I misread the cops

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

About 40 years ago, my wife and I were walking down an urban street, on an overpass over I-25 in Denver, when some kids in a passing car said something insulting to us and threw something (maybe a bottle? It’s been a long time) at us that scared the hell out of my wife, so I filed a police report, and LSS, the cops found the vehicle via the license plate I gave them, and asked me if I wanted to file charges.

“Sure, I do.” I said, as if to say “Of course–why else would I have made a report?”

“You know you’ll have to come to court to testify?”

“Well, yeah.”

“It’s going to take some time, maybe even several days, to get this resolved in court.”

“Okay.”

“And you may not be satisfied with the result–probably the verdict will result in probation.”

“Yeah?”

“And that’s if they’re found guilty, which isn’t guaranteed.”

“Okay.”

“And you’re still willing to go through with this?”

“Yup.”

“And testify under oath?”

“Uh huh.”

Around this point I began to wonder “What is this cop trying to tell me? That he doesn’t want me to follow through?”

This conversation went on for a bit, and finally I cracked. “No, I’ve decided I DON’T want to follow through on this complaint.”

My reasoning was that there was a subtext here, that the cops or this cop felt I was making something out of nothing, or maybe he felt the defendant was a good kid who made a mistake that was punished enough by having the cops investigate him, or something. I felt this colloquy was designed so that I would withdraw the complaint, which is what I ended up doing.

In retrospect, I think the cop was just checking that I wouldn’t back out at some point, and waste more of his time,

But he ended up talking me into dropping the charges by asking me repeated questions, contrary to what I think his intentions were. I’m almost sure I took his questions the wrong way, after careful consideration, but at the time I felt quite sure that I was being discouraged from following through on my complaint.

Is there something this cop could have done, that he neglected to do, to see that I would have followed through or was I completely wrong in the situation?

2

He may have even thought that having to show up for the hearing would also be a waste of his time.

3

If, as you say, his intention was to check whether you’d back out, and you backed out, I’d say it wasn’t contrary to what his intentions were.

4

I think the cop was lazy and didn’t want to do his job.

5

I’ll go with lazy and/or cynical on the part of the cop.

He’d seen too many examples of trivial charges being dismissed due to no-show complainants and figured you were likely just one more of the same. Whether he figured rightly before you two started talking, by the end he’d converted you into one of those people. Which becomes a self-reinforcing experience from his POV.

6

40 years ago? Let it go, Louie.

7

I think about it every year or so. Until today, I berated myself for reading too much into the cop’s persistence, and I assumed that he was just being thorough in making sure that I would show up to testify in court, but now after reading the responses, I’m thinking that, yeah, that was a lot of questions to ask of a potential witness, and beyond a point that persistence does add up to discouraging testimony.

It’s always going to remain a judgment call, I guess. If the cop doesn’t stop asking if you’re willing to show up and give testimony, eventually the most determined witness is going to be discouraged. The question is, was that point reached, or was his persistence just a routine part of the process?

8

You run into the same stuff today. One of my son’s friends knocked on out door at 11:00 PM with blood running down his face. He’d been jumped by a guy with a tire iron. They knew each other and they were not pals. Anyway, the kid (okay, he was 19 but a bit slow) is in our living room with a cold rag on his scalp laceration, clearly concussed (even for him). Cop asked him if he wanted to press charges for the assault and then proceeded to talk him out of it. A different time, my son’s motorcycle got stolen out of his driveway. The cops decided it would be more interesting to say he’d done it, and filed charges against him for false reporting–that was a whole big thing. I’ve got a pocketful of stories like that–police not wanting to pursue real rapes & assaults & thefts, and at the same time making up charges out of whole cloth because [reasons]. It’s my policy now to never call them no matter what is going on–traffic accident, murder, riot–because you never know what they’re going to do, and they can do a LOT.

9

Do we not have some law enforcement officers on this site? I’d be curious to learn how they are instructed to mediate the fine line between making sure the witnesses will show up and discouraging them from showing up.

10

Not instructed at all. After the paperwork is done it goes into the “not my problem” file. If it goes to trial we are witnesses for the state. We have nothing to do with if a witness shows up and it does not affect us at all. That is a prosecutor’s problem. I’m not trying to sound flippant, we have enough to worry about without going into someone else’s lane. Our responsibility is to show up when we are subpoenaed.

11

Are you saying that this conversation took place before the police had interviewed anyone in the vehicle? I imagine that it would only be a moment’s effort to find the name of the owner of a vehicle, but the prospect of getting any further would have been slim. Without someone confessing they would have to prove who was in the vehicle, who said or did what, all on the basis of your testimony because everyone would deny everything. I can understand that no-one would want to waste time on that.

12

Right that’s what I was thinking. Finding the vehicle is not the same as proving who was driving or who threw something from it.

13

Best as I can remember, the cops had found the vehicle, had spoken to the person who owned it and identified a driver who fit the general description I gave (young, white, male). He was prepared to follow through with a “he said-he said” case, I thought, but was intent on grilling me until I refused to testify. The part that I’m questioning was his intent with me–whether he was seeking to discourage my testimony or just to inform me of the hardships involved. As I recall, after all that, he sounded pretty disgusted with me that I finally said, “No, I’ve decided not to testify” even though I’d said I would the first dozen or so times he’d asked.

14

Things are done differently in various jurisdictions but in general a low level crime that was unwitnessed by the police would require you to sign the complaint. I he said-he said case is really not much of a case at all. He may have just been trying to realistically inform you that it was a waste of time that wasn’t going anywhere.

15

Is this better (from the police perspective) than simply refusing to waste their time investigating in the first place? Seems to me they spent a chunk of time getting as far as they had, only to discourage me at that point.

16

Now this part, if your recollection is accurate, sounds like you conned yourself out of testifying while the officer’s intent had been nothing of the kind.

There is a big difference between a message of: “In my professional experience this will be a PITA for you and probably pointless in the end. Are you sure?” vs. “I, Officer Friendly, think you’d be an utter fool to pursue this. So quit already. Please … and save us both a bunch of trouble.”

17

I’m questioning my accuracy as much as anyone, but the gist of it is correct.

I don’t see the big difference between your two choices, though. They both seem like the same thing to me. The question is: Was he trying to dissuade me from testifying, or telling me about some realistic possibilities in the hope of getting me to testify? If the latter, he succeeded in the former. I would have gone through with it if he’d stopped asking after about question #4 or #5.

18

The difference is in whether he cares about how you answer. The difference between informing and editorializing. Although, as you’ve said, after enough "Are you sure you’re sure?"s it certainly begins to collectively amount to editorializing even if each question in isolation is neutral.

And of course there’s always the question of whether his words matched his own intent. In addition to all the points you and others have made about whether or not you correctly understood his words.

See also this current thread for similar ruminations about understanding intent in conversations: