Any laws compelling one to obey police, “on official business.” You know, like in the movies when an officer needs to comandeer a car or motorcycle, or borrow your laptop. What happens if you’re late for work and your boss is gonna kill you, or if your afraid he’ll find all that porn in your browser cache, and politely refuse the officer’s request. Is it a crime? What crime? Misdemeanor, felony, does it depend? How much jail time should one anticipate?
BTW, I live in California if locality has bearing.
Right there. Right there. Right there. And right there. Granted, you missed a couple, but don’t beat yourself up about it. It already sounds like an interrogation.
I don’t know if you’re in LA, but if you are, just do as the nice man with the big stick says.
snopes.com did an interesting write-up of this question, but the results are rather vague:
The only possible justification for compulsion is the doctrine of “posse comitatus” (section 150 in the california penal code), which requires a citizen to assist law enforcement officials recapturing an arrestee or prisoner, or preventing a crime.
But no-one can say definitively if ‘assisting law enforcement’ actually extends to giving up your property to them.
There are a number of sites (such as www.vaw.umn.edu/Ctman/connsac3.pdf) that deal with crime investigation. The one above is a college course outline of a course in the subject.
The site states that witnesses should be separated and interviewed as soon as possible. It also states that if the witness has to leave, arrangements for an interview as soon as possible should be made unless there are exigent circumstances requiring the witness to stay.
I think each case is unique, but I do think the police have the authority to detain a witness if they can show that it is necessary to their investigation.
If you are a witness and are asked to stick around, be nice, be calm and if you must go explain to the nice policeman in a quiet voice why. The cop is just doing his job which is a difficult one at best in those conditions
I don’t think that the OP said anything about being a witness… just a police officer commandeering items (car, motorcycle, laptop… hat ) for “Official police business.” Any authority that relates to detaining witnesses would not carry over to such situations.
I’ll add in that there are documented cases of police requesting vehicles in order to pursue suspects or detainees, which usually are obliged. As was pointed out on the urban legends site, if a police officer is in enough of a hurry to ask a passerby for his car, he probably isn’t going to bother finding out personal infomation enough to press charges if the driver puts up a fuss – he’d likely just try asking someone else.
I’d love to hear the answer to this one. Take my situation for instance. I’v driven crappy cars since I was 16. I just got a 2000 Ford Explorer Eddie Bower edition after things finally started going my way. I just can not see giving it up to the cops so they can try and chase some felon down in it. I seriously doubt I’d ever be properly compensated for the vehicle, at least not without a fight. He’d have to physically move me out of the vehicle if he wanted to take it from me.
You are correct and I didn’t read carefully enough. I doubt that any police officer in California would commandeer a car or any other vehicle to chase a suspect. There is enough danger when the chase involves two or three units with lights flashing and sirens blowing and helicopters buzzing overhead. As far as other “official business” is concerned - why? If it requires rapid action then see above. If rapid actions isn’t needed then the cop probably has a radio that he can use to call for transportation.
Sure it’s a crime. It’s called “car jacking”. An officer can’t force you to give up your car. He could ask nicely, I guess. But woahhhhhh… what liability!!! He’d be risking his job. It would have to be for something serious!! Like the president’s daughter being kidnapped or something.
