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by zmgsabst 672 days ago
My experience aligns with your advice:

Most police officers will bully you within the extent of their authority and try to deceive you into complying beyond their authority, but will not physically break the law.

With those police, being polite but firm is a good strategy.

- - - - -

Example: you’re in the parking lot of a business after hours, sitting there with a backpack; two officers in a cruiser park and get out to find out what you’re doing.

1. Well — legal or not, they’re going to detain you for a moment until they decide how to proceed

2. and they’ll pretend the only way to make that stop is let them search your bag to “prove you didn’t steal anything”

3. but if you politely repeat that you’re not consenting to any searches and would like to leave, they’ll let you go because at best they have probable cause for trespassing.

1 comments

> Most police officers will bully you within the extent of their authority and try to deceive you into complying beyond their authority, but will not physically break the law.

"most" is probably correct, but of course cops that don't break the law don't make the news because it's uninteresting.

I think the real problem we have is the cops that DO break the law and violate your rights and absolutely nothing happens.

A cop that searches your bag without probable cause or consent needs immediate retraining on the first offense, and needs to be fired on the second offense. If the cop gets fired and then gets hired as a cop somewhere else and commits the same offense, they need to be permanently banned from being a cop.