And this is successful police work, from their point of view. Closed the case. Successful prosecution too. The reversal of his conviction is a failure, but not in the way you and I see it.
You know, most police stations don’t have a special room where they torture people.
They have a room with a table and some chairs. They talk to suspects in that room. They talk to victims in that room. They talk to witnesses in that room. They have wacky shenanigans in that room.
Okay, that last one may only be Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Correct. Just ask Abner Louima. He was beaten in a police car, then sodomized with a broomstick in a bathroom. No special room needed!
Exactly!
And anyway, he was guilty of something.
I see the article didn’t mention he is Black. I guess goes without saying these days.
How fortunate for Abner Louima that people were willing to step forward and be witnesses on his behalf. Otherwise the police might have gotten away with their crimes.
I’d like to think I would do the same in a similar situation. But I guess some people have different views.
“Everybody has something to conceal.”
- Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon.
Not do I say they do. They have one or more interrogation rooms. You sit in a uncomfortable chair, across a table. There is a camera, and often a one way mirror.
They hardly ever even shine bright lights in your face, even.
But unless you know your rights, you think you have to sit there for hours while professionals grill you.
How ironic considering SCOTUS just declined to hear a case from the 10th Circuit where Denver police illegally, and against department policy, seized a tablet and tried to erase the the video taken of them beating a suspect. The circuit upheld the doctrine of qualified immunity that there was no prior case that explicitly told the cops that it was illegal to do that.
What happened to that kid and plenty of others like him is clearly revolting, it’s just that I don’t think that a not talking to police policy was going to save him. Any jury convinced by a recanted confession obtained by a kid who just discovered his mother’s dead body is also going to be convinced by “Your honour, the only residents of that apartment were the deceased and her son - we talked to all the neighbors and nobody remembers seeing a person entering the home” and “We found no fingerprints except those belonging to the victim and her son”. Not talking to police wouldn’t even slow down railroading lazy incompetent bastards like that - it’s just that any police left who were still trying to do their jobs would find their job twice as hard and their clearance rates abysmal compared to their lazy incompetent railroading colleagues.
I’m sure it’s too much to ask that the cops involved in that little escapade were at the very least fired. That’s really the only way out of that kind of vicious circle.
Qualified Immunity only applies to lawsuits. It does not apply to criminal charges.
The police there could have probable cause for an arrest, in which case he could have said the magic word. The lawyer would have ended the interrogation after a few relevant answers. But people need to be trained to use that word.
Hm! She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch…THE COMFY CHAIR!
BUMP
Not the same thing, but related. The police in this video(I don’t know the area at all) insist a gentleman has to provide identification. He is not under arrest.
Once he shows them the law, which indicates you must be under arrest to be required to show ID, they leave.
I admit, I thought you did have to provide ID. Is this the case in some areas? Can citizens legally decide not to show their ID?
Unless your driving a car, all you have to do is identify yourself. “I’m kayaker”, that kinda thing.
“Show is your papers”? Seriously?
There are 3 types of police interactions:
The most formal is an arrest. It’s marked most notably by being taken into custody, which usually means being placed into handcuffs or put into a secure location (such as the back of a police car). Once arrested, you are obligated to provide basic booking information (it’s not considered an interrogation to request your name or date of birth, for example), although there is no law that requires you to hold an ID.
Then there is an investigative detention. Here, the cop doesn’t have probable cause to conduct an arrest, but has reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime is occurring or has occurred. In this scenario, the cop can detain you, which means not let you leave, while they complete an investigation. At that point, they can hold you so that they can identify you, but again this doesn’t mean that you have to have an ID on you. But, it certainly makes it easier for them to complete the investigation if you do provide them that info (and an ID avoids the issue of them having to spend time confirming that the identity you provided was accurate).
The third type of police/citizen encounter is a voluntary interaction. Police can come up to anybody they want to ask questions, but if it’s a voluntary meeting than the citizen doesn’t have to answer any questions or provide any information, and has the right to walk away at any time.
(As noted, none of these specifically require you to present an ID; that’s only necessary if you are doing something, like driving a car, which is only authorized if you have the ID. And even then you are likely only looking at a ticket for something like “failure to display ID” as opposed to a criminal charge)
There’s a guy who posts videos of himself on Youtube basically going up to the periphery of areas people are prohibited from filming in, but staying just outside that area, and filming away.
Some cop, naturally, walks up to him and orders him to stop taking pictures of the prison, FBI offices, Army base, whatever, and he says “I’m on a public sidewalk” or whatever, and they ask him for ID, threaten to arrest him, etc.
This dude knows the local laws, the federal statutes and all that and argues with them for a long time, daring them to arrest him, which of course he would have recorded. They back down but still try him to stop filming, walk away, and so on, which he does not do.
I can’t figure out if this guy is a dick or a hero. For now, I’m going with “hero.”
Yes. You have to ID yourself. (Unless operating a motor vehicle, carrying a concealed weapon, all sorts of things for which you have a permit or license)
“I am Fred Deth, I live on Main street San Jose”
Looks like there are currently 26 states in which there is a legal obligation to ID yourself if asked. This doesn’t mean LEO’s can’t hassle you in the remaining 24 and try to coerce you into doing so or coming up with some pretext to accomplish the same.
A bit of a hijack - the link below goes to the police interview of disgraced former RCAF Colonel Russell Williams. Williams is a double murderer and sex-offender.
He was asked to come into the Ottawa police station for an interview, in which he starts off extremely arrogantly while being calmly and quietly led into the trap of OPP detective James Smyth; it’s the complete opposite of interrogations shown on TV police dramas.
The version below describes some morbid details. Shorter versions omit those details.
I’d reserve “hero” (or at least “public-spirited”) for people taking video of incidents or facilities in which they have cause to believe official wrongdoing is occurring.
Doing this for no legitimate reason in order to prove you can get away with it, makes you a shithead or worse.*
*for an example of worse, someone filming/taking photos of civilians going in and out of police stations or F.B.I. offices in order to post them on his website that claims to out potential informants.