I'm not sure that's "worse" - it seems that's actually what the situation is today but with the tables reversed. AIUI, it's pretty common that when they can't

I'm not sure that's "worse" - it seems that's actually what the situation is today but with the tables reversed. AIUI, it's pretty common that when they can't get you for the crime they think you committed, that they'll just goad you into a casual mis-statement (i.e., lying), and lock you up for the lie. That's exactly what happened to Martha Stewart, for example. What (apparently) seemed to her to be a minor omission that had no bearing on the case, suddenly becomes the cause for her prosecution. The end result of this is that anyone with a clue knows that the best policy is, simply, never talk to police. There's nothing you can say that will make things better (the die is already cast), and you can do yourself a world of hurt. And you can't even know ahead of time whether you're suspect. So the best course of action is simply to refuse to talk to police ever. How is a situation in which the public refuses to help the police any worse than taking these tools away from the police? Obligatory anecdote: I went skeet shooting with a friend. The next day, for some reason, I still had a bunch of spent shotgun shells sitting on the table. That morning the police came to my door, and I let them in the house to talk since it was cold out. They started asking for information about an incident where someone had shot out a car window with a BB gun. Later I realized that I had those empty shotgun shells sitting right in their sight. If you're not aware, "BB" is actually the designation of a particular small size of shot (like #8 being used for deer and #4 or #0 used for turkey or birds; BB is smaller than #0). So although I knew nothing of the BB incident, and was certainly innocent, I had inadvertently given the police some reason to suspect my involvement. In actuality, nothing came of this, but given the way these things go, I would have been safer to have just said "sorry, officer", and refused to deal with them.