What the hell. I suppose its just one of those things that most people don’t think about. I knew simply because I was watching a program on television and some guy was telling people how to deal with police officers when they pull you over. Keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times, be polite, and don’t move unless you are asked to do so.
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If I was an officer I wouldn’t be interested in listening to reason at that point either. Especially when you reached for your wallet.
It doesn’t really matter whether he offically arrested you or not. It sounds to me like he was well within his rights to detain you and cuff you. Just think of it as a learning experience.
FYI, you are not technically under arrest until the officer tells you are under arrest. A police officer is entitled to put handcuffs on you in the course of putting your under arrest for his protection. Technically, he must have articulatable reason why he felt the situation warranted it though since when a person is detained they are supposed to have the capability to walk away from the detainment, and handcuffs do somewhat infringe on that right.
Consider this. Whenever I have put somebody arrest they pretty much 99% of the time state:
a) “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
b) “You got the wrong guy.”
Now, the trooper here comes to make an arrest. His suspect is telling him he has the wrong house, and the wrong guy. Unusual? Hardly.
Also, I can guarentee you that as soon as you reached for your wallet he could have cared less what you had to say… you needed to be in cuffs. This is for his and your protection (so that he is not put in a shoot-no shoot scenario). I can also guarentee that you weren’t coming out of those cuffs until he was 100% sure that you were innocent. Simply the way these things work.
He should have apologized.
This is not a flame of you Tripler. Likely someday you’ll look back on this incident and find it funny. When I was a lot younger I was detained by the police for being at the scene of a warehouse’s silent alarm being tripped by a burglar with a gym bag in my hands (imagine my surprise at having four cop cars surround me and having several cops detain me). Mad at the time for them making miss the last bus of the night, but funny as hell now.
As soon as a Police Officer is in control of YOUR motions, ie he ORDERS you to stand still,or puts handcuffs on you- you are “under arrest”. Reading your rights does not an arrest make= otherwise why would they dismiss charges against those who were questioned while in custody, but did not have their “rights read”? SCOTUS has made this rather clear- if a PO has no control over your actions- ie you are talking to him willingly , with no duress- then whatever you say can be used as evidence without your rights being read. BUT as soon as you are 'detained"- which could include something like a PO ordering you to stop- your rights come into play.
And- you are sadly innocent if you think writing a letter to the Sherrif will do anything. Have you not heard of the “Blue Line”? The Police no longer “police their own” they now do everything they can to protect each other from US. In the old days the Police had an “Us vs Them” attitude- but then the “Them” was the crooks, scum & other assorted lowlifes. Now it is “Us” being the Police force- and “Them” being everyone else- including us- the law-abiding citizens.
Yes- the vast majority of Police are honest professionals- but hardly a one of them will turn in his “fellow officer’ no matter WHAT that man might be doing. There have been a few recent developements, where the Police dept has been shown to have large #s of corrupt Cops- like in LA. But the oldtimer cops did not rat on their brothers- no matter how wrong they were. It takes rookies or someone whose nuts are on the line to break the 'code of silence”.
glitch- they do nothave to say “you are under arrest” in fact they rarely do. Too much TV.
This has absolutely nothing to do with watching too much TV. Although this may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, during a traffic stop for example, I can take people of the car and put handcuffs on them, conduct a unintrusive pat down for weapons, for safety reasons without the person actually being under arrest.
Similarly, when a SWAT unit enters into a hostage situation they will handcuff everybody, if possible, including suspected or even confirmed hostages. These people are not under arrest. This is for safety reasons.
Contact your local PD and ask them about their policies on controlling a suspect or situation.
Lastly, a police officer is supposed to instruct you that you are under arrest when you are under arrest. This isn’t to say that we always do but we are supposed to. Period.
Now, the Supreme Court may very well have ruled that once the handcuffs are on your Miranda rights are in effect regardless as to whether the police officer has instructed you of them or not, but from a police procedure perspective you are not under arrest at that point.
You don’t know me very well, do you? The Sherriff and my employer have a very tight working relationship. I’ve heard of the “Blue Line” and we sorta have our own version. I just don’t see this case as “Blue Line” or as paranoia as others want me to see it. Let me put it this way with the “us” and "them"s: I am them.
I had a run in in high school, and got hauled in. I always thought there was a point at which you were 1) Not under arrest, 2)In the process and interrupting the process would result in false arrest, and 3)Yup, yer under arrest. I’ve come to the conclusion that:
A) Anyone can arrest anyone with a decent cause (even citizens can effect arrest). It’s a measure to get you off the street. It means nothing, and it’s just an official detainment.
B) You don’t have to worry about it until you are charged. That’s when you sweat bullets. They have to advise you of charges.
Other than that, I’ve had a pretty good sense of humor about this whole thing. Caught myself laughing about it today. I ran into my neighbor, who saw the commotion, and he laughed himself silly when I told him the whole story.
Tripler
My letter is fired off, and I could care less about the “Blue Line”. I have faith in these local guys.
I can’t beleive some of you are defending this moronic cop.
SE…SW? Give me a fucking break. The man explained to the idiot that he had the wrong address. The cop could have just looked around, checked his paperwork, and went on his way.
Sounds to me like the cop just copped an attitude because a citizen challenged his WORD, when the cop was clearly fucking up. They oughta fire his ass. This moron might shoot the next person he sees, because I AM A COP, I AM ALWAYS RIGHT!
I think might might be an unfair assumption. As difficult as it is to believe, I personally don’t believe that most people are, at heart, complete assholes.
But again, that’s just my opinion. If the cop was anything like me, he probably has no sense of direction and got lost. So he gets a +1 for following correct procedures with what he believes is a dangerous criminal, but minus several million for style, yea?
And do we care more about a Police officers opinion of when an arrest starts- or SCOTUS? I vote for SCOTUS- sorry, no professional insult intended- but those guys sorta get to define legal terms.
And again- almost every Cop I have known has been completely honest- except where it came to “ratting on his fellow cop” no matter HOW bad that Cop was. When you take that oath (and i take the same oath) to “Uphold & defend the Constitution of the US”- there is no qualifier “except where it comes to my fellow officers”*. Either do the job as you SWORE to do- or resign. If you are 99.999% honest- but you look the other way when a known racist cop beats up a minority for no good reason- you might as well be 100% dishonest. “There is no try- either do, or don’t do”.
Tripler- sorry- did not know you had an “in”. I do also- having been on the Grand Jury, etc. But an "ordinary citizen’- sorry- he will be “blue lined”.
If you are being 'detained" you are “arrested”- but not yet “arrested for a crime”- thus- they can(and usually do) let you go right then & there, without taking you in or charging you. I know it sounds odd- but that is what SCOTUS says, anyway. I think it was to stop Police from “detaining” someone, and questioning them without their miranda rights, then trying to say “He was not REALLY under arrest yet”. If you are NOT “free to walk away” you are under arrest.
*Note- however, this only exends to actual crimes- not violations of policies, etc. So if some dude is always 10 minutes late- but his buddies cover for him- that is no crime.
I actually know of a case where a cop didn’t stand up for one of his fellows when he was being an ass. This guy I knew was pulled over, and one of the cops was this extremely fat bastard (I’m guessing he was 5’6" and well over 300 lbs) that everyone in town hated - as an example of how this guy was, one time when I was walking down the road he yelled ‘Faggot!’ and threw a cup at me for no reason. Anyway, him and this other cop pull this acquaintance of mine over for speeding, and as the other cop was writing the ticket the fat one started calling the guy names and telling him he wasn’t so tough, etc. Well, the guy punched the fat cop and sent him rolling down into the median. The guy who punched him said he was scared shitless, thought he was about to get beat down for sure, but saw the other cop was laughing as the fat one got up, and told the bastard that he deserved it.
True, the story might be a fabrication, but I like to think it isn’t.
None taken, especially since I would take SCOTUS’ word over mine too. However, and I mean no insult, I wonder if it possible that you have misunderstood the ruling since at least to me it makes no sense.
When a person is under arrest they have the right to know with what charge they have been placed under arrest (at least up here in Canada and I am pretty sure in the USA too). How can a person be under arrest but not been charged? How could a police officer fulfill his constitutional duty to tell a person (when asked) what crime they are being arrested for? Is it possible, that the SCOTUS decision means that the Miranda rights are in effect retroactively to the time the person was placed in restraints, since it was a higher level of detainment?
By the way, according to my police manual:
This according to the manual constitutes an arrest from a policy perspective. Again, I am not stating that the Miranda rights are no in effect before this if the person was already restrained.
I’m not defending this cop. I am defending the Sherriff’s Department in the face of a handful that posted I might want to sue. I’ve also had a pretty good sense of humor about the whole situation, without holding grudges.
If you want me to hold a grudge about this, let me know, and I’ll call you silly. It was a moronic navigational error. Yeah, he’ll be punished, but brought up on charges? I think that’s a but much for a rookie cop. I don’t defend, I understand.
Daniel what is SCOTUS? Yer losing me here. . . I understand “keeping the Blue Line” while actually on the street, and backing up your buddy, and I believe it carries over to the Squad room in places, but I don’t think it applies here in bumpkin country. . .
Geezus, had I known this thread would’ve caused this much attention . . .
Daniel, can you possibly provide a cite for that Supreme Court opinion? Maybe from findlaw.com, or some other easily accessible place? I’d be interested in reading it to see exactly what it says.
I had a dispatcher give me a S address that should have been N once, they had to get another ambulance to roll when we discovered it was a strawberry feild 4 miles south of town, we were 9 miles away from the actual call. Luckily everything came out OK, the dispatcher in question was disciplined but not fired.
I would tend to say he should have apologized. If I was that deputy I might want to even put that apology in the form of a nice letter. IMHO based on the assumption that you were the person he was looking for I believe he acted correctly. Also based on your story, if I was that rookie deputy, I might want someone else to see that you were the wrong guy so somebody back at the station isn’t screaming “What do you mean you just let him go!!!”
Luckily you had good ID on you or I bet it would have gotten real messy
Yeah, they should fire his ass because he made a simple navigational error, conducted himself as any other cop who truly believed he had the right suspect, took precautions when the subject reached for a pocket, yep, they should toss him out to the unemployment line before he shoots someone. :rolleyes:
Shit happens. Even well-intentioned folk fuck up. But as noted by glitch and drachillix, there is no excuse for not apologising. I consider it unfortunate how often people fail to acknowledge that they have inconvenienced you and apologize. Often that is all that is needed. I believe this is especially incumbent upon public employees, including LEOs.
