No, and no one here is saying that, get off that. We iirc all say calling 911 is a Good thing.
Don’t allow the police to question you without a lawyer.
No, of course they don’t look to jail innocent people. They do look to jail people they think are guilty, and they’ll use all of the tricks they know to prove that somebody is guilty, whether they truly are guilty or not.
We’d like to think that the investigators are agnostic, and follow where the clues lead them, but they often work the other direction. They have a suspect, and are trying to prove that person committed the crime. This is why it can be so dangerous to talk to even well meaning police when you are under investigation.
This video is the second one brought up in this thread. It’s been out for about 9 years and has almost 15 million views, and seems to be the most often quoted and seen video on the general topic. That’s the one I commented on most recently.
The specific question asked in this thread based on the other video is a little odd. That video seems to describe the dangers of non-verbal communication if you into an interrogation room even with a lawyer. I’m not sure whether he’s saying to trust your lawyer if they say to go in, or to blanket never go in despite what your lawyer says.
Have you read the posts in this thread?
and
Now I will acknowledge that most people in this thread have recognized the difference between talking to the police when you witness a crime or are a victim of a crime and talking to the police when you are a possible suspect in a crime.
I made that point myself:
As did you:
But a lot of people are saying “Don’t ever talk to the police” instead of “Don’t talk to the police in any situation where you may be charged with a crime”.
Because most people do not recognize when they go from being a witness to being a suspect. OR worse yet, by what they say they make themselves a suspect. “Sure we argued sometimes. Guy was an ass. No one liked him.”
The problem is that you can’t be certain which situation you’re in. The cops may approach you asking “did you see anything in the vicinity of the post office yesterday around 1PM?” You say “yeah sure, white van on the corner, I was dropping off a box.”
What you don’t know is that the police didn’t have any suspects, couldn’t place anybody in the vicinity of the post office. And you recalled incorrectly, the van wasn’t white, it was blue. You didn’t drop off a box, you dropped off a letter. So you’ve placed yourself at the same time & place as the crime, and you’ve told 2 falsehoods about hat you were doing there. When the police have no other suspects, that’s not a good position to be in.
None of those are saying, don’t call 911.
Yes, true, “don’t talk to the police” could have that inferred from that, but I don’t think that is what is implied.
Note your first quote from me does say to call 911, but if you don’t want to do more than that, it is ok. My quote does Not say don’t help further,it just says that’s ok. You have done your duty by calling 911.
The two posts immediately before yours are two people who do not imply this point. They explicitly state you should not talk to the police, even as a innocent witness to a crime. So clearly there are people in this thread who hold this belief.
That is different than not reporting via 911.
Okay, is there any poster here who will say “don’t even call 911”?
Even the dude in the video I linked to in the original post said you should speak to the police to say things like “Help, that guy is drowning!” or something where you need aid/help. And he was the one telling you not to even go into the police station, especially not if you haven’t got a lawyer with you.
As I said in one of the many other threads on this topic, the police don’t hand you a special hat that says, “SUSPECT” so that you’ll know when it’s time to ask for a lawyer. And there’s no meaningful distinction between being interviewed as a “witness” versus as a “suspect” anyway. Just because you’re a “witness” doesn’t mean that police are going to ignore inconsistencies in your statement or shrug their shoulders if your statement conflicts with any other evidence they have.
Also, some people are treating “innocent” and “guilty” like they’re objective, indisputable states of being instead of subjective judgments rendered at the end of a messy, fraught and fallible process. It’s easy to say that you should tell the police everything you know if you’re “innocent,” but you won’t be the one who gets to make that determination.
I’d call 911 as a total last resort, where it definitely appears it’s what needs to be done.
BF and GF arguing loudly? None of my business, move on. Someone repeatedly stabbing a prone individual? Yeah, anonymous call to 911 warranted.
When you watch actual interrogations you see detectives intentionally blur this line as a tactic to get suspects to talk. “We know you were there, we know you didn’t mean it to go bad, we know the other guy was there too. People panic, make bad choices… but this is your chance to just tell us your side. Don’t lie to protect that other guy”.
They convince the guy he’s just a witness and the other guy is the suspect, when really they don’t actually have any proof that either of them was even there. Get the first guy to admit yeah he was there, yeah other guy pulled the trigger, here’s why it all happened. “Thank you, place your hands behind your back”. Then go through the same routine with the other guy, and in the end charge them both with the same crime. They both get led to believe they were just witnesses helping the police out.
I understand that. Here’s what I said:
So I’m not talking about calling 911. I’m talking about somebody who witnessed a crime talking to the police.
(yes I realize I’m replying to myself)
The disturbing thing about the interrogations you see is how the detectives are completely numb to how their behavior impacts innocent people they question. In some of those interviews (say from the first 48), they genuinely don’t know whether someone did the crime, but have info they might have. They’ll question that person viscously and pressure them really hard to admit things, later to find the person was innocent.
Then then just shrug their shoulders and say “oh well, guess it wasn’t him after all”. No regret for what they put the person through, no apologies for threatening to send them to prison for life, no cares at all. They genuinely don’t care about you the witness/suspect and won’t be sending you any apology cards if they were wrong. That’s the part I don’t like: you are a name on a list to them, nothing more. If their accusations cause you to lose your job, ruin your marriage, or drain your life savings to defend yourself only to be cleared, big deal.
It’s not wise to trust someone with that level of power over you, who genuinely doesn’t care one way or the other what happens to you but rather only their cases and track record for promotion.
That, to me, is a maybe. If they want to put you in a interrogation room- no. Hell no. Not without duress, and my lawyer. That is the OP question.
If it is on the spot, I would do it. On the scene witness.
Other situations call for at least a call to your attorney. Be careful.
Ianal.
To clarify my position:
call 911 as necessary
do not talk to police before consulting an attorney
after consulting an attorney, do what they recommend
Here’s some real world context for this discussion.
Yesterday in Western Australia, a kidnapped child was discovered alive and well after being missing for eighteen days in what was essentially a Madeline McCann style of incident.
Because this has been pretty much flooding the news over here, there’s lots of information on how the police built up the case - in their own words, taking “thousands” of witness statements and just grinding away at them until they hooked up enough pieces to figure out the whereabouts of the (completely unknown to the victim’s family) perpetrator. There were no actual “witnesses” to the kidnapping - as far as I can see, the bulk of these witness statements would very much fall into the “yes I saw a white van on the corner near the post office” kind of line. Nobody at the campsite could be confident that they weren’t a suspect. People have been railroaded for this kind of stuff before. I don’t for a moment believe that “thousands” of people all got a lawyer before they told police their movements on the night of the crime - but if they didn’t make statements, it never would have been solved.
Talking to the police is kind of like vaccination. Yes, there’s a chance that something bad will happen, but if everybody does this, your community goes to shit. Society actually depends on most people not following this advice.
Link to the story in question, for the curious:
See, they likely did not make signed written statements. They likely did not give that info in a interrogation room.
It was casual witness comments.
And in Australia, not the USA.
Finally, if you carefully read the article, they used many other bits of evidence, and there is nothing there that indicates witnesses were crucial or even helpful.
CCTV seems to have been the biggest clue.
Here’s some real world context for this discussion.
The system stole 19 years from Huwe Burton. It began the day he came home from school and found his mother Keziah Burton stabbed to death in their Bronx home.
In the days that followed, Burton was a shattered and fragile 16-year-old who had discovered his mother’s bloody body. But in the hands of police for 48 hours, he became a confessed killer — a confession he recanted a day later, albeit too late.
“When I was picked up I was told, my godmother was told, that I was just going in for a polygraph test,” Burton told PIX11 News.
Instead, police grilled Burton without the aid of counsel or a guardian.
“I hadn’t really slept, hadn’t really eaten and I couldn’t hold any food down. The only image I had in my head is what I saw coming home from school,” he said.
With Burton’s confession in hand, the NYPD and prosecutors pursued the case against him, even though a tenant of the family was caught driving Keziah Burton’s stolen vehicle two days later. That man, now believed to be the killer, died in a domestic incident before Burton’s case went to trial.
At the end of Burton’s trial, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He served 19 years based on a false and coerced confession before the conviction was overturned and he was released. It wasn’t until 2019 that he was fully exonerated.