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Twenty years ago I read the article "Never talk to the police." Later that year, the police came to my girlfriend's apartment and asked questions about a homici

Twenty years ago I read the article "Never talk to the police." Later that year, the police came to my girlfriend's apartment and asked questions about a homicide. I was there and when they asked if they could come in, I said "No." There is no upside to allowing them in. "We'll answer any questions here" I remember saying. We didn't have anything to hide, but you never know what law you may've broken. You never know what they may say and how you will react. The system sets up an adversarial relationship. It would be in the best interest of law enforcement to play by the same rules as regular people.

Justsignedup 6y ago
Another advice: Always talk to the police -- AFTER GETTING IMMUNITY. Basically first if they ask you anything, say "I will happily comply with any questioning if you give me immunity in writing to this case or anything resulting from my answers." The cop who gave that presentation even mentioned getting an IRS call, and said that, they never called back. Point is, ask for immunity.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  My understanding of the law is, cops don't have the authority to grant immunity. I would want to get that promise from a prosecutor, minimum.
  - DavidAdams 6y ago
    That's true. The cops would have to coordinate with the DA to make that happen. Which they would never bother to do unless they really needed your testimony, which is why it's a good way to get them to buzz off.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    According to the article it's OK for the cops to lie about almost anything. There's not a lot to stop them saying "I have the authority to grant immunity" or "I am an official from the DA's office" or "I just called the DA and he approved the immunity" or "I just called the DA and he approved the immunity and he sent this confirmation by fax". Some of these might not really be de jure OK for the cops to tell you, but would you want to rely on a court upholding that?
    - nullc 6y ago
      Police have even pretended to be the accused's attorney-- not lawful-- but generally the only consequence of an unlawful interrogation technique is that they lose the conviction. ( https://reason.com/2011/03/08/tennessee-cops-posed-as-a-defe/ https://reason.com/2011/03/08/tennessee-cops-posed-as-a-defe... in this case, the trial court even allowed it-- it had to get overturned on appeal ) There is a whole subreddit (/r/legaladvice) where the moderators are all (almost all?) law enforcement officers, where they remove good information from actual attorneys and promote bogus "cop law" that is highly detrimental to the interests of the users.
      - selimthegrim 6y ago
        My favorite is when they denied an insufficiently formal request for counsel. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/suspect-asks-for-a-lawyer-dawg-judge-says-he-asked-for-a-lawyer-dog.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/suspect-asks-for...
        jakelazaroff 6y ago
        That is horrifying.
    - spacemanmatt 6y ago
      Agreed. In addition to my belief that they lack authority, I know that it would be extremely uncommon for a cop to be able to provide a notarized document that would protect later when the cop denies his verbal grant of immunity.
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
    They don't, so the absolute best case outcome of "asking a police officer for immunity" is "nothing happens". The worst case outcome is that police officer testifying to a jury that you agreed to answer questions about a crime once you had immunity. This is a terrible plan that ends terribly for you. Smart people think they'll be able to logic and reason themselves out of the crosshairs of the criminal justice system. But they're playing a game they don't know how to play and the odds are stacked for the house.
- powersnail 6y ago
  Can cops give you immunity? And given that cops can legally lie, that promise of immunity seems empty.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    That's why you ask for it in writing. They have to get that from the DA, and while it may not be a perfect shield, it's pretty solid. Either they go do the legwork or you avoid random liability for whatever you might have said.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      No no no. Don’t ever ask for immunity! That’s your lawyers job. When your lawyer asks for immunity it can’t be used against you in court. If you ask, it almost certainly will.
    - powersnail 6y ago
      That makes sense. But to be honest, if a police officer insist on questioning me despite my initially refusing to answer, I'd just ask for a lawyer. I won't trust myself to handle legal processes, and I certainly won't be able tell if the police had forged a document for me to sign.
    - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
      Under American law this is probably the worst possible advice you could give someone. Why? Because if you end up in front of a jury, that police officer is going to testify to that jury that you said "you'd tell them anything when they granted you immunity", a truthful statement, and the jury is going to fill in whatever gaps the prosecutor suggests they fill in. If you are in police custody you ask for nothing from the police. You tell them that you are remaining silent until your lawyer arrives. And then you shut up.
    - zentiggr 6y ago
      I'll have to agree with the replies I received - say nothing until you have counsel who can handle things the best way possible.
- caturopath 6y ago
  > Always talk to the police -- AFTER YOUR LAWYER TELLS YOU TO SAY WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY FTFY ;) A cop can't grant you immunity, and most people wouldn't know what it meant if you did have an immunity agreement.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    Also, an up front request for immunity is a massive red flag that says "I'm probably involved in the illegal thing, or some other illegal thing", which is not how you want to introduce yourself to a police officer, especially if you're not a serious suspect at the time. Even if the cop could grant it, why would he? Obviously different if your lawyer says that requesting immunity might work, probably because you're knee deep in someone else's mess and their experience tells them that prosecution will be far more interested in your testimony against them than stuff you might need to admit to.
- jancsika 6y ago
  In the anecdote the student did ask for immunity, but only after talking to a lawyer first. It was the lawyer's advice to ask for immunity. The bigger lesson was not to ask for immunity, but to refuse to say anything without your lawyer present. (...and then, obviously, to only say things if your lawyer advises you to do so.)
- u678u 6y ago
  IRS never calls, it was a scammer. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/how-to-know-its-really-the-irs-calling-or-knocking-on-your-door https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/how-to-know-its-really-the-irs-...
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  Are you a lawyer? This seems like pretty irresponsible advice to give from an armchair, tbh. IANAL, but if you're arrested, just ask for a lawyer. Don't try to play weird games like asking for immunity. The police have played them way more than you, you don't know the legal system and you will probably lose.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> Always talk to the police -- AFTER GETTING IMMUNITY. No no no, a thousand times no. Immunity is a very nuanced thing that, in the US especially, is beyond the understanding of laypersons. Talk only to and through YOUR lawyer. Don't go anywhere near any talk of "immunity" without several days to discuss the matter with paid legal counsel.
  - cogman10 6y ago
    And, AFAIK, the police themselves CANNOT GRANT IMMUNITY. Only the prosecutor can sign an immunity deal with you. By the time you are talking to a prosecutor, you should have your lawyer involved.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Not even the prosecutor. The US is a strange dual sovereignty system (state and federal) and so you need multiple prosecutors to agree. State immunity can be respected by the feds, and vis versa, but that is not absolute. Similarly, US prosecutors cannot grant immunity for crimes in other countries such as crimes that cross boarders. US immunity might mean end many travel options.
      - senkora 6y ago
        I’m not sure I would call that “strange”; it’s just the meaning of federalism. Federal means that subnational units have some limited sovereignty, versus unitary where only the toplevel government has sovereignty.
        sandworm101 6y ago
        Not really. Canada is federalized, but still has a unitary authority for prosecution of crimes. There are very few countries operating parallel authorities, parallel criminal courts. Most countries have a unitary authority structure with the national government being the highest source of law. The US operates a bifurcated structure where States (50+ of them) are often the final authority on criminal matters. That is strange.
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  Have your attorney ask for immunity and confirm to you that it’s then safe to talk with police (your attorney will just say, “No!!!!” when you ask them)
- valuearb 6y ago
  Asking for immunity can be used against you in court. “Officer, was there anything strange about the defendants response to finding out his ex-roomate had been murdered?” “Well he immediately asked for immunity to cover his actions in the crime” Never talk to the police, refer them to your lawyer.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I mean, if you ask for immunity out of nowhere, it does make one think about what exactly you want immunity from. One does not have to be manipulative narcissist to figure that one out.
- rdtsc 6y ago
  How would I know what immunity looks like? Police can and do lie to people to get them to confess to stuff. "We'll go easy on you, we promise", or "this is off the record, you can tell us anything now" etc. So what stops them from saying something like "sure, you got immunity, now let us in".
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The cop who gave that presentation even mentioned getting an IRS call, and said that, they never called back. The IRS would never call you in a situation where that would matter, and in fact they try very hard to make that public since fake IRS enforcement calls are a very common scam. So the cop was either lying to you, or was caught in a scam and accidentally scared them off by showing they weren't going to immediately buckle under, without even realizing it was a scam. Ask for a lawyer, not immunity. And take legal advice from your lawyer, not from cops who, as a class, have neither the knowledge nor the motivation to give good advice.
jpalomaki 6y ago
Related video from Youtube: https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE Long time since I watched it. I think one argument was that it’s very easy to make a mistake in what you tell and it might sound bad later on.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
  There were about four arguments that he quite persuasively made: you might make a mistake, you might inadvertently say something that is misinterpreted, you may be completely honest and truthful but an unreliable third party makes a claim that contradicts your statement... It's an incredibly important video that shows why there is no good that comes out of police interactions.
watwut 6y ago
I am actually thankful to people who talked to police and allowed then to decomposed few mafias that operated where I live. Good thing for everyone. That includes victims who had courage and took the risk of retaliation and perpetrators who talked about former associates.
- JadeNB 6y ago
  It is a good thing for everyone if you can talk to the police and not have to worry about that putting you in jeopardy from the police. Since police choose not to offer you that protection, and are legally supported in doing so, it is the police, not the individual refusants, who have brought about this sad state of affairs where the right advice is always not to talk to them.
guerby 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE "Don't Talk to the Police" Old video but still funny and very instructive.
rubyist5eva 6y ago
I don't know if it's related - but there is a video "Don't Talk To The Police" which is probably the most important video anyone could ever wathch. https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
- kemiller2002 6y ago
  If you are in the U.S. this is absolutely the most important video you can watch. It very clearly details how the system really works, and why it is always bad to talk to the police without a lawyer present. Note I didn't say, "Never talk to the police." You need someone with you that can understand the law and how work within the system. You never know when they might consider you part of the suspect pool. You can be helpful, just be helpful while protecting your own best interests.
  - bsder 6y ago
    One note about that video: he's updated his advice a bit. Our shitty Supreme Court has made "stay silent" a bit of an issue--it's safer to demand your lawyer instead. It's not even about understanding the system, the presence of the lawyer forces the police to establish "scope". If I'm just a witness, then the lawyer can make sure that what I say can't later be used against me for something unrelated. If I'm a suspect, this prevents the police from going on a fishing expedition to just "find anything". Once they talk to the lawyer, they have to go hunting for "what they told the lawyer" as opposed to everything in the world.
    - Diederich 6y ago
      > he's updated his advice a bit Interesting...do you have a reference to that handy? Thanks!
      - bsder 6y ago
        I don't. You probably have to hunt around on YouTube for some of his later videos. The lawyer's name is "James Duane", but I can only find his CATO Institute videos and they're not very good. :(
cortesoft 6y ago
> There is no upside to allowing them in I get what you are saying, and agree with your decision to not talk to the police, but it isn’t true that there can be NO upside to talking to the police. For all the bad things police do, they DO also solve some crimes and arrest some dangerous people. If someone killed one of my loved ones, I would hope the police would be able to find, arrest, and successfully prosecute the murderer. If no witness will speak to the police, it makes solving a homicide much more difficult. This is why the current approach to policing is so awful. We should work on fixing the system so talking to the police is a good thing.
- Jkvngt 6y ago
  Police barely ever solve crimes. Murder, the most serious crime, is hardly ever solved. There is no fixing the situation with talking to police, how would you fix the system? It would take decades of action on the part of the police to regain the public’s trust. One wrong move by one cop, one time would reset that back to zero.
  - neartheplain 6y ago
    That’s overstating things. Most murder cases in the US are solved. 40% aren’t, though. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r...
    - stretchcat 6y ago
      To be fair, solving a great many murders is probably a simple matter of finding the family member with literal blood on his hands and a history of domestic abuse. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.
    - Jkvngt 6y ago
      https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3566383 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3566383 Seems it’s only about 22% of serious crimes which are solved. Of course the beauty of these “facts” is they differ wildly.
rurp 6y ago
This makes total sense and it's frustrating that many police want to have it both ways. They want good faith cooperation from potential witnesses, while also being free to lie to and manipulate potential suspects. If they want better cooperation from the public then they need to act in better faith themselves.
- clankyclanker 6y ago
  How do they distinguish between witness and suspect?
  - lambda_obrien 6y ago
    Treat everyone the same, maybe?
  - corty 6y ago
    They don't. They just distinguish between playing good cop and bad cop.
  - watwut 6y ago
    They are often the same people.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    Everyone is a suspect.
landemva 6y ago
To have the police play by same rules as regular people, we need to remove "government immunity" which the USSC created out of thin air in the early 1970s. Why would police and city councils change anything, when after somebody sues the government files a motion to dismiss because of government immunity and the motion is granted? There won't be accountability until this changes.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jstarfish 6y ago
> you never know what law you may've broken. Yeah. Even innocuous things like having a hole in the wall changes the line of inquiry from whatever crime is being investigated to a domestic violence or child protective services intervention on your account...all because you wanted to help. It would be in the best interest of law enforcement to grant by default some amount of immunity to witnesses in order to encourage their cooperation. Nobody should be punished by the justice system for cooperating-- witnesses already risk retribution from whoever they're willing to make a statement against.

Justsignedup 6y ago

Another advice: Always talk to the police -- AFTER GETTING IMMUNITY. Basically first if they ask you anything, say "I will happily comply with any questioning if you give me immunity in writing to this case or anything resulting from my answers." The cop who gave that presentation even mentioned getting an IRS call, and said that, they never called back. Point is, ask for immunity.

spacemanmatt 6y ago
My understanding of the law is, cops don't have the authority to grant immunity. I would want to get that promise from a prosecutor, minimum.
- DavidAdams 6y ago
  That's true. The cops would have to coordinate with the DA to make that happen. Which they would never bother to do unless they really needed your testimony, which is why it's a good way to get them to buzz off.
- dmurray 6y ago
  According to the article it's OK for the cops to lie about almost anything. There's not a lot to stop them saying "I have the authority to grant immunity" or "I am an official from the DA's office" or "I just called the DA and he approved the immunity" or "I just called the DA and he approved the immunity and he sent this confirmation by fax". Some of these might not really be de jure OK for the cops to tell you, but would you want to rely on a court upholding that?
  - nullc 6y ago
    Police have even pretended to be the accused's attorney-- not lawful-- but generally the only consequence of an unlawful interrogation technique is that they lose the conviction. ( https://reason.com/2011/03/08/tennessee-cops-posed-as-a-defe/ https://reason.com/2011/03/08/tennessee-cops-posed-as-a-defe... in this case, the trial court even allowed it-- it had to get overturned on appeal ) There is a whole subreddit (/r/legaladvice) where the moderators are all (almost all?) law enforcement officers, where they remove good information from actual attorneys and promote bogus "cop law" that is highly detrimental to the interests of the users.
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      My favorite is when they denied an insufficiently formal request for counsel. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/suspect-asks-for-a-lawyer-dawg-judge-says-he-asked-for-a-lawyer-dog.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/suspect-asks-for...
      - jakelazaroff 6y ago
        That is horrifying.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    Agreed. In addition to my belief that they lack authority, I know that it would be extremely uncommon for a cop to be able to provide a notarized document that would protect later when the cop denies his verbal grant of immunity.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
  They don't, so the absolute best case outcome of "asking a police officer for immunity" is "nothing happens". The worst case outcome is that police officer testifying to a jury that you agreed to answer questions about a crime once you had immunity. This is a terrible plan that ends terribly for you. Smart people think they'll be able to logic and reason themselves out of the crosshairs of the criminal justice system. But they're playing a game they don't know how to play and the odds are stacked for the house.
powersnail 6y ago
Can cops give you immunity? And given that cops can legally lie, that promise of immunity seems empty.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  That's why you ask for it in writing. They have to get that from the DA, and while it may not be a perfect shield, it's pretty solid. Either they go do the legwork or you avoid random liability for whatever you might have said.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    No no no. Don’t ever ask for immunity! That’s your lawyers job. When your lawyer asks for immunity it can’t be used against you in court. If you ask, it almost certainly will.
  - powersnail 6y ago
    That makes sense. But to be honest, if a police officer insist on questioning me despite my initially refusing to answer, I'd just ask for a lawyer. I won't trust myself to handle legal processes, and I certainly won't be able tell if the police had forged a document for me to sign.
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
    Under American law this is probably the worst possible advice you could give someone. Why? Because if you end up in front of a jury, that police officer is going to testify to that jury that you said "you'd tell them anything when they granted you immunity", a truthful statement, and the jury is going to fill in whatever gaps the prosecutor suggests they fill in. If you are in police custody you ask for nothing from the police. You tell them that you are remaining silent until your lawyer arrives. And then you shut up.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    I'll have to agree with the replies I received - say nothing until you have counsel who can handle things the best way possible.
caturopath 6y ago
> Always talk to the police -- AFTER YOUR LAWYER TELLS YOU TO SAY WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO SAY FTFY ;) A cop can't grant you immunity, and most people wouldn't know what it meant if you did have an immunity agreement.
- notahacker 6y ago
  Also, an up front request for immunity is a massive red flag that says "I'm probably involved in the illegal thing, or some other illegal thing", which is not how you want to introduce yourself to a police officer, especially if you're not a serious suspect at the time. Even if the cop could grant it, why would he? Obviously different if your lawyer says that requesting immunity might work, probably because you're knee deep in someone else's mess and their experience tells them that prosecution will be far more interested in your testimony against them than stuff you might need to admit to.
jancsika 6y ago
In the anecdote the student did ask for immunity, but only after talking to a lawyer first. It was the lawyer's advice to ask for immunity. The bigger lesson was not to ask for immunity, but to refuse to say anything without your lawyer present. (...and then, obviously, to only say things if your lawyer advises you to do so.)
u678u 6y ago
IRS never calls, it was a scammer. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/how-to-know-its-really-the-irs-calling-or-knocking-on-your-door https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/how-to-know-its-really-the-irs-...
jakelazaroff 6y ago
Are you a lawyer? This seems like pretty irresponsible advice to give from an armchair, tbh. IANAL, but if you're arrested, just ask for a lawyer. Don't try to play weird games like asking for immunity. The police have played them way more than you, you don't know the legal system and you will probably lose.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> Always talk to the police -- AFTER GETTING IMMUNITY. No no no, a thousand times no. Immunity is a very nuanced thing that, in the US especially, is beyond the understanding of laypersons. Talk only to and through YOUR lawyer. Don't go anywhere near any talk of "immunity" without several days to discuss the matter with paid legal counsel.
- cogman10 6y ago
  And, AFAIK, the police themselves CANNOT GRANT IMMUNITY. Only the prosecutor can sign an immunity deal with you. By the time you are talking to a prosecutor, you should have your lawyer involved.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Not even the prosecutor. The US is a strange dual sovereignty system (state and federal) and so you need multiple prosecutors to agree. State immunity can be respected by the feds, and vis versa, but that is not absolute. Similarly, US prosecutors cannot grant immunity for crimes in other countries such as crimes that cross boarders. US immunity might mean end many travel options.
    - senkora 6y ago
      I’m not sure I would call that “strange”; it’s just the meaning of federalism. Federal means that subnational units have some limited sovereignty, versus unitary where only the toplevel government has sovereignty.
      - sandworm101 6y ago
        Not really. Canada is federalized, but still has a unitary authority for prosecution of crimes. There are very few countries operating parallel authorities, parallel criminal courts. Most countries have a unitary authority structure with the national government being the highest source of law. The US operates a bifurcated structure where States (50+ of them) are often the final authority on criminal matters. That is strange.
tehwebguy 6y ago
Have your attorney ask for immunity and confirm to you that it’s then safe to talk with police (your attorney will just say, “No!!!!” when you ask them)
valuearb 6y ago
Asking for immunity can be used against you in court. “Officer, was there anything strange about the defendants response to finding out his ex-roomate had been murdered?” “Well he immediately asked for immunity to cover his actions in the crime” Never talk to the police, refer them to your lawyer.
- watwut 6y ago
  I mean, if you ask for immunity out of nowhere, it does make one think about what exactly you want immunity from. One does not have to be manipulative narcissist to figure that one out.
rdtsc 6y ago
How would I know what immunity looks like? Police can and do lie to people to get them to confess to stuff. "We'll go easy on you, we promise", or "this is off the record, you can tell us anything now" etc. So what stops them from saying something like "sure, you got immunity, now let us in".
dragonwriter 6y ago
> The cop who gave that presentation even mentioned getting an IRS call, and said that, they never called back. The IRS would never call you in a situation where that would matter, and in fact they try very hard to make that public since fake IRS enforcement calls are a very common scam. So the cop was either lying to you, or was caught in a scam and accidentally scared them off by showing they weren't going to immediately buckle under, without even realizing it was a scam. Ask for a lawyer, not immunity. And take legal advice from your lawyer, not from cops who, as a class, have neither the knowledge nor the motivation to give good advice.

jpalomaki 6y ago

Related video from Youtube: https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE Long time since I watched it. I think one argument was that it’s very easy to make a mistake in what you tell and it might sound bad later on.

35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
There were about four arguments that he quite persuasively made: you might make a mistake, you might inadvertently say something that is misinterpreted, you may be completely honest and truthful but an unreliable third party makes a claim that contradicts your statement... It's an incredibly important video that shows why there is no good that comes out of police interactions.

watwut 6y ago

I am actually thankful to people who talked to police and allowed then to decomposed few mafias that operated where I live. Good thing for everyone. That includes victims who had courage and took the risk of retaliation and perpetrators who talked about former associates.

JadeNB 6y ago
It is a good thing for everyone if you can talk to the police and not have to worry about that putting you in jeopardy from the police. Since police choose not to offer you that protection, and are legally supported in doing so, it is the police, not the individual refusants, who have brought about this sad state of affairs where the right advice is always not to talk to them.

guerby 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE "Don't Talk to the Police" Old video but still funny and very instructive.

rubyist5eva 6y ago

I don't know if it's related - but there is a video "Don't Talk To The Police" which is probably the most important video anyone could ever wathch. https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE

kemiller2002 6y ago
If you are in the U.S. this is absolutely the most important video you can watch. It very clearly details how the system really works, and why it is always bad to talk to the police without a lawyer present. Note I didn't say, "Never talk to the police." You need someone with you that can understand the law and how work within the system. You never know when they might consider you part of the suspect pool. You can be helpful, just be helpful while protecting your own best interests.
- bsder 6y ago
  One note about that video: he's updated his advice a bit. Our shitty Supreme Court has made "stay silent" a bit of an issue--it's safer to demand your lawyer instead. It's not even about understanding the system, the presence of the lawyer forces the police to establish "scope". If I'm just a witness, then the lawyer can make sure that what I say can't later be used against me for something unrelated. If I'm a suspect, this prevents the police from going on a fishing expedition to just "find anything". Once they talk to the lawyer, they have to go hunting for "what they told the lawyer" as opposed to everything in the world.
  - Diederich 6y ago
    > he's updated his advice a bit Interesting...do you have a reference to that handy? Thanks!
    - bsder 6y ago
      I don't. You probably have to hunt around on YouTube for some of his later videos. The lawyer's name is "James Duane", but I can only find his CATO Institute videos and they're not very good. :(

cortesoft 6y ago

> There is no upside to allowing them in I get what you are saying, and agree with your decision to not talk to the police, but it isn’t true that there can be NO upside to talking to the police. For all the bad things police do, they DO also solve some crimes and arrest some dangerous people. If someone killed one of my loved ones, I would hope the police would be able to find, arrest, and successfully prosecute the murderer. If no witness will speak to the police, it makes solving a homicide much more difficult. This is why the current approach to policing is so awful. We should work on fixing the system so talking to the police is a good thing.

Jkvngt 6y ago
Police barely ever solve crimes. Murder, the most serious crime, is hardly ever solved. There is no fixing the situation with talking to police, how would you fix the system? It would take decades of action on the part of the police to regain the public’s trust. One wrong move by one cop, one time would reset that back to zero.
- neartheplain 6y ago
  That’s overstating things. Most murder cases in the US are solved. 40% aren’t, though. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r...
  - stretchcat 6y ago
    To be fair, solving a great many murders is probably a simple matter of finding the family member with literal blood on his hands and a history of domestic abuse. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.
  - Jkvngt 6y ago
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3566383 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3566383 Seems it’s only about 22% of serious crimes which are solved. Of course the beauty of these “facts” is they differ wildly.

rurp 6y ago

This makes total sense and it's frustrating that many police want to have it both ways. They want good faith cooperation from potential witnesses, while also being free to lie to and manipulate potential suspects. If they want better cooperation from the public then they need to act in better faith themselves.

clankyclanker 6y ago
How do they distinguish between witness and suspect?
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  Treat everyone the same, maybe?
- corty 6y ago
  They don't. They just distinguish between playing good cop and bad cop.
- watwut 6y ago
  They are often the same people.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Everyone is a suspect.

landemva 6y ago

To have the police play by same rules as regular people, we need to remove "government immunity" which the USSC created out of thin air in the early 1970s. Why would police and city councils change anything, when after somebody sues the government files a motion to dismiss because of government immunity and the motion is granted? There won't be accountability until this changes.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jstarfish 6y ago

> you never know what law you may've broken. Yeah. Even innocuous things like having a hole in the wall changes the line of inquiry from whatever crime is being investigated to a domestic violence or child protective services intervention on your account...all because you wanted to help. It would be in the best interest of law enforcement to grant by default some amount of immunity to witnesses in order to encourage their cooperation. Nobody should be punished by the justice system for cooperating-- witnesses already risk retribution from whoever they're willing to make a statement against.