[mirimir]

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.

[CaptainZapp]

A very experienced criminal lawyer who used to be a federal prosecutor very strongly disagrees with your assessment[1] & [2]

There's a whole collection of well reasoned opinions why you should really shut the fuck up, when confronted with police[3]

[1] https://www.popehat.com/2013/05/01/shut-up-i-explained-mostl...

[2] https://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you-plea...

[3] https://www.popehat.com/tag/shut-up/

[dustingetz]

attorney recommends approach resulting in attorney fees

[dsfyu404ed]

Attorney recommends approach that makes their job easy and results in happy customer.

It's the same reason mechanics tell you do do preventive maintenance even though they make way more money swapping out large components.

[saltminer]

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.

[heyoni]

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.

[mirimir]

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]

0) https://traffic.findlaw.com/traffic-stops/what-to-do-during-...

1) https://www.wikihow.com/Answer-Questions-During-a-Traffic-St...

[CaptainZapp]

And do not consent to a search, if I may add.

[mirimir]

Look, this was basically a traffic stop. And the guy handled it well. If he had gone the "don't talk to police" route, he'd have spent time in jail.

And your examples are mostly about people who had done something wrong.

[CaptainZapp]

He actually answers this very point:[1]

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.

[1] https://www.popehat.com/2014/01/15/the-privilege-to-shut-up/

[mirimir]

Having the rental agreement is quite mundane, no?

[mirimir]

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.

[chrisseaton]

> 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.

[_jal]

> Why do American police stop people so often?

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:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prison...

But hey, freest country on earth, amirite?

[dsfyu404ed]

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.

[coldtea]

>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.

Yeah, but you're not in the land of the "free".

[mirimir]

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.

[drewmol]

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).

[hyperman1]

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.

[crooked-v]

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

[weberc2]

Usually it’s to enforce traffic laws, like obeying the speed limit or yielding for traffic signals. Are traffic infractions not common in the UK?

[mirimir]

Sorry. My comments about being shot, and my outlandish experiences, were foolish.

But the point about TFA stands. "[I]n the majority of the cases", people were not arrested.

[andybak]

> The "don't talk to police" mantra is for when you know that you've done something wrong

Not true. Rewatch the original video. It covers exactly this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

[fiblye]

>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.

[dragonwriter]

> 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.

[mirimir]

OK, I overstated the argument. Mea culpa.

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.