sailor: it is a fine line. You are 'arrested" if you are not free to go, but you have not nessesarily been “arrested for” anything. Once you are not “free to go”, they must gine you your Miranda warning to question you, or it is not admissable. The Supreme Court refused to draw a line between “detained, and not free to go” and 'arrested", ie once you are under duress, of any sort, if you blab stuff, prior to the Miranda warning, it is inadmissable*.
Now, does that mean you should walk off? No. But you can make them say that you HAVE to stay. Thus, you are under duress. Note, once any police officer reads you your rights, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! Say only one thing “I want to see my attorney”, or “I want an attorney”. Nothing else. Once that miranda has been read, you are not going to “talk your way out of it”.
However, that does not mean that once the police have said that you can’t go, but your Miranda has not been read, you should satrt confessing to anything serious. Cops DO lie, you know, and they could say that you were “free to go”.
re Id: Yes, you certainly do have to show a drivers/operators license, when you are driving/operating. But not just walking around. Or as a passenger.
Males over the age of 18 are required to carry ID on their person at all times and can be arrested if they do not provide said ID to an officer upon request.
Actually though my van is a 1990 Vanagon, is liquid cooled, has no problem doing 75mph, and is very solid. I still got a laugh out of your post though.
So, if a drug dog indicates there are drugs in the car and then none are found is there legal recourse for the driver? Was the search a violation of the driver’s rights, or was the false positive still good enough for probable cause?
Badge, is there any independent accounting of the records that the dog handlers keep? It just seems that the temptation to fudge has to be great when so much hard work, the dog’s handler’s reputation, and maybe past convictions are on the line.
Commander: I am afraid the US Supreme Court has said otherwise. Basicly, it struck down all “anti-vagrancy” and "id upon demand’ laws.
A male of draft age must be able to show his draft card, upon reasonable notice, to a Federal Offical, or show that he is registered. Note that the Local officials cannot enforce this, nor can you be convicted simply of not haveing the card, just of failing to register.
You are quite correct, as you say in a subsequent post, that for the purposes of determining whther an interrogation is custodial, it’s of no significance if you are actually “under arrest.” But I would absolutely not advise a person to walk away from a police officer if they have been told they are not free to go. Such action might give rise to a “Failure to Obey” charge (a misdemeanor that certain of my brethern in the PD’s office used to call “Contempt of Cop.”)
The police are well within the law, under certain circumstances, to detain you without arresting you. It’s certainly appropriate to ask them if you’re free to go. But under no circumstances should you disobey a cop that tells you to stay put.
The court will ultimately evaluate whether the investigative detention was reasonable. Common sense and ordinary human experience will govern over rigid criteria. The test is whether the police methods were calculated to confirm or dispel the suspicion quickly and with minimal intrusion upon the person detained.
Note that I said “slowly, and without provocation”. Ie, if they then order you to freeze, or stop, you do so, of course. Note, that the Police, up to this time have NOT “ordered” you to “stop”, or stay. You should be polite, non-confrontational, but firm on your insistance of your rights. But perhaps my statement could have been phrased better. Perhaps “Make as if to go, without provocation, and slowly, so they have to order you to stop, or let you go”.
And, folks don’t rely on COPS for proper Police proc. They routinely violate the rights of their subjects. If those shows had been filmed in MY County, and we (The Grand Jury) had seen some of those stunts, some Police Officers would be facing a not too pleasant Grand Jury investigation, assuming Police HQ had not started to do anything. Look at Law & Order. How many times have you seen the Police interrogating someone, and his Lawyer arrives, and asks “Are you charging my client with anything?” and when they say no, then saying “Then we are leaving now”.
Commander: I do not have a legal search engine on this computer, but it was quite some time ago, in the early 70’s i believe. In the 60’s, the LAPD actually went onto the beach, and arrested youths who had no ID on them (in their bathing suits). :rolleyes:
BillyBoy, are the campus cops at this campus real police or merely security? This thread has lots of hypotheticals that would be answered if you gave that info. Also, I don’t think you’ve specified if it was a public or private school. You can walk around public campusses (sp?) all you want–well, at least the same as you would regular streets.
If they are campus cops (and most school security in my experience of visiting well over 100 schools are not “real” police), you’ve got a nifty lawsuit possible if you want to pursue it.
BeerDog, the Constitution and ideas of freedom might indicate flaws in your thinking.
Not true, at least in Texas. I worked security for a number of years, off and on(a friend of mine owns a security company). On private property, true security doesnt have more rights than the average citizen on their own property, other then to carry guns, asps etc. they can detain you for a number of reasons. And use a great deal of force in doing so. Just like a normal citizen can. The differance is they are often better equiped and more willing to do it(and often bored enough to do it). In Texas, you can pretty much use any force short of deadly force to effect a citzens arrest. And you can make a citizens arrest for any felony, or breach of the public peace committed in your presence. That means if some one uses profanity(a breach of the public peace around her, use of abusive language in a public place), you can handcuff them, and if you deem it necesarry beat them into submision with a mag light. Working in night clubs this was a common occurance with some people(I wasn’t quite so aggressive myself). I can’t tell you how many times we heard “your just security, you can’t do anything”, and it was those people who almost always wound up in hand cuffs. other breaches of the public peace included assult by contact, creating an offensive smell, criminal tresspass,…there was a long list, I don’t remember all of them. Assault by contact, public intoxication, use of abusive language, criminal tresspass were the most common. We often got all of them on the same person. Assault by contact could involve just grabbing someones arm, or pretty much putting their hand on you in any way. Criminal tresspass could be if you asked them to leave and they didn’t, or they left and came back. Public Intox was jut that in your opinion, the person is a danger to themselves or others. They didn’t even have to be drunk, and you didn’t have to prove it. Of course they often would get out the next day, and charges would be dropped, but they still got to spend the night. And in this state, its perfectly legal. Not being police officers, and not being trained, actually gives them more leeway in some situations, because they cant be expected to held to the same standards that peace officer is. Fact is most security guards won’t do anything, because company policy forbids them to, not because the law does. If your guard trys to take someone down, and gets hurt themselves, they can sue the company they work for. To big a risk. As for the baggy of pot, We did catch people with dope/coke etc, and we did detain them and hand them over to the sherrif. I never searched anyone though, Never felt a need to. I just let the deputy that came and picked them up do that. Glad I’m not in that line of work anymore. I saw a lot of disturbing things.
I said that based upon my recollections when I was practicing. However, in 1996, the Supreme Court decided Ohio v. Robinette, and held that a consensual encounter may immediately follow the issuance of a traffic summons without violating the Fourth Amendment. In Robinette, the Supreme Court rejected a bright line rule that would have required police officers to advise citizens stopped for traffic offenses that they were free to go before the officers attempted to engage in consensual interrogations.
Rather, the Supreme Court held that “[t]he Fourth Amendment test for a valid consent to search is that the consent be voluntary and ‘[v]oluntariness is a question of fact to be determined from all the circumstances.’”
So it would seem that totality of the circumstances is now the rule everywhere. I apologize for my earlier misstatement; I have tried to stay abreast of decisional law since leaving the criminal law world, but this one slipped by me, I guess.