# Questions about arrests and custody

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-arrests-and-custody/617161>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 29, 2012, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-arrests-and-custody/617161 "2012-03-29T14:37:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2012, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-arrests-and-custody/617161/81 "2012-04-04T01:35:45Z")

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> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> Every lawyer will say that yes, you should identify yourself. After all, that’s the law. So saying “Hey, I am guizot, not guigot, look, here’s my ID” is not really lawyering up.

It actually was a case of mistaken _visual_ identity, so that wouldn’t have changed anything. (They were looking at a print-out from a very blurry security camera image.)

I was aware of the distinction between booking (arresting) someone and simply _detaining_ someone. If they had decided to actually book me, I would’ve “lawyered up,” because in that case then I would be in there for a while no matter what. They hadn’t mentioned anything about murder before they threw me in the squad car–they just said “a crime” had been committed the night before. On the scene where they stopped me the cops (all seven or eight of them) were squinting at a print-out, and comparing it to me.

But because I was here in Los Angeles at the time I knew the crime to have occurred (the previous night), that’s basically all I could tell them anyway–lawyer or no lawyer–and I was in the company of others basically all that time. I knew that eventually I’d be cleared. If I had clammed up and insisted upon a lawyer, they might have been forced to book me and throw me in cell, instead of leaving me in the little room inside the homicide office. They probably would’ve done that in any case if the original security tape had remained unclear, but at least by cooperating _on a minimal level_ I stood a chance of release, which is what eventually happened.

Essentially, they did to me exactly what happened to George Zimmerman, although the circumstances were very different.

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