No, I meant “Vents”, as in “Ventilators”, machines that breathe for you when you have the right of way and get smashed by another car anyhow. I didn’t realize it was an obscurity; sorry about that.
Going back into a store is suspicious behavior now? Really? No one here has forgotten an item and had to go back inside?
FWIW the police can make life very difficult for you, even if you have done nothing wrong. I was once told a story by a taxi driver, he had bought a car from another taxi driver (it was a private taxi) and found he was getting pulled over by the police several times a week. It turns out that the previous owner had done something to annoy the police and since then the vehicle had been marked for harassment. He would frequently be pulled over for ‘random spot checks’ of his vehicle which would take a long time (causing him loss of income) and they would flag up anything and everything they could, including cracks in headlights the driver was sure weren’t there when he was pulled over.
This wasn’t the current owners fault of course, he isn’t even sure what the previous owner did to warrant such attention but it served as a warning to me that it is best to just tell the police what they want to know, be polite and get on your way. I’m all for standing up for ones rights but you have to pick your battles and the OP would have got home out of the cold faster if he had just given his name and address and since (I assume) he has nothing to hide it would all have worked out fine.
Exactly. None of us are college graduates. None of us spent countless hours learning the law before being tested, vetted, and allowed to protect you. We don’t have IA watching our every move, and citizen review boards who don’t know shit about policing telling us we’re wrong. We don’t spend hours every month in review and continuing education. We’re just Neanderthals (notice I’m not smart enough to use the current accepted Neandertal) with guns who shoot and tase innocent people without cause.:rolleyes:
Thanks for insulting about 700,000 men and women who are a hell of a lot smarter than you, and a hell of a lot better than you.
Next time you have a crime problem, try and solve it yourself. See how that works for you.
So being made to stand out in the cold while being interrogated for not having ID is “fine”?
In the sense that it would have worked out quicker to comply than to stand out in the cold whilst he waited for the LEO to talk to his superior; yes.
From the looks of this thread the OP got more satisfaction by standing up for himself. What the police did to that tax driver was a crime. He should have documented it and sued them.
Bawahahahaha
Cecil is loosing the fight. :smack:
Well what did the tax driver do to deserve that harassment? Why did the op deserve to be hassled for not presenting his papers?
You’re honestly saying it’s better to roll over and take it in the ass than to stand in the cold for a few minutes and assert your rights?
Or are you saying the tax driver deserved the abuse and should have taken it? Fuck that shit, and the ignorant subservient spineless cowards who promote it.
I don’t know what state you’re in, but here in AZ it’s a misdemeanor to fail to provide ID if asked by a law enforcement officer. It’s one of the few things I dislike about this state, but there’s no impetus to change it.
My husband had a bunch of coworkers who got pulled over for Driving While Black in a rich, heavily-white suburb on the way to work in that suburb. Over the course of a few weeks, a guy would get pulled over on his way in, get hassled about where he’s going and did he know he cut that corner a little sharp/swerved over the line a bit/whatever BS excuse, and typically got off with a warning or something, but that’d make him late to punch in at work. At their workplace, punching in over 5 minutes late is as bad as not showing up and not calling in. After a few of these explanations to their supervisor, things started adding up for management.
Fortunately, these guys worked for a United States Post Office branch, which is probably why they only mostly got warnings (the cop would see the postal jacket and let them off with some BS). Their Postmaster called the town’s president to notify them of harassment of her employees, then told the police chief that this would stop. And it did, and they’re goddamned lucky that they worked for a government agency, or a big enough company that can tell the cops “this stops now” and it actually works.
I already said that I would have given my name. But the cop saying that it’s against the law to not carry an ID? That’s bullshit. Whether he was misinformed or just yanking the chain of the OP, I’m glad the OP stood up against that.
The taxi driver did nothing to deserve the harassment (the guy who owned the car previously may have done, we will never know) and in his shoes I would have kept a log of when and where I was stopped and then file a complaint (or sold the car on!).
There is a big difference between what happened to the taxi driver and what happened to the OP, the OP wasn’t abused, the two situations aren’t comparable. If the OP had told the LEO his name and address I am sure he would have been on his way (and out of the cold) faster than taking the course of action he did. I’m not saying he is wrong to stand up for his rights, just that I wouldn’t have bothered when there was nothing to be gained from it and potentially a lot to be lost if the cop turned out to be a real power-tripping asshole.
IMO people should stand up for their rights when their rights are being abused, I don’t think being asked for your name and address qualifies as abuse or anything close to it, just let it slide and get on with your day, save your ire for when it might actually count for something.
The law does not require you to provide ID. Under certain circumstances, it requires you to state your name.
Under the circumstances in the OP, I probably would also have resisted showing ID, even if I had it on me. I would likely have cooperated to the point of saying “I’m Joe Schmoe, I live over there on 1st Street, and I walked up here to get some cigarettes, beer, and a movie, since, as you may have noticed, there’s a lot of snow and it’s not worth trying to drive anywhere. Anything else?”
This is almost as silly as what he said. There are plenty of police officers who are stupid, arrogant, abusive, or corrupt. Some commit crimes - some even murder without cause, or rape. There are also many who are highly intelligent, humble, would never abuse their power, and are much more ethical than your average bear.
I have known and known of plenty of cops (usually apart from their job) and they were all very different people. Any profession, no matter how noble, is a thoroughly mixed bag. They only reasonable thing is to judge every cops you meet as an individual, and by how well they perform their job.
As a general rule, no.
If you ask if you’re free to go, and the cop says, “wait,” you have been detained. As noted elsewhere in this thread, “Am I free to go?” are the magic words to determine if you’re being detained.
Bolding mine. At the time he said “you’re not in any trouble…”, I (in good faith) had no reason to believe that the officer suspected me of something illegal. However, after the fact, I am 100% certain that the police officer had no RAS…or else he’d have arrested me, or given me a citation.
Wow, I have been spending a lot of productive time researching police misconduct, lack of knowledge of laws, etc, over the past few days. I’ve discovered a lot of things I didn’t know, and more importantly, I’ve learned how to respectfully assert my rights and protect my constitutional rights. They’re the only thing that we’re guaranteed, with the exception of death and taxes, so we should go out of our way to protect these rights. What started out as a simple police encounter turned out to be a lesson in constitutional rights for me. And even though the encounter got my blood pressure up a bit, I’m glad it happened.
And by the way, I wholeheartedly believe that 99.9% of police officers in this country are honest, hardworking people who are just doing their job. And the cop I dealt with was one of the 99.9%, now that I look back. …well, except for when he barked, “what’s your name?”. lol.
When the police question a suspect, they have the right to lie. OTOH, I believe they’re supposed to tell you that you are a suspect and read you your Miranda rights.
Yes, the police have the right to lie to a SUSPECT who is under arrest. The do not have the right to arrest people at random or make shit up to give a reason to put someone under arrest. So none of that really has anything to do with a random free citizen taking a walk.
The suspect doesn’t have to be under arrest.
That’s why I advocate so strongly for everyone to know their rights. The police can consider you a suspect in their heads based on their horoscope for the day or whatever else, but they can’t do shit about it if they don’t have reasonable suspicion. And they can’t lie about that. They can’t make up some reason why you’re under arrest.