Indeed. I'm a white guy, and I've talked to the police repeatedly, back when I lived in the poor parts of various towns. As far as I know, nothing I've ever s

Indeed. I'm a white guy, and I've talked to the police repeatedly, back when I lived in the poor parts of various towns. As far as I know, nothing I've ever said to any police has been used against me. Of course, I assume I've hardly ever been a suspect, so maybe that's part of it, but the difficulty with all of this "don't talk to the police" is that we don't have any statistics on what percentage of people who talk to the police never even get arrested. It's probably quite true that it will be difficult for the courts to convict you of anything if you don't talk to the police. However, it seems like there'd be a large risk of attracting a lot more attention than you otherwise would have, should you conspicuously refuse to talk to the police. Being arrested and having to endure a trial is, itself, a fairly large imposition on someone's liberty and time, and it's hard to know how many people would have been looked at far more closely had they insisted on saying nothing.