I didn’t know that. This is the sort of thing that makes me sure that not saying anything is the best approach.
I’m not teaching them that police officers are bad. I’m teaching them that they have rights and they should exercise them in their own best interests.
You make it sound like anyone is saying to *lie *to the police, which is not the case.
It’s paranoid to teach your minority kid that the police aren’t your friends? It’s paranoid to tell your kid that false confessions and false convictions are real things that you could very well be susceptible to, when that’s a proven fact? You have an odd definition of paranoia.
Yes and yes, its paranoid. Say instead that you should cooperate with police. Say that the odds are very low anything of the sort like in the linked article will happen. Say that for the most part, the police are like you and me, trying to do their job, uphold the law, but sometimes they can’t do it without help from you. Say that instead of obstructing the police because you can, try to help them and only resist if you think you are being targeted. I would say that police are in general good people, and you only fear them because they have a power over you that you do not, but if you don’t fear random strangers stabbing you outdoors, waiters spitting in your food just because, or a doctor prescribing you something that may harm you, then you should not be afraid the police are out to get you every second of every day.
Also because exactly the type of people who should not have power over others and the type of people who often seek it. There’s a reason police officers are more likely to commit domestic violence.
Again, not a position anyone has taken.
Yes, the police are just like you and me - they have exactly the same percentage of lazy-asses, fuckups, authoritarian bullies, and power mongers as you’ll find in any other workplace setting. (They have the same percentage of good workers and stellar performers as well, but those aren’t the police who worry me.) And they are trying to do their job, which is arresting people and putting them in jail.
And as MOIDALIZE said in his post earlier in this thread:
"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.”
Being careful around the police isn’t paranoia, it’s simple common sense.
The last time I was pulled over for speeding the cop asked if I knew how fast I was going. I knew I was speeding and knew I was caught so I just told the truth, “Yeah, I was probably going about 50 (in a 35), I just found out my network is down and I’m hurrying in to work to fix it.” The cop gave me a fix-it ticket for my tinted side windows, thanked me for my honesty, and told me to be more careful.
Talking to the police and not being a jerk probably saved me $2-300 in that case.
You were in no danger of being arrested for a mere speeding violation. Would you have continued to cheerfully cooperate if the officer had asked to search your car, though?
(I agree that you should ALWAYS be polite when speaking to the police. Given the abuse they routinely suffer, the police take great pleasure in making life painful for abusive assholes.)
And this is why we don’t trust cops to look out for our best interests.
I have a friend who’s a retired county cop who told me to NEVER answer this question. It is a confession and makes a ticket based on the admitted speed virtually unassailable in court. Once you’ve admitted how fast you were going, all other avenues of questioning the evidence are irrelevant. It no longer matters how long it’s been since the radar gun was or the cruiser’s speedometer was calibrated, or whether the officer was doing something like hiding behind a tree to entrap drivers, or any other technicalities which might have gotten you out of the ticket.
Methinks you do not understand what “entrapment” means in the context of law enforcement.
I know what entrapment means – I just couldn’t come up with a better term do describe police doing things like hiding at the bottom of a hill or things like that. Those kinds of tactics might be against the rules in some places and not others.
What if you had $20,000 in cash in the trunk, and the cop asks if you’re carrying any money? Will you continue to cooperate with him, given that you’ve done nothing wrong and the cash legitimately belongs to you?
As for the speeding thing, when asked, the safest answer is a non-commital “gosh, I really couldn’t say.”
Yes. And I have learned that you just can’t convince people that there really is a different ‘police’ that inner city black people know than the police that everyone else knows. When I was discussing this with my husband, he said, “Yeah, white folks don’t realize that when no one is watching, cops break the fourth wall with us.” And though it amused me he put it that way, I think it’s apt.
Cops get downright unprofessional with a lot of black people all the time. All the time. I have stories to tell, but I don’t even bother telling them on these boards because it’s one of those things that people honestly believe they understand when they just can’t.
LOOOOOOOOL just found this video on youtube, it was hilarious
Poor girl, haha. 
Arrested for having a foul mouth. She’s hot, though.
Sometimes I think all discussions about the police need to have the poster identify their race, gender, country of residence and socioeconomic status. I think there’s a clear divide: people who say the police are not on their side are/had their opinions shaped by American minorities of lower socioeconomic status, and ones that think they police are on their side are white, middle class people who live in suburbia.
As a white, middle class female living in an okay Canadian neighbourhood? The police are my friends.
Not that simple. I’m a white, female, upper-class American (not quite a 1%er, but definitely in the top 2% of the income distribution), and I definitely do not believe the police are on my side or are my friends. And no, I’ve never had any bad interactions with them either.
The police are on the side of the state. It’s that simple. The closer you sit to the positions of true power in your society, the more unlikely it is that the state’s guard dogs will ever do anything to you besides wag their tails and lick you. Don’t be fooled: they still have teeth, and are capable of delivering a very nasty bite.
Exactly. White, middle class people are the subpopulation that typically wields the power that hires and fires police chiefs, elects sheriffs, and so forth. In fact, their interests often conflict with those who are nonwhite, lower or working class, and so on. So I’d wager in 90% of the cases, if you are a law abiding White middle class person you can safely assume that the police are in fact working in your best interests, as is the criminal justice system. They know that if they do something wrong or treat you unfairly, shit’s going to hit the fan. So they have powerful incentives to work ethically, or even give you a break every so often.
If you are of color or poor, you often don’t vote in large enough numbers, or wield the power that gets LEOs appointed and/or fired - and by that token, mayors and councilpeople who are vying for your vote. So LEOs are more likely to engage in behavior like profiling because it keeps “dangerous” populations in check and that’s generally not going to cause any blowback politically. They also want to close cases, and DAs want to successfully prosecute cases so they’re seen as tough on crime.
I have a colleague who works with the Innocence Project, and any survey of correctional data will likely make you question the very meaning of justice in this country. Death row is populated with uneducated, illiterate, poor Black males, who almost always have the lethal combination of inept public defenders (including those who sleep through trials, or never do any investigative work) and “tough on crime” judges, like shitstain Sharon Keller, who refused to keep the court open past 5 pm for a death row inmate’s final appeal. So many of these cases have such obvious circumventions of due process, or just make no sense, yet still, there’s a human being who will die as a result. Of course there are many in jail and in prison who are serving disproportionally long sentences simply because of race, education, and socioeconomic level.
So in short, it is truly dangerous for one’s livelihood or even life to trust that the police have your best interests at heart, especially if you’re not White and middle class. And even if you are, you can still get fucked over - Michael Morton is exhibit one. And even if you’re an affluent person of color, you can still find yourself in jail having done nothing wrong, like Skip Gates. When I was a graduate student in Boston, I had two acquaintances - both Black men who were Harvard affiliates - embroiled in traffic stops that ended up with them being arrested (and innocent of having drugs or stolen the cars they were driving). One guy had a mental breakdown and had to withdraw from school.
That’s why I advise all people, especially men of color, to retain counsel before any type of questioning by the police. And I will tell my son precisely this when he’s old enough. I have friends in law enforcement who’ve essentially told me the exact same thing.
Some are just stupid, others have a need to confess. My nephew got arrested for credit card fraud. As soon as they got him into the interrogation room, he confessed to everything, they didn’t even need to start questioning. He got caught, he needed to confess his crimes.
If they haul you in and are refusing to allow you to leave, they had better have read you your rights. If you are stopped by a cop when driving, they can keep you there for a reasonable amount of time (varying by state I believe) but they have to eventually either arrest you or let you go. But they can’t force you to go somewhere with them unless they take you into custody.
“So, you were close to Ted? His best friend? So you knew him very well.”
“Sure, knew him for years. We saw each other several times a week, watched football together every Sunday.”
“Did he have any enemies? Or people he didn’t get along with?”
“Nah, not Ted, he was the life of the party, making people laugh.”
“Maybe he had some irritating habits that annoyed people. Always tapping his fingers or stiffing waiters on tipe, something like that. Anything that annoyed you?”
“He wasn’t perfect, but really, he was a great guy. Would pull occasional practical jokes, stuff like that. Nothing really annoying.”
“No one ever got mad about a joke he played on them?”
“Well sure, but nothing that would cause them to kill him. He’d apologize, everyone would laugh it off, things would cool down.”
“Did he ever play one of those jokes on you?”
“Well, yeah, but it was no big deal. I cooled off and cleaned up the paint, we laughed about it later.”
“So you have a history of being mad at and arguing with the victim. Just for the record, where were you when he died? And can you prove it?”
A UK based anecdote.
When I was a kid a group of us used to go and play at our local picnic spot. I must have been about 11. One afternoon we found a radio on the ground, nobody about. We assumed someone had put the thing on the roof of their car to listen to while they had their picnic and then driven off having forgotten it.
I picked it up and took it home intending to hand it in to the local police station. Fortunately my mother came with me. When I handed it in I was grilled in a most unfriendly manner by a policeman who essentially accused me of having stolen it. Thankfully my mother was having no such shit and told the officer as much.
The next day the owners inquired after and recovered it. They came to our house and rewarded me with their gratitude for my responsible attitude and a sum of money that quite cheered my 12 year old self up.
My mother never really spoke of it but she had on one occasion in the past had some involvement with the police and was disinclined to trust them. This would have been why she wasn’t going to let me go alone to do my public duty, something which I considered unnecessary before I saw what followed.
They did more that day than miss an opportunity to do a good bit of PR with a public spirited 12 year-old. They poisoned my view of them and I would never speak to them without a solicitor (UK) present, and I would advise anyone else to do the same.