on a whim becomes completely unnecessary when he has Terry v. Ohio to back up a search that can so quickly shift from a matter of officer safety to a fishing expedition for whatever other stuff someone might be carrying.