There’s the “good feeling” you could get if a violent criminal (possibly one that hurt or killed a friend or relative) is convicted and taken off the streets and doesn’t have the chance to injury or kill anyone else, at least for awhile.
I agree that if you are guilty of the crime, or of similar or unrelated crimes that could back to haunt you, your best course is probably to lawyer up and keep your mouth closed, unless you think your accomplice(s) are ready to cut a deal and sell you out.
The best course for the rest of us is if you confess, plead guilty and go away for the appropriate period of time.
Since the odds of that are, for various reasons, so tiny, I’ll take my chances. I’ve known quite a few cops socially and through my career. I’ve also had friends who got hassled or worse by cops because of their age, neighborhood, or skin color. I think law enforcement needs massive reform. I don’t trust that cops are all decent people who always act in my best interest, and I don’t assume they’re all doofuses who take ghoulish glee in pinning crimes on the wrong people.
I’m also smart enough to realize which situations call for my attorney being present, which don’t, and when a situation changes.
It seems to me that you have a very concrete, very lopsided, very black-and-white view of law enforcement. If your attitude is the result of bad experiences you’ve had with LE through no fault of your own, I’m truly sorry. If they keep you from having enough sympathy for crime victims and society at large, then that’s a shame.
I saw a very obvious drunk pulling out of a bar - saw him sitting & sitting & sitting at the end of the driveway & then almost pull out & hit me despite a 15-20 second gap between me & the previous car up the road. He was then swerving all over the place. I don’t like drunk drivers. I called the PD, I followed him giving play-by-play of where we were until they found him & pulled him over.
A little bit later I get a call back informing me they’re stopping by for a statement; seems my call was the probable cause for them to look for him & pull him over. Against my better judgement I gave them my statement. Great, I just got some fucking asshole arrested & now he’s gonna get my name & address in discovery.
In this case, nothing came of it, not even a subpoena to testify but watch the news of killings in da hood & there ain’t a single person who saw a thing, despite it happening during a block party with the whole neighborhood out there - snitches get stitches, ya’know.
Made me think long & hard about calling for another crime in progress. With modern tech, 911 gets my phone # & my location; there’s no way to block them from being shared from your phone.
But how do you know if you’re guilty of a crime? One of the themes running through this thread is that posters are deciding whether someone should talk to the police based on whether they’re “guilty” or “innocent.”
But the real world is much messier than that. As I mentioned upthread, there are tens of thousands of criminal offenses on the books. That creates thousands of ways to potentially implicate yourself in a crime that you had no idea about.
Even setting that aside, unless you were literally just standing on the street corner when the masked bandit holding two sacks with dollar signs on them came running by, most people that the police want to talk to had some degree of involvement in the events that they’re investigating. Just because you “know that you’re innocent” doesn’t mean that the total set of evidence that police and prosecutors are looking at won’t reasonably look to them like a case that you’re guilty of some crime. Your instinct may be to get your story on the record, but you could just as easily say something that comes into evidence against you. Maybe you misremember something and the cops can prove that what you said was false. Maybe you panic and make a “little white lie” that they can disprove. These could easily damn you at trial. And if you do have a rock-solid alibi, your lawyer can introduce this at the appropriate time without you exposing yourself to the risks of an interrogation.
So sure, if I’m that guy on the street corner I’m probably going to tell the cops what I saw. But if the bandit shoves the bags into my hands before taking off around the corner, I’m clamming up.
To go back to the point I made earlier, why do people who distrust the police so much still believe that the police will follow the rules?
“I want my lawyer.”
“Nope.”
“What? I have a right to a lawyer.”
“You sure do. But we’re not going to call a lawyer. What we’re going to do is say you agreed to talk to us voluntarily without a lawyer present and that you voluntarily confessed to the murder. And then we’re going to write up a confession for you and we’re going to fake your signature on it. We’re telling you all this because there’s nothing you can do about it. We’ll use our fake confession as evidence to convict you and the judge and jury will believe us not you.”
“I see…Is it too late to ask for a happy meal?”
I frankly wouldn’t have any concern about giving a statement under those conditions; you are purely an uninvolved witness and the only possible legal blowback would be if the perpetrator accused you of making a false report. It becomes more of a question if you are actually proximate to the alleged crime or anyone accused of criminal action, where police believe that they might gain some advantage by pressuring you into giving information or an incriminating statement. Similarly, in the already cited negligent shooting on the set of Rust, if you didn’t handle the weapon, weren’t responsible for the weapon or associated props, and were essentially just on set doing your job unassociated with the weapon or safety protocols, you likely have nothing to worry about. If I were Alec Baldwin, however, I’d shut like a clam until I had legal representation to make sure that I didn’t say or indicate anything that would suggest criminal or civil liability because even if it is totally clear that he was not technically responsible for the the weapon being loaded and presumably was told to aim the muzzle in what would normally be a hazardous direction, he’s a ripe target for blame and culpability.
Of course, nothing guarantees that police will “follow the rules”. But virtually all interview rooms today have cameras and microphones, and should an officer concoct a story about how the camera just conveniently cut out when the suspect makes a confession that he subsequently recants, there are going to be serious issues about credibility that any good defense attorney would bring up. (One of the things that bugged me about The Shield was how frequently they would unplug the interview room camera; there is no way even Vic Mackey could get away with that for as long as he did.) Not that the scenario you suggest couldn’t occur, but defense could throw a lot of shade on that even if they couldn’t get the confession thrown out.
If he wasn’t arrested he would never know who it was who called the PD. I saw someone driving erratically & swerving, I didn’t make contact with him to know the actual cause; he could have been hypoglycemic or suffering another medical issue, This happened long enough ago that only ‘dumb’ flip phones existed, otherwise, he could have been texting. I merely made a report to the PD & let them investigate it.
I think you missed my point - Yeah, we all should do the right thing, & in this case I did do the right thing but was not able to remain anonymous; thereby potentially putting myself/family in danger.
Why do people who trust the police believe that police are all Dudley Doo-rights who will unquestioningly accept their testimony at face value and give full benefit of the doubt to any inconsistencies or factual errors in their statements, and will doggedly pursue every potential avenue of investigation, no matter how many hours and resources it may take, until they have arrived at the unvarnished truth of the matter?
I accept the possibility that the police are corrupt and will railroad innocent people. This was, in fact, my point.
If the police are willing to lie and fake evidence, why would asking for a lawyer do any good? Sure you have a right to a lawyer. But in this scenario, the police are ignoring your rights.
Sure, just like the example I gave earlier, as seen on multiple episodes of “Cops” - where total strangers hurl illegal drugs into your vehicle through an open window.
There’s no telling how many innocent people are rotting in prison via this scenario.
If you could get hit by a runaway eighteen wheeler hauling a load of dynamite, why would wearing a seat belt do any good? There are any number of scenarios absent corrupt cops deliberately breaking the law where your speaking to the police could harm you. Bad police who would go to the lengths you describe are rate. But bad policework is much more common, and police and prosecutors don’t have to be of malicious intent in order to draw conclusions from your statement that could be used against you.
For what it’s worth, I was driving to work this morning when a traffic accident occurred at the intersection in front of me. I dutifully called 911 to report the location of the accident. I told them that I saw airbags deploy, but nobody appeared hurt. And when asked my name, I declined to give it.
Why?
Well, I was on my way to work. I didn’t have time to wait.
And, I heard the collision but didn’t see it as I was still coming around a bend approaching the intersection. I wasn’t a good witness.
Of course, this isn’t one where I was asked to go into an interrogation room. There isn’t any real concern of reprisal.
But you can be a good citizen without having to become embroiled in the police’s concerns. Just sayin’.
Saw a guy on YouTube who made a persuasive case that the only good response to a police question is to say “I don’t answer questions.” Seems like a better play than passive-aggressive silence, or “eat shit, G-man.”
Presumably, cops don’t fabricate confessions in 100% of cases, right? Like maybe 97% at most? A lawyer can help in those remaining 3% of cases. Those odds are better than nothing.
Moreover, if the police do fabricate a confession, there are various strategies to weaken or disqualify it, and attorneys will know how to best go about that. There’s a decent chance of prevailing if there are no recordings of the alleged confession.
In all seriousness, it’s my understanding that most false confessions aren’t due to police fraud, but because defendants who can’t raise bail will say anything that they think will reduce their total jail time. Particularly if the pre-trial hold is likely to end up being longer than the actual sentence (a thing that cops definitely say, true or not).
There was a famous and tragic murder case quite near where I was living at the time in Toronto; a young girl, Holly Jones, was abducted and murdered by a neighbor. the police canvassed the area asking for men to volunteer DNA samples - they couldn’t force anyone, they just asked - and when the murderer refused to provide a DNA sample, he instantly because Suspect #1. Once that happened they broke the case in a day. They got his DNA off a beverage can he discarded, just like in “Law and Order.”
Now, I’m assuming no one here is a psychopathic sex killer, but refusing to answer questions does not always go the way it does in the ACLU videos; it may actually set the cops on you, and while that was great in the case of Holly Jones’s killer (he fully confessed; there’s no chance they got the wrong guy) that has also led to innocent people being convicted.
So while I personally dislike talking to police, I think a blanket policy of “Nope, I refuse to say anything” needs to be intelligently applied in some cases.
That’s not the question to ask. It’s ‘If all the area men refused to give DNA, what would have happened?’ Because even the moderate “don’t talk” folks in this thread would have drawn a hard line at DNA samples.
