The police are not your advocates, they are agents of the state. No one should forget that.
You should also keep in mind that they’re allowed to deceive you, that seemingly innocuous admissions on your part can have unforseen legal consequences, and that Miranda warnings are only required before a custodial interrogation, meaning an interrogation where you’re not free to leave.
Everyone has the right to remain silent. There’s nothing shameful or immoral about exercising that right. There’s no good reason to assist the police in conducting a fishing expedition at your expense. The risk of something bad happening to you may be remote, but the consequences can be dire, so why take a chance?
If I was a policeman and your kids pulled that routine on me when I just wanted to ask them some mundane question, they would pretty quickly piss me off and make me look for any reason to detain them.
What do you possibly gain from this attitude. Co-operate, the police ask something, you answer and you are on your way in two minutes. Act like an asshole and you attract suspicion on yourself and possibly get dragged off to the police station and waste an afternoon filling in forms. Who wins here exactly?
So pretty much what you’re saying is, “I would be a corrupt cop and search for a bullshit excuse to detain a juvenile for asserting their rights…but you should trust cops!”
Which is* exactly *why citizens should not answer such police questions. Police officers should not have the power to arrest innocent citizens & taxpayers , just minding their own business, just because the citizen was exercising his Constitutional rights. This is abuse of authority.
Like I said, if treated as a witness and you can help, then of course assist the police. Once treated as a suspect- STFU.
I should have been more explicit when I said “if they find themselves in a situation where the cops are involved”. This is what I have taught them to do when it is a criminal situation, not just any time that a cop says “Hi” or asks if they have a permit to play on the football field or stuff like that.
I have been confronted by cops enough to know that they won’t arrest you unless they believe that you have committed a crime. I would rather have my kids say nothing and be arrested than have them say something that will get them into even more trouble. Cops are trained to get confessions out of people. They’ll tell a kid “Just admit that you did it and I’ll let you go.” So the kid gives a false confession and gets arrested. Good luck getting anyone to believe that it was a false confession. It’s better to keep your mouth shut and talk only when a trusted adult is there to advise you.
I’ve had the sex talk with the kids
I’ve had the drug talk with the kids.
I haven’t had the “criminal situation” talk yet. I guess I’m a bad parent :smack:
How does that go exactly? If you rob someone, and the cops catch you . . .
Why not break the cycle and take your kids out of that thought process???
I think some people are surprised by the responses in this thread because they, nor anyone who looks like/talks like/lives near them have not dealt with police who harass or persecute them prima facie. I grew up in the UK and had a generally positive view of the police - go to a bobby if you’re lost, etc. but when I came to the US and moved to a moderate crime area, I discovered that the police are not necessarily your friends. Being a Black male, I have been detained and harassed by the police for no legitimate reason, and in fact, now that I know more about my rights, illegally detained (not in jail, but made to sit on a sidewalk while the police searched a car).
I am generally law abiding (yep, I speed) but if the police question me for anything besides “did you see a guy run by here with a purse in his hand,” yes, I’m getting a lawyer. Michael Morton is a guy in my county here in Texas who spent 20 years in prison because of flawed police work, horrible public defenders, and a shitstain of a judge. And he was a middle class White guy. Without knowing what the police are looking for, you can often find yourself as a convenient scapegoat. The police and criminal justice system are generally trying to solve a case which does not always mesh with your self interest.
Sadly racial profiling and shoddy police work are realities in American jurisprudence. As many have mentioned, if you’re not a hardened criminal, you are probably not going to fare well during an interrogation or questioning. You can certainly help police with their investigation but you don’t want to end up putting yourself in a bad situation.
I don’t know what cycle you’re talking about, but I’ll answer the rest.
When I was 19 years old I was driving in Boston looking for a parking spot. I went around the block three times. No spots. As I turned the corner to try again I saw the flashing lights behind me. I pulled over. The cop told me that I ran the red light. I knew that I hadn’t. He asked if he could search my car. I asked what he wanted to search for. He said he was looking for drugs. Being naive, I thought “I don’t have any drugs” and consented to the search. But first he asked me for the vehicle’s registration. As I opened the glove compartment to get it he thought he saw a gun. A second later I have a cop’s gun in my face. My “gun” was a cassette tape. I learned in that moment that cooperating with cops can get you into big trouble. After that scare the cop continued searching the car. I couldn’t stop him because I had given my consent. He found nothing but wasn’t satisfied. He wanted me to admit that I had drugs in the car. That was when I asked “Am I under arrest?” When he said “No” I asked “Can I leave?” He said “No”. I hadn’t done anything but he was not going to let me go because he was convinced that I had drugs. Nothing I could say would make the situation better. So I stopped talking. He eventually gave up. “I’ll be watching you.”
When I was 23 I got arrested for public drinking. I had had half a beer in a parking lot outside of a concert hall. A cop rolled up. I put the beer in the trunk of the car I was standing next to. The cop asked “Is that your beer?” I said “Yes”. That was it. I was under arrest and I was screwed because I had confessed. If I had said nothing he could still have arrested me but he would have had to do real police work to get a conviction. It wouldn’t have been worth his trouble.
There are two examples from my life. I’m not a criminal but both times I cooperated with a police officer’s questioning of me I ended up in a bad situation. Both times it would have been better to say nothing. Both times are things that could just as easily happen to my kids. I teach them about the dangers of all sorts of things. Cops can be a danger. If you don’t believe it it’s just that you’ve never been on the wrong side of one.
I think if one is expecting to find trouble, you generally find a way to get it. And teaching your childern about how to act if they find themselves in a “criminal situation” and seeing the police as the enemy is doing just that. What is worse, IMHO is passing that on to your kids.
This is the mistake that you are sadly indoctrinating into your kids. Telling the truth is bad now? If your kid did something bad, they deserve to be punished. At no point should you ever hide the truth from the cop or counsel anyone else to. You did the crime, so do the time
No, I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is that a kid acting cocky, arrogant and “I know my rights” and trying to escalate a non-existent situation is going to ring alarm bells, i.e. “What is this person trying to hide?”, that a kid who is polite and non-confrontational, answers my question and goes on his way will not. It’s human nature that a policeman will be more suspicious of someone who apparently views the police as “the enemy”.
Perhaps I value politeness in everyday interaction too highly. I couldn’t imagine stonewalling a policeman who was simply asking me a question.
As YogSosoth says, this is a ridiculous, paranoid stance. Telling a cop the truth is a bad idea? I can’t think of any situation I would put myself in where that would be the case.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law.
That’s essentially what I have taught my kids. The cops will tell them the same thing if they are arrested. It’s good advice. They have to remind people of these rights because cops so often abuse them.
Dunno. No cycle of criminal activity or police encounters here.
But also, if one is not expecting to find trouble, they might still find it. I don’t expect to find trouble and certainly neither does my sweet little girl, but that’s no guarantee it won’t happen, and there’s too much at stake.
Even if your kid did do something bad (which again, they could have done NOTHING wrong and still found trouble), that doesn’t mean they necessarily deserve the punishment they might get. Jail/prison/juvie corrupts. It doesn’t help. If my kid was getting into normal youthful shenanigans (and it IS normal for a kid to do that, and most grow out of it. I can find cites if you want but it will be in a paper book, not online), I would want to deal with the situation in a way that wouldn’t make matters worse.
After Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District, the US SC permitted a criminal charge if a person detained under at minimal, reasonable suspicion, did not ID themselves when asked, so you either give a name or ID in states that have “stop and identify” laws, as Ohio passed thiers shortly after Hiibel.
Also in Ohio, if the charge is a Minor Misdemeanor, you can not be arrested unless you refuse to identify yoursel, for 1 exception. So if you stand “mute” you can be arrested.
It can certainly be against your best interests in some situations. Did you not read the link in post #92, or Machine Elf’s description of what happened?
Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean that revealing information to the police is always the best course of action.
Says who? Why not? Are you just totally ignoring all the info in this thread that indicates otherwise?
And are you totally ignoring the fact that many people committed no crime whatsoever, but have suffered dire consequences from saying too much to the police?
Of course, if the search up to that point produced sufficient fruits to sustain probable cause, then revoking your consent won’t help you. But in the situation you describe, you are absolutely permitted to say, “I am withdrawing my consent to search right now. You no longer have my consent to search.”
I’ll agree with that, and if you have specific instances where you want me to judge whether or not its moral, I’ll do that. There’s plenty of laws I disagree with, slightly less I would lie about, but at no time would I blanketly state that telling the cops the truth is bad. The default should be the truth, with exceptions in extraordinary circumstances. What is being taught to these kids is a paranoia consistent with overthrowing the government delusions