We have courts and lawyers to works out errors made by cops, deliberate misbehavior on the parts if cops, and to settle borderline complex matters. Once those issues are dealt with, they should be incorporated into police training. If you think that’s impossible, then what you are saying is that there is no way to create a lawful society. If you think that the police can’t be reasoned to act lawfully then they’re nothing but an armed gang of thugs.
And, the real issue in these cases, as I said above, is NOT a complex legal question. It’s a matter of training cops not to create unnecessary problems.
Professor Bergman is making a general statement about the law, without distinguishing between felony, a misdemeanor that has public safety implications, and a generic misdemeanor. His statements are true for the first two categories, but not the third.
I made the identical error when I first began to participate in this thread. My own circuit, the Fourth, hasn’t really addressed the issue (that I know of), and I was unaware that other federal circuits had reached different conclusions. Hentor directed my attention to US v. Grigg, a Ninth Circuit opinion. California is in the Ninth Circuit.
If they truly saw that, the. They were right to call the cops. When the cops arrived, they saw nothing going on. The right thing to do was walk away.
Have you listened to the audio and watched the tales? There is no question in my mind that the security guard was wrong to summon the cops. Lollie was doing nothing wrong.
Regardless, pretend he was. When the cops got there, Lollie walked away. Poof. End if story.
If you read Bricker’s posts, he explains repeatedly that there are certain crimes that are only crimes if a cop catches you in the act. Thus, in the a Watts case, regardless if what witnesses might have seen, so far as the coos were concerned there was no crime.
Other posters have already outlined what an appropriate response would have been—tell them they got reports of public sex, explain that it is illegal, and then let it go.
Same for Lollie. The most that would have happened was “I heard there was somebody trespassing” / “There’s no sign that says this us private” / “Oh, you’re right. I’ll go talk to the security guard and see what’s up. Have a nice day.”
That’s what should have happened.
No, that isn’t equivalent. You are saying that police officer should not be expected to know how he can and cannot conduct himself in the course of his duties. The vast majority of his day will involve talking to people; do you dispute that? The officer should know what is legally acceptable conduct. I don’t know how you can argue otherwise, to be honest, without also arguing that no one else should be expected to know their job.
An electrician with a couple of years experience should know how to bend pipe and should know how to make connections; they should know what the difference between AC and DC power is, and should know what precautions to take when dealing with high voltage power. These are very basic parts of their job and things that they do every day.
I don’t find your attitude that people should not know the basic and most-engaged in activities of their profession reasonable at all. Your arguments have no basis other than “it seems difficult”, but I think we need people with the power to detain or kill others to have a much, much higher standard for basic knowledge of their job duties than any other type of profession.
The way standard procedures work is that you have a set of procedures that result in the most efficient process most of the time. That doesn’t mean that there’s a purpose in every given instance. But it makes things run smoother if you train people to do them routinely, rather than have people have to decide on a case-by-case basis what to do.
Important note: this is not to say that the cops should do things that are illegal because they’re standard procedure. This was only intended to address the specific question that it answered, i.e. what purpose was served by demanding ID in this instance and why did the cops not just wave it off.
And my point here is that it’s not practical to have cops make on-the-spot decisions about whether to ask for ID and sit around contemplating whether and how this might be useful. And this is likely not what happened, in either case. In all likelihood, someone who was experienced and trained in police procedures figured out that having a policy of the police routinely asking for ID in situations like this was productive, and trained all cops to routinely do this. So it’s a mistake, IMO, to focus on what the purpose might have been of ID in this specific situation.
[As it happens, I think it might have been productive, both in terms of prior history and in terms of possible future developments, but I don’t know if the cops had any specific purpose in mind, and they were likely just following some routine procedures, as above.]
They are still crimes. But (in some federal circuits, including the Ninth / California) the police don’t have the power to detain you briefly when they reasonably suspect a completed misdemeanor that doesn’t involve public safety.
The guy (in this scenario) was committing a crime, he took away someone’s right to control their property, and we just declare that he gets to walk away because HE decides to walk away?
Or, like in the Loitering investigation I linked to, instead of just seeing that nobody was in danger and walking away, the cops made an effort to identify everyone and arrested a guy with a carjacking warrant.
Are you sure? He specifically said “even a low-grade misdemeanor”.
And the rationale he used would seem to survive your reasoning. He said that “once a police officer identifies the suspect as matching a description of people involved in committing a crime”, then he has the right to inestigate and that investigation encompasses asking for ID. Does Griggs contradict this? ISTM that it’s addressing a different rationale.
Police have to ask people questions, and in many cases to attempt to determine their identity, every day as part of their jobs. Are you aware of any jurisdictions where cops are encouraged to stab people?
I think that’s an entirely reasonable discussion, although one that’s much harder to armchair quarterback than one purely about legality and rights. It also is fairly pointless to have without really really accurate and contextual descriptions of everything that went on in the encounter. (Another good reason for requiring all on-duty cops to constantly have lapel cams.)
shrug Well, that’s why it’s a discussion. If you agreed with me (on anything :p) or vice versa, then it would be a lot less interesting. Would be a lot of ‘what he said’ and ‘me too’, which is no fun at all.
Well, this is a strawman of what I’m saying, so it’s not exactly surprising that you don’t see how I can argue otherwise. The police obviously didn’t know that in this vertical situation (or these if we are talking about both cases) that they couldn’t demand ID or detain someone if they didn’t get it. It’s a finer point of the law that they were obviously unaware of, and looking at the earlier discussion in this thread, as well as opinions I’ve read from lawyers (people who ARE paid to know this sort of thing), it wasn’t nearly so cut and dried as the blithe statement that the cops should have known better.
Right. But this situation is a finer point of the law, something I wouldn’t EXPECT a cop to know instantly. That’s what lawyers are for. The cops are expected to know and deal with the things they are trained on, but they can’t know all the minutia, which was the point I was making earlier when talking with Acsenray, who also doesn’t agree with me and finds my arguments unpersuasive. I don’t believe that cops should or do know all of the ins and outs of the law, nor are they trained to know them, because the basic training for a cop is a couple of years, most of which is training in other things than the law. Lawyers, who are expected to know this sort of thing go to college for many, many years and have to pass a bar exam as well…which is why they are paid a lot more than cops.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t find your assertions reasonable either. To me, you are saying that someone of low level training and education (and pay) should know as much as someone who has specialized and received high levels of training and professional certification in their field, which is ludicrous IMHO. Why have professionals if journeymen can do the same jobs and are expected to know the same things (and be payed a hell of a lot less)? And to me, a cop isn’t a lawyer…he’s a cop, trained to be a cop, trained with a journeyman understanding of the law, and trained in a lot of other fields (shallowly)…and paid a commensurately low wage compared to a vertical specialist (i.e. a lawyer), and thus not expected nor required to know the finer points of law.
But this is sounding like a broken record. No sense in going back and forth on this round after round. My arguments are unpersuasive to you, and vice versa so why don’t we leave it at that? In the end, the cops were wrong, and the courts will decide (assuming any of these go to trial), and maybe things will change…and this problem will be fixed with new training and education on this point at the department level.
I’m surprised this is suddenly your view, when you didn’t hesitate to call Watts ugly names for her reaction. Why do you suddenly feel you lack accurate “contextual descriptions” to determine whether the cops acted excessively, but you have enough to know Watts overreacted?
[QUOTE=Snowboarder Bo]
Do you think it is reasonable to expect a cop to know that he cannot stab a suspect to get them to confess?
[/QUOTE]
I figured if I waited a while, you would say something stupid enough to justify my amused contempt for your posts.
I didn’t read that entire thread, but it would seem folks might be interested in reading this debate:
The young lady was not questioned for no reason, and the officer indeed had probable cause (not merely reasonable suspicion) to believe a crime had been committed based on witness complaints alone. They were identified precisely, including their vehicle. She was not detained for no reason, and was not detained unlawfully. Witnesses called to complain that sexual acts were witnessed, and not just kissing (with the door open, no less). Someone suggested they should stop putting on a show before calling the police. Evidently, this suggestion was ignored, at least for a time.
It was a low-level issue, and the officer has indicated he’d no intention of citing or arresting anyone for sex in public. Confronting and briefly questioning puts people on notice about their behavior – it’s a disincentive to ever do again in public whatever it was they *were *doing. It’s never a good idea to be evasive and snotty with a co; it only makes them more suspicious. (She never did later answer a question of an interviewer about what in fact they’d been doing aside from “making out”/kissing. She deflected by in effect declaring that so long as one is clothed, there was no wrongdoing. This is incorrect.)
It went south when the young lady (who does not in fact understand the law or basic law enforcement techniques, like many people) took issue with being questioned about her identity. To be sure, I’d take issue with an officer asking a question *about *me of the male in whose company I was, instead of directly to me; that is, if I hadn’t decided to get my daddy on the phone and supposedly otherwise occupied. She went on to say “my dad wants to talk with you” (or the like), mentioned she had a publicist (one step from “Do you know who I am?!”) … and also threw in a dying stepmother as a tactic. This, evidently, after in effect declaring the cop was being racist didn’t ruffle him.
