One interesting point here is that the commonly-repeated mantra of "don't talk to police" would have likely resulted in this guy getting booked to jail, ending up with a mugshot on a couple of mugshot extortion websites, and generally getting his life upended.
That's some yuppie shit, got to be honest. Brown bearded guy reaches for his phone after telling the cop he's not going to talk and he's going to dial his lawyer and you get a guy without his beard, or his jaw, or his life.
For the people downvoting this post, consider that people have been shot in the US for complying with police orders, including literally lying on the ground with arms up [1], for simply possessing a firearm with hands well away from it [2], and for attempting to comply with police orders to crawl across the floor with legs crossed and arms up (yes, really) [3]. Getting immediately shot for putting a hand in a pocket is an entirely realistic possibility.
I don't think that's the right time to call your lawyer.
The advice I've received in the past is to comply to the best of your ability, don't talk to the police, call your lawyer when you have a chance, and fight whatever there is to fight in court or in the media.
Reaching for something in your pocket instead of complying will probably get you hurt regardless of race.
The "don't talk to police" mantra is for when you know that you've done something wrong. So the main thing is that you don't want to lie about it, because they're trained to detect lies, and to manipulate you into contradicting yourself.
Otherwise, being polite and not escalating is the safest approach. Because another aspect of traditional police training in the US is always out-escalating suspects.
Edit: What can I say? It clearly worked for this guy. Perhaps because he looks pretty harmless. But it's also worked for me. Because I also look pretty harmless, I guess.
That's assuming the police actually intend to arrest you. When questioned by police, you cannot talk yourself out of an arrest. If they already have evidence, they just want a confession to give the prosecutor a slam dunk case, but if they do not have evidence, saying you won't speak without a lawyer present will usually cause them to move on to the next person on their list, and you won't spend a dime on counsel or time in jail.
A lawyer helps ensure the innocent don't get screwed by a mistaken witness, a vindictive prosecutor, or a corrupt cop, and that the guilty don't get railroaded with a laundry list of bullshit charges. Money spent on a lawyer will generally pay dividends when you consider the cost of false convictions and false arrest - losing your job, bills going unpaid while you're behind bars (and the interest, penalties, evictions, and reposessions resulting from them), damage to your credit, trying to find a new apartment with an eviction on your record, having to get a new car, etc. All these factors combine to make people who go to jail far worse off when they get out, regardless of their guilt.
Cool. You just went to “imright.com” and found a guy to back up your claim. Now try finding the opposite that and see how many results you come up with.
I really should know better. I typically argue "don't talk to cops" when stuff like this comes up. And if I were SWATed right now, I'd hit the UPS panic button, and politely request a call to my lawyer. Because there's really nothing for me to say that would help me.
But if I get pulled over for some traffic offense, or even because some glitch has flagged my vehicle, I'm going to politely cooperate. While remaining noncommittal, of course. That's what FindLaw recommends.[0]
However:[1]
> Remain silent if arrested. If your traffic stop turns into an arrest, do not say anything to the police other than requesting an attorney. The police may try to get to volunteer information but refuse to say anything.[10]
So, I say, don't talk to the cops. Ask to speak with an attorney, and get competent advice before you answer the cops' questions. Are there mundane situations in which you might rationally decide to talk to the cops — say, if a neighbor's house is burglarized, and they come to ask if you saw anything? Sure. But you should view each interaction with the cops with an extreme caution bordering on paranoia, as you would handle a dangerous wild animal. When you talk to a cop, you are talking to someone who is often privileged to kill you with complete impunity, someone whose claims about what you said during your interaction — however fantastical — will likely be accepted uncritically by the system even if the particular cop is a proven serial liar. Even the most mundane interaction carries the potential for life-altering disaster.
If the cop shoots you, it won't matter what you said or didn't say.
And in TFA:
> According to ABC Action News, these affected customers ended up in handcuffs and in the back of a police car in the majority of the cases. A few people were even met with the business ends of a firearm and were taken into custody forcefully after disagreeing with police.
So with routine traffic stops, playing it cool is almost always the best bet. I've experienced scores of them, mostly for speeding, but some for reckless driving. And a couple for evading. And I've never gotten more than tickets.
One of those evading stops involved a county-wide APB :) I just said something like "Hey, I just saw "Dawn of the Dead", and got scared". Which was almost the truth, in that it was hypomania. They almost impounded the car, but eventually we all decided that it was funny.
> So with routine traffic stops, playing it cool is almost always the best bet. I've experienced scores of them
Why do American police stop people so often? Every American here seems to have experience of being stopped and acts like it’s a super normal thing. I live in the UK and I’m don’t think I’ve ever even spoken to an on-duty police officer in my life. They don’t just cruise around stopping cars here.
Multiple reasons, but the big one is money. There are a lot of places smaller than big cities who have massive revenue problems. Turning cops into revenue generators seems to be the preferred solution.
And then come second-order effects: private probation enforcement companies, private prisons, communications monopolies for private prisons... and they all lobby to keep and expand their pound of flesh. And you get this:
We haven't gone as far down the 1984 path as you have so we have still have human cops write tickets instead of using speed cameras.
It also depends a lot on your area. Where I live the cops to "real problems" ratio is pretty good. I'm basically free to go a safe and reasonable speed regardless of the speed limit. I'd have to do something really flagrant to get pulled over for it. In the wealthier cities and suburbs that the people of HN tend to live in you have many more bored cops looking for trouble where there is little to be found so they spend more time extracting revenue from motorists and making fishing stops.
But I hear about the police stopping people for things like tail lights in the US? Or in other comments people are talking about being stopped because they're driving a suspiciously cheap car in an expensive area? The police just don't seem to stop people here in the UK unless there's something seriously wrong. As I said elsewhere, I've never seen a tail light out ever, but it seems to be a common thing for normal people to be stopped for in the US?
And of course speed cameras don't bother you if you don't speed in the first place, so they don't catch people unless they're doing something wrong.
> they're driving a suspiciously cheap car in an expensive area?
This happens all the time in rich areas. It's a plain and simple fishing stop.
>I've never seen a tail light out ever,
Because your government intentionally makes vehicle ownership so financially onerous that everyone who drives a car has the resources (time more than money) to get it fixed promptly. In the US, even in poorer areas it's not common but it's not uncommon. In a 40min rush hour commute in the winter (when it's dark and you can see everyone using lights) I could probably still count on one hand the number of head lights and tail lights I see out.
You can't make a good first impression on a speed camera.
Overwhelming majority of fishing stops result in a warning because the cop realizes after getting a closer look at the vehicle and its occupants and realizing that there's nothing sketchy going on. And I say this as someone who's been subject to a heck of a lot of fishing stops because I tend to check the boxes that make me worth stopping (one time I had almost an entire PD stop me over the course of a month as they rotated through the shift and location that put them where I was driving at the time I was there).
I'd much rather have laws that go fishing than robots that enforce the law to the letter 100% of the time.
> result in a warning because the cop realizes after getting a closer look at the vehicle and its occupants and realizing that there's nothing sketchy going on
If there's nothing sketchy going on... what are they getting a warning for?
> You can't make a good first impression on a speed camera... I'd much rather have laws that go fishing than robots that enforce the law to the letter 100% of the time.
I don't want people being let off because they make a good impression! That lets the police enforce laws based on their biases, such as race or gender. I'd much rather have simple factual enforcement. Either you were speeding or not.
As far as internet comments go I think it's more than a stretch to put "screw off" in the abusive bucket.
>what are they getting a warning for?
So the cop can have a paper trail proving he was awake and working.
>I don't want people being let off because they make a good impression! That lets the police enforce laws based on their biases, such as race or gender. I'd much rather have simple factual enforcement. Either you were speeding or not.
Automated enforcement of the letter of the law would instantly screw basically everyone. I don't think you understand how many letter of the law violations cops see every day and choose not to do anything about.
So me getting warnings, and my plates being in a cop's notebook / files is, to you, an acceptable price to pay for law enforcement officer productivity accountability?
>As far as internet comments go I think it's more than a stretch to put "screw off" in the abusive bucket.
But not "as far as HN comments go". The community members, posting rules/guidelines, the user moderation system, dang, etc. work to foster friendly substantive discussions. Please help this effort.
I think you're basically making a slippery slope argument. Nobody was arguing for automatic enforcement of all laws, but I think traffic laws are fine. I've never had a traffic ticket for anything ever. If you don't speed, they don't bother you.
If you're the type to drive no more than 55.00 mph on the highways posted at 55 and with prevailing speeds of 70-75 mph, you're probably doing more harm to society than help, to be honest.
> I'd much rather have laws that go fishing than robots that enforce the law to the letter 100% of the time.
This is how corruption, and racial profiling, and all manner of terrible things start.
You definitely DO want the laws enforced 100% without exception. It must be applied to those who write the law as equally as it does to everybody else. This is how laws get fixed.
>Why do American police stop people so often? Every American here seems to have experience of being stopped and acts like it’s a super normal thing.
And they also seem to think a cop pointing a gun at people they've stopped, or even shooting them for reaching into their pockets is also normal ("what did they expect?").
>I live in the UK and I’m don’t think I’ve ever even spoken to an on-duty police officer in my life. They don’t just cruise around stopping cars here.
What I really want to know is what's wrong with American break-lights? Often the cause for a stop seems to be 'your break-light was out' (sometimes it's implied it's a lie, other times not.) Again I've never seen a break-light out in the UK, never been stopped for a break-light, never had to replace my break-lights. What's different?
(from movies) I think it's usually the 'tail light' and it's so they can smash it when the walk by. I've never heard of a break light being out either.
> I've never heard of a break light being out either.
LED lights are slowly reducing this, but I don't think I can do my 20 minute morning commute for a week without seeing at least one car with a burned out brake light. How is it possible that you've never seen or heard of it?
Are you certain that movies reflect reality in this regard? I'm less willing than you are to believe a cop would smash a tail light, perhaps you could link me to a recent incident or something.
I don't even understand how you could easily smash a tail light. They're inside the car bodies, encased in heavy plastic, and usually made of LEDs so there's no single bulb to hit even if you could get through the plastic.
> They're inside the car bodies, encased in heavy plastic, and usually made of LEDs so there's no single bulb to hit even if you could get through the plastic.
Cops intentionally breaking tail lights is 99.999% something from Hollywood. I try and keep up to date on the various stupid abuses of power that happen at police departments throughout the country and I've never even heard of it happening. I thinks the notion of cops breaking tail lights probably predates the war on drugs (which gave them other ways to manufacture probably cause)
Nevertheless, tail lights weren't commonly LEDs until fairly recently and the styling that results in deeper housings also wasn't default until the mid 2000s. You can definitively break a tail light with the back end of a flashlight relatively easily though.
I'm sure you can imagine some jerk cop breaking a tail light on some 90s car because the person gave him lip and he can't find anything else to write a ticket for but jerk cops do all sorts of things and it's not really appropriate to use edge cases to reason about normal cases.
From what I've read, police in the UK rely more on speed cameras. But there certainly are lots of police in the US. I live in a small city, and it's rare that I don't see at least one police vehicle on a trip to the supermarket or whatever.
I experienced so many because I'm bipolar, and was taking an SSRI, which made me hypomanic, but with little affect.
There are substantial protections against unlawful search and seizure in the US constitution which are also supported by subsequent legal precedent/case law, often specifically referencing private property, dwellings, persons, etc. An arrest warrent does not necessarily allow police to go barging in to private dwellings to enforce it. Persons in vehicles were generally not explicitly referenced in the law and a slow encroachmemt on executive power has led to 100+ years of case law that eroded those protections when it comes to persons in vehicles, especially on public roadways. This has led to vehicles in public being a place where police have a lot of legal leeway and a common place for police to enforce warrants, etc. for minor violations and a common place for police to fish for possible crimes with less risk of explicitly violating a persons rights (at least in the eyes of the judiciary).
As I understand it, US culture makes it impossible for the state to build a trustable database of inhabitants, complete with addresses etc.
So if a cop sees something, he has to react immediately. They cant simply go to your home afterwards as they dont always know where it is. And gun culture makes it impossible to know when some random dude is going to shoot you, especially when pissed off or drunk. So I can understand the cop paranoia.
Strange thing with social security numbers as pseudo-id happen there too. I wonder how they know who to tax over there.
See small towns like Hampton, FL that get their funding overwhelmingly from setting up bullshit speed traps and ticketing everyone who passes through, sometimes to the point of the town existing almost entirely as a support structure for the police department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton,_Florida
>The "don't talk to police" mantra is for when you know that you've done something wrong.
Or when you're dealing with police who are just looking for an excuse to arrest someone. The problem being, you don't know when you're dealing with one of those people.
> The "don't talk to police" mantra is for when you know that you've done something wrong.
No, though there is a it of a balancing act. It certainly isn't “never report a crime” or “never call 911 when a person is distress and cooperate with first responders when they arrive, even if those first responders happen to be police”. But it's a lot more than “never talk to the police when you know you are guilty”.
> So the main thing is that you don't want to lie about it, because they're trained to detect lies, and to manipulate you into contradicting yourself.
They are trained to manipulate you into contradicting yourself and will use that training if they don't like you, or if they suspect you are lying (and police aren't magical lie detectors, they are wrong a lot about their suspicions, in both directions), or for any number of other reasons, and lying to them is often a crime itself.
But about TFA, it's true that stealing vehicles typically results in arrest. And it's true that making substantive statements to police, without your lawyer present, is dangerous.
However, when you have in fact rented, and not stolen, the vehicle, it's fine to say that. And it's fine to say that you have the rental agreement in the vehicle. That should be enough to defuse the situation. Even if it takes a while, and even if you end up handcuffed.
Going immediately to "I want my attorney" is silly in those circumstances. If you've lost the rental agreement, or if you screwed up and didn't return the vehicle on time, then "I want my attorney" is the prudent course. But otherwise, it pretty much guarantees that you'll be arrested. And having been arrested can be problematic when seeking employment.
> I think the sort of cerebral effect of feeling incarcerated made me extra lucid.
I mean, he was handcuffed for awhile by the side of the road over a clerical error. That genuinely sucks. But if he ever does find himself actually incarcerated I bet he’ll learn the difference.
I learned the difference in 2011 when I was nearly killed by the LAPD. It's not a one-upping game but man, some people don't realize the kind of actual evil and malice and terror that their fellow humans endure daily... Being handcuffed is a pittance compared to the possible nightmare scenarios..
I've only had three interactions with the police in my very old life and I have come very close to dying each time. Not sure if I just ran into three people on extremely bad days but I can't emphasize enough how lucky you are if you have never had to interact with United States law enforcement. You don't know what you're missing, and that's a good thing. Keep missing it.
The idea of an algorithmic bug leading to false arrests is not exactly the worst case scenario I can imagine, but it's really close to the worst case scenario I can imagine.
Seems like all he had to do was to show the receipt, the cops called the rental place, cleared the stolen car alert. The car rental should probably be charged for falsify reporting the car as stolen. And as the police said, you could probably ask for a year of free rental for the inconvenience.
The police has to take some precaution because they risk their lives walking up to a stolen car, thus the not so friendly tone and hand-cups.
There would be no story to tell had the cops been able to just call Hertz in a reasonable time. Instead apparently it took ages to go through the meanders of phone support.
https://stevecheney.com/handcuffed-and-under-surveillance/
Sounds awful.