13 ms·

It's legal for police to use deception in interrogations. Some want that to end

281 points by everybodyknows 2y ago

henryfjordan 2y ago
Never talk to the police. Do not "just give a statement" to get them to let you go. Identify yourself when asked, ask for a lawyer, then shut up. If communicating something to the police might be helpful for you, do that through your lawyer. "You can beat the charges but you can't beat the ride"
- nappsec 2y ago
  Yup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
  - isatty 2y ago
    Required watching imho, I watch this atleast once a year.
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    Every person in the United States, whether a citizen or just visiting, would do well to watch this.
  - linsomniac 2y ago
    An informative and entertaining watch. Never answer questions from the police. Also, if you are arrested, keep your mouth shut. Don't say anything about anything on the phone or while in custody, even to other inmates. When you call your lawyer or family, don't say anything more than "I've been arrested and need a laywer" don't say "I screwed up" or anything really. Tell all this to your kids and spouse.
- echelon 2y ago
  We just need brain scanning technology to extract and reconstruct memories directly. It's probably not far off. There's a whole host of new potential investigative technology that may be right around the corner: - memory extraction - DNA to photograph / phenotype - photograph to DNA - environmental DNA recovery from exhalation, etc.
  - spoonfeeder006 2y ago
    Not far off?? Just imagine the insane amounts of training data needed to be accurate on that. Although brain scanning data to determine if a non-psychopath and non-narcissist is lying or telling the truth is probably not nearly as difficult
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    it's more likely that that kind of psuedotechnology would get promoted as a way to wash false or suspect testimony, like lie detectors were. it's not even clear why you would want to anyways. Human recall is notoriously terrible.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    BRB, getting hypnotized into "remembering" someone wealthy signed a contract giving me lots and lots of money.
    - 77pt77 2y ago
      Not like that!
  - MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
    Memory extraction is likely impossible, as I expect that every brain encodes long-term memory slightly differently. There was a demonstration of partially decoding images from _surface memory_ that a subject was already thinking of, but that only works because they were reading off the visual cortex, which brains use to reconstruct scenes from long-term-memory and is better understood. [1] That said, directly reading memories is unlikely to be necessary. In Daniel Suarez's Daemon/Freedom™, he proposes using fMRI and increasingly narrow questions to extract truthful information. The blood flow in our brains changes when we lie, and is much easier and faster to detect. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111216184729/http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20111216184729/http://newscenter...
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  > then shut up The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, has ruled that you cannot exercise your right to remain silent by merely remaining silent, and that the Prosecution can say things like "you didn't have an answer when asked questions". To exercise your right to remain silent, the Court says, you must say "I am exercising my right to remain silent". And don't say "I want a lawyer, dawg", or else the police will say they were unable to find you a canine who had passed the bar, and thus your request for counsel was not a serious one and that they are free to continue your interrogation... and the Court (in this case, the Louisiana Supreme Court) will say that that was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of your request.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    Other readers, please note that none of the above is an exaggeration. 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...
    - decremental 2y ago
      [dead]
  - gmiller123456 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - coldtea 2y ago
      In what universe is "Why don't you just get me a lawyer, dawg" ambiguous, except in the universe of backwater town prosecutors playing wordgames?
      - wisty 2y ago
        Thus is an example of a rhetorical question. You aren't asking for anything, you are making a statement. Another example is “If y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what’s up.” which is a statement of innocence, not asking for anything.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  “Never talk to the police” is impractical. Not everyone pulled over on a traffic stop has the time and money to be obstructive. (Or afford the ticket they might smile their way out of.) Better, maybe: never concede. And if it goes beyond the sundry, call counsel. (If you don’t have counsel, weigh being technically correct and massively inconvenienced against being pleasant but subordinate.) TL; DR If they’re asking about felonies, shut up. If they’re telling you off for a tail light, ehhh!
  - chaps 2y ago
    This is terrible advice, friend.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > This is terrible advice, friend Why? I say this as someone with personal counsel on retainer, and who has been pulled over but not gotten a ticket in a decade. I’m legally conservative but also practical. Most people don’t have the time to be arraigned every time they might have gone five over. “Never talk to the police” means every random stop turns into interrogation. That simply isn’t the baseline risk for most of us.
      - chaps 2y ago
        And I'm saying that as an award winning investigative journalist who focuses on transparency and police misconduct. This is the first time in years where I only have one lawsuit against a police agency. I also have counsel on retainer :) I believe your advice is bad because it's being given to a wide audience that very likely doesn't know better.
    - gcau 2y ago
      It's not terrible advice, it's the same advice you will hear from many lawyers. If a cop pulls you over because you were blatantly speeding - saying nothing, or admitting to it and apologising, are both reasonable things to do. Never talking to police is a safer blanket decision, but you can have some grey area.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  My father was a lawyer and I grew up hearing this advice. But then we ended up living in Texas when I became a stoner teen. I can't quite explain what its like to be on the side of the interstate for literally hours undergoing constant questioning and various forms of psychological torture. Splitting everyone up, questioning everyone to try to find inconsistencies. Multiple times I remember telling a cop "no, you are not allowed to do this, am I being detained?" And they can just respond "yes I am, no you're not, can I look through your car now?" In central nowhere texas, the cops are elite at this. Just all of us pretty much sobbing on the side of the road from the stress, pleading and pleading with them... But I would live through that everyday of my life if I knew I would never have to get to the sometimes next chapter of this kind of thing: jail in a small Texas town. There I learned about both physical and psychological torture. But its too much to get into. And yes I tried to fight the most egregious event of torture, spent alot of time talking to lawyer, explaining what happened to me. My stop was unlawful even in that case. But I came in with a some fancy Austin lawyer to Brownwood, TX and they all but laughed us out of the courtroom. And even after all that, don't even get me started on how they extract your money and sanity for years and years if your lucky like me to get probation for an eighth oz of mushrooms. I was a special case because I ended up going to grad school and it was easy for me to work the weekends to make the money I needed to pay them that wasnt covered by my stipend. I am also so grateful I kept a spreadsheet of my payments to them, it truly truly saved me from more years and money. They are really good with all their paperwork, except for anything to do with paying them money. But very important to realize in all this: this is not at all exceptional, and I am a card-carrying privileged white man. This is just how it is.
  - adriand 2y ago
    I'm sorry about what happened to you!
  - mkatx 2y ago
    Can confirm, 100% Texas right there. It is still worse for non-white men though, but even that won't save you here.
  - ranger_danger 2y ago
    [flagged]
- qingcharles 2y ago
  It's not always that simple. I promise you, if armed police are threatening to harm your family you will tell them anything they want and sign anything they want to get them to stop. In the USA you might be able to get the statements thrown out afterwards, but as long as the police didn't actually commit any violence then they are likely to get promoted. And you have to be pragmatic; you might be able to get the charges thrown out, but you could easily spend a decade or more in pretrial detention to do it.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > if armed police are threatening to harm your family you will tell them anything they want and sign anything they want to get them to stop Don’t do this. If the charges are serious, if the motivation is so serious they’ll use illegal violence, say nothing. Demand a lawyer. Where I disagree with this is in super minor cases. I took a left without indicating, once, and got pulled over by the town pub. I figured they were looking for drunks, so I co-operated; the worst I was admitting to was a traffic ticket.
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      The charges don't have to be serious for the police to use illegal violence. They do it regularly for minor cases. If they are threatening violence, you can be sure your demands for a lawyer are going to go unheard.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  It's extremely sad that things work like that in a supposedly democratic country.
- tzs 2y ago
  Do you really mean never? I've run into a lot of people who have heard that advice and take it very literally, to the point that when I've asked them what they would do if an officer responding to an explosion and fire at their workplace asked the people who got out if they knew of anyone still in the building said that they would not answer without getting a lawyer first.
  - basilgohar 2y ago
    It sounds absurd, but people have been arrested or even killed for less cooperation than this. Blame the system, not the people who are trying to avoid being destroyed by the system. Law enforcement has become more and more hostile towards citizens with time, not less. Wariness is the only way to navigate it, unfortunately.
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    Tell the firefighters, what are the police going to do?
  - henryfjordan 2y ago
    Emergency situations where you are trying to coordinate is maybe the only time I would talk to a cop, and if you can talk to a fire fighter or EMT instead I would do that. In the case of the fire I wouldn't say anything except "Little Timmy is still inside, on the second floor". Do not discuss how the fire started or anything like that.
aftbit 2y ago
IMO if it is legal for police to lie to me, it should be legal for me to lie to the police too. Under oath in a courtroom is a totally different thing.
- hugh-avherald 2y ago
  IANAL and jurisdictions differ but in general merely lying to the police is not illegal.
  - mingus88 2y ago
    In theory, sure. In practice, police will gladly make your life hell by charging you with obstruction of justice or a vague charge like disturbing the peace and let you sit in jail for a weekend until they drop the charges. There are countless ways in which they can mess with you, and they are legally unaccountable 99% of the time. Better advice is simply do not engage with police, and know your rights.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Make sure they're not feds. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001
  - bigfatkitten 2y ago
    Making false statements to police is a criminal offence in most places.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  That's a tricky proposal, because even if you might legally lie to police without direct repercussions, the same lie could easily--and quite reasonably--be introduced into into a later court case as evidence against you. Imagine a prosecutor, or a juror during deliberations: "He lied to police about not owning a gun, and he lied with a fake alibi about being somewhere else at the time. Those aren't the actions of an innocent bystander."
Terr_ 2y ago
People will want to draw the line in different places, but to me one of the most heinously inexcusable boundaries is when the police lie about the laws and the process. Ex: "If you confess, it will just be just a week in jail, and if you don't, you'll be executed. And your agedmother will have to pay the fines, making her homeless."
- coldtea 2y ago
  Prosecutors allowed to make the same bullshit threats to push for plea deals is an even worse version of this.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Don't forget filing two of the same charges and offer a "deal" for you to plead guilty to one of them.
    - HWR_14 2y ago
      Two different charges, not the same one. You can plead to unlawful firearm possession, or take a chance with unlawful firearm possession, brandishing a weapon and armed robbery.
      - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
        It's convient how the Federal version and the State version on of the law for the exact same act differ just enough that 'they are totally not the same and don't violate double jeopardy' if you are retried for the same exact act in both jurisdictions. The justice system has 'by the strict definition' not 'the spirit of it' removed a lot of our constitutional rights.
        HWR_14 2y ago
        The state and federal law don't have to differ at all. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the laws can be 100% the same and you still can get charged by both the state and the government. They ruled that the spirit of double jeopardy only applies within the same government entity. Some states forbid filing charges if the federal government already did.
briandw 2y ago
Cases like Tom Perez should never happen. He was held for the murder of his father who was alive. They told him they had video of him dumping bloddy clothes and they knew where he had buried the body. They the said that they would kill his dog and even brought the dog in for him to say goodbye. Should be illegal. https://abc11.com/post/city-fontana-reaches-900k-settlement-tom-perez-was-pressured-confess-he-killed-father-alive/15275361/ https://abc11.com/post/city-fontana-reaches-900k-settlement-...
- nickff 2y ago
  That’s shocking, and sounds like psychological torture. That police officer should be criminally prosecuted (though it’s difficult to get a prosecutor to go after the police).
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > They the said that they would kill his dog Someone should be in prison. This will not end untill there are personal consequences.
  - guyfromfargo 2y ago
    The article says the officers got promoted.
    - simoncion 2y ago
      I'm not sure why this comment was killed. A heading in the ABC 11 article is literally "Officers involved were later promoted". The text of the article later goes on to say > Months after the interrogation, Guthrie was named a 2019 Employee of the Year for the Fontana Police Department. > Guthrie is now a sergeant. So is Janusz. > And Michael Dorsey, the lieutenant who Guthrie says told him and Janusz that officers believed Perez Jr. had killed his father, has been promoted to captain and is now chief of police of Fontana, overseeing 188 sworn officers, according to its website.
      - 2y ago
zug_zug 2y ago
It always felt like such a contradiction that police could lie to you but had to read you your miranda rights. Apparently police are allowed some threshold of deception (e.g. can outright lie but can't pretend to be your lawyer) but since 99% of people don't know this it really undermines the purpose. Like if the police can lie, but tell you that you get an attorney, how is a client supposed to know that your lawyer can't lie to you too?
- Loughla 2y ago
  Because the lawyer is there for you, hopefully paid for by you and therefore independent. If not, you have to assume the public defender is at least friends with the police and therefore may not have your best interests in mind. That system is fucked, but I'm not sure I know a solution for folks who can't afford representation. Thoughts?
  - LgWoodenBadger 2y ago
    The equivalent of “jury duty” for every lawyer who passed the bar in the state where they have to serve as defense counsel for whomever needs it.
  - zbentley 2y ago
    > assume the public defender is at least friends with the police and therefore may not have your best interests in mind What? Police fucking hate public defenders as a general rule. Like sure, a police officer might be familiar with a public defender who frequently works cases brought by that officer’s precinct. But it’s perfectly clear to both of them that they work in opposition. Absent a few extremely rural and/or corrupt cases I do not believe this friendship is often the case.
    - Loughla 2y ago
      I know that's what TV says, but my anectdata is the opposite of that. I've known multiple attorneys in the public defenders office in three different courts. One rural, two very urban. They absolutely had relationships with both street officers and leadership in the precincts of the city and town.
sfmz 2y ago
Police also use all kinds of body-language techniques, like sitting very close to you, violating your personal space and subconsciously indicating that the only way to get to the exit door is to go through them, but all you have to do is request legal council.
giantg2 2y ago
I think deception is fine if it's about what evidence they have. What isn't fine is deception about the the law and physical threats. It's one thing to say you have someone's prints at a crime scene hoping they confess, it's entirely different to threaten to kill their dog or say you aren't allowed to talk to a lawyer. The basis of our adversarial legal system is that the truth will emerge from a fair fight between the sides. Deception on the facts, but not the law or threats, seems to be balanced. There are other areas of the law that are not, but this one seems to check out. Some potential tips are to stay calm while asserting your rights and ask for a lawyer. Record anything you can, even leaving an open 911 call if you feel your safety is in jeopardy. Ask for a supervisor. If you're being forced and physically threatened to comply with something like an unlawful search, say you only consent under protest (recording needed).
- AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
  I also think deception in the form of "just admit you murdered the person and you can go home" should be illegal. Police aren't empowered to make plea deals and they shouldn't imply or outright say that they can.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Well yeah, that falls under deception of the law - they don't have the legal power to make deals.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > Record anything you can Ironically, I would record phonecalls and it saved my butt when dealing with a scammy company. You could do it on an old android phones but now neither Android nor iPhones allow this.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Phone calls are often covered differently under wiretapping. Then there are concerns about which states the parties are in and the consent laws. Recording police during official interactions with yourself has generally been upheld.
qingcharles 2y ago
This is one of the more famous cases I remember (won $16m payout from having spent 8 months in jail getting a regular beatdown from guards and other detainees): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Riley_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Riley_Fox This is the Illinois statute that prevents deception of minors, but not yet adults: 725 ILCS 5/103-2.1. This provision, effective January 1, 2022, renders any confession from a minor inadmissible in court if obtained through deception by law enforcement.
frellus 2y ago
While we're at it, I think it should be illegal for prosecutors -- or defense attorneys -- to lie or use hypotheticals they know are not true just to spread doubt. Law should be argued on facts, conviction and conjecture. Example: if I was caught drunk driving and blew a 0.15, my lawyer shouldn't be able to say "How do you know my client didn't just use mouthwash? Mouthwash has a level of alcohol in it." If they know that's not what happened, it shouldn't be legal to plant in the mind of a jury or judge. Rather they could say factually, "How accurate are these breath tests?" or "Are you sure you administered the test correctly?" to the officer being witnessed.
- cperciva 2y ago
  Attorneys (including defense attorneys), as officers of the court, are ethically barred from lying to the court or bringing witnesses whom they know intend to lie. Defense attorneys will sometimes tell their clients "if you're guilty, don't tell me" in order to avoid such ethical restrictions. Of course, not all lawyers live up to their ethical obligations and if the only evidence of an ethical lapse is protected by attorney-client privilege, it's unlikely that they would ever get caught.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I disagree with your example. That's a perfectly reasonable question that a good witness can have a perfectly valid answer to: "I know your client didn't use mouthwash because we tested this process and proved that mouthwash is only capable of getting up to a 0.05 (or whatever number)". If the officer doesn't have a good answer to the question, then there exists reasonable doubt, whether or not the defense attorney knows that their client was, in fact, drunk.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    I think the point frellus made was that you shouldn’t be allowed to create reasonable doubt by bringing up something you know is not true/relevant. If the lawyer know no mouthwash was involved, it shouldn’t be allowed to use the ambiguity created by mouthwash to discredit the measurement. At least that’s how I understood it.
Glyptodon 2y ago
I feel mixed about it overall, but one place I don't think there's any question its sketchy as hell is when interviewing kids, especially younger ones.
- foxglacier 2y ago
  If you draw the line at kids, then you'd better also draw it at any adult who may think like a kid in some relevant way. And there are a lot of them. Often these doubtful confessions are from intellectually impaired people, but there are all kinds of emotional and mental health problems that can cause people to not properly stand up for themselves.
foxglacier 2y ago
It should surely be OK if they use deception to get you to reveal information that only the perpetrator could know. Like "We know you buried the body in that forest [lie], so tell us which tree it's under." And you tell them which tree, and they find the body there. Unless there's some weird circumstances, that proves you knew where the body was buried and should be valid evidence contributing to the conclusion that you murdered them or were at least an accomplice. Seems like just applying honest common sense and intelligent reasoning solves this, and I thought that was the judge's job. Maybe judges are the problem for not seeing through the bullshit.
swayvil 2y ago
While you were in the basement cell the world ended. Everything wiped out with neutron bombs. So that means the government, the laws, the legal system, all that stuff. Doesn't exist anymore. So whether you're guilty or not doesn't even matter. But just out of curiosity, did you do it?
swayvil 2y ago
We could do a VR simulation. Fake the prisoner's acquittal, release, tearful reuniting with family, later life, retirement, deathbed. And then, on his deathbed, he confesses. Aha!
patrick451 2y ago
A police officer who lies should go to jail for the maximum amount of time of the sentence they claim their prisoner committed. The only way these abuses of power end is if we hold these thugs accountable.
jMyles 2y ago
It's obvious to everyone that on sufficiently long time scales, there aren't going to be peculiar divisions of society who are solely responsible for enforcing laws, and who are given special powers and weapons to do that, right? Sometimes - when there are tens of millions of people in the street - it starts to feel like it's within our lifetime. But even if it's not, we all recognize that, in like 10,000 years, there's no chance that society will remain sufficiently centralized that such a thing can persist... yeah? So, can we just frontload this stuff right now? Make it simple: * Everybody has the exact same responsibility to enforce the law, and the same (if any) protections attached to that responsibility * Everybody has the exact same rights to own and possess weapons Then, sure, if the states still wants to pay some people to professionally engage with this responsibility, that's fine. But there's no reason on earth that they need to continue to be a special class of people with special rights. That part can end _today_ and literally nobody will suffer.
- aniviacat 2y ago
  > It's obvious > we all recognize that It isn't obvious to me; I don't recognize that. Not nearly everyone can properly conduct an investigation. And if a loner, without family or close friends, is murdered, noone will even attempt investigating. If there's a feared gang in your town commiting crimes, everyone would be too afraid to try to convict them. We would quickly get crime-run cities and local warlords. We need professionals who can properly investigate and who are willing to risk going up against a group of dangerous criminals. The police is necessary.
  - jMyles 2y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your argument: you're saying that, in order to conduct an investigation, we need to have a special class of society that has different powers, and different access to weaponry? Investigations have been happening for thousands of years in the western common-law tradition via constabularies and courts. These have been in the hands of police for only the past 200 or so. So, just so I understand: you think that the police experiment is still going to be going on in 10,000 years?
ssklash 2y ago
I'm afraid that in this country that the desire to convict and see justice/retribution served on perpetrators is much stronger than the fear of convicting and even executing innocent people. And I think police deception is a strong cause of false convictions.
efitz 2y ago
For a confession to be accepted in a court, I think that the entire interrogation should have to be filmed and viewed by a grand jury. Separately I think that it is ridiculous that LE is allowed to lie to you but that it is a crime to lie to federal investigators- they get people on that when they can’t get them on anything else, eg Martha Stewart.
- throwawayian 2y ago
  Then you’d be forced to watch 8-12 hours of interrogation, in some cases multiple times to cover months or years long investigations. You can’t cut that time down across the board, it produces results. (Obviously it has drawbacks and it’s often not the right results.)
  - efitz 2y ago
    Yes, that is the point. Juries are our justice system’s protection against abuse. If the crime was bad enough for police to sweat someone for 12 hours, then having a jury watch for 12 hours seems a reasonable check and balance - after all they might be saving weeks that would be spent on a trial if there were no confession. And it puts sunshine all over police interrogation practices- if they are acting professionally then that will show through, but if they are abusing someone that will become visible as well.
    - throwawayian 2y ago
      At that point you’ll end up with people doing the equivalent of filibustering. Gibberish for weeks on end.
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    Have you seen how long criminal trials go? Watching interrogations would be a drop in the bucket compared in comparison.
guywithahat 2y ago
> Bradford says the officers in Yakima, Wash., claimed they had biological evidence that would prove he did it, and they weren't going to let him leave until he admitted it. I had the opposite experience. They kept promising me I wouldn’t be arrested if I answered the questions and approved their searches, I did everything they wanted, nothing suggested any guilt, and then they arrested me anyways for 5 days before putting an ankle bracelet on me. I’m sure my case wouldn’t be included but they shouldn’t be able to lie about things or the process.
noduerme 2y ago
I think there's a clear bright difference between the police lying to a suspect about her rights, versus lying about what the police do or don't already know. The former is Kafkaesque; the latter is merely Dostoevskyan. What is absurd is that anyone would fall for any of this in modern America. Every parent should teach their children that in any contentious interaction with police, the only words they should ever say are "I want a lawyer".
jimnotgym 2y ago
Are police allowed to do this in Western Europe? Everything I read about the police in the US suggests to me that they are an array of paramilitary thugs that are supported by the courts, so not suprised they do this. Curious if these tricks are allowed in the civilised world too?
- Leptonmaniac 2y ago
  In Germany, "means of deception" are listed in section 136a of the Code of Criminal Procedure [1] as one of "prohibited examination methods" among things like induced fatigue, hypnosis, medications or torture. I think that does count as "not allowed". [1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_stpo.html#p1329 https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_st...
scotty79 2y ago
It's really silly that people refuse to believe the suspect when he says he "didn't do it" but immediately trust the same person when he says "I did it". It's a bit reminiscent of witch trials where there's only one possible outcome and the person is tortured until it's achieved because it's the easy path for the accusers.
heisenbit 2y ago
Deception in the US must be seen in the context of excessive punishments, great latitude for making deals and strong incentives to get convictions.
datavirtue 2y ago
You don't have to talk to them. When you stop there is usually no way to proceed unless they have evidence. I would never agree to an interrogation for anything or any reason. You never know if they are going to consider you a suspect. Just flat out refuse. If you want to help the cops out with what you know, get a lawyer first.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Never talk to the police. Do not "just give a statement" to get them to let you go. Identify yourself when asked, ask for a lawyer, then shut up. If communicating something to the police might be helpful for you, do that through your lawyer. "You can beat the charges but you can't beat the ride"

nappsec 2y ago
Yup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
- isatty 2y ago
  Required watching imho, I watch this atleast once a year.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  Every person in the United States, whether a citizen or just visiting, would do well to watch this.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  An informative and entertaining watch. Never answer questions from the police. Also, if you are arrested, keep your mouth shut. Don't say anything about anything on the phone or while in custody, even to other inmates. When you call your lawyer or family, don't say anything more than "I've been arrested and need a laywer" don't say "I screwed up" or anything really. Tell all this to your kids and spouse.
echelon 2y ago
We just need brain scanning technology to extract and reconstruct memories directly. It's probably not far off. There's a whole host of new potential investigative technology that may be right around the corner: - memory extraction - DNA to photograph / phenotype - photograph to DNA - environmental DNA recovery from exhalation, etc.
- spoonfeeder006 2y ago
  Not far off?? Just imagine the insane amounts of training data needed to be accurate on that. Although brain scanning data to determine if a non-psychopath and non-narcissist is lying or telling the truth is probably not nearly as difficult
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  it's more likely that that kind of psuedotechnology would get promoted as a way to wash false or suspect testimony, like lie detectors were. it's not even clear why you would want to anyways. Human recall is notoriously terrible.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Terr_ 2y ago
  BRB, getting hypnotized into "remembering" someone wealthy signed a contract giving me lots and lots of money.
  - 77pt77 2y ago
    Not like that!
- MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
  Memory extraction is likely impossible, as I expect that every brain encodes long-term memory slightly differently. There was a demonstration of partially decoding images from _surface memory_ that a subject was already thinking of, but that only works because they were reading off the visual cortex, which brains use to reconstruct scenes from long-term-memory and is better understood. [1] That said, directly reading memories is unlikely to be necessary. In Daniel Suarez's Daemon/Freedom™, he proposes using fMRI and increasingly narrow questions to extract truthful information. The blood flow in our brains changes when we lie, and is much easier and faster to detect. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111216184729/http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20111216184729/http://newscenter...
FireBeyond 2y ago
> then shut up The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, has ruled that you cannot exercise your right to remain silent by merely remaining silent, and that the Prosecution can say things like "you didn't have an answer when asked questions". To exercise your right to remain silent, the Court says, you must say "I am exercising my right to remain silent". And don't say "I want a lawyer, dawg", or else the police will say they were unable to find you a canine who had passed the bar, and thus your request for counsel was not a serious one and that they are free to continue your interrogation... and the Court (in this case, the Louisiana Supreme Court) will say that that was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of your request.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Other readers, please note that none of the above is an exaggeration. 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...
  - decremental 2y ago
    [dead]
- gmiller123456 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - coldtea 2y ago
    In what universe is "Why don't you just get me a lawyer, dawg" ambiguous, except in the universe of backwater town prosecutors playing wordgames?
    - wisty 2y ago
      Thus is an example of a rhetorical question. You aren't asking for anything, you are making a statement. Another example is “If y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what’s up.” which is a statement of innocence, not asking for anything.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
“Never talk to the police” is impractical. Not everyone pulled over on a traffic stop has the time and money to be obstructive. (Or afford the ticket they might smile their way out of.) Better, maybe: never concede. And if it goes beyond the sundry, call counsel. (If you don’t have counsel, weigh being technically correct and massively inconvenienced against being pleasant but subordinate.) TL; DR If they’re asking about felonies, shut up. If they’re telling you off for a tail light, ehhh!
- chaps 2y ago
  This is terrible advice, friend.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > This is terrible advice, friend Why? I say this as someone with personal counsel on retainer, and who has been pulled over but not gotten a ticket in a decade. I’m legally conservative but also practical. Most people don’t have the time to be arraigned every time they might have gone five over. “Never talk to the police” means every random stop turns into interrogation. That simply isn’t the baseline risk for most of us.
    - chaps 2y ago
      And I'm saying that as an award winning investigative journalist who focuses on transparency and police misconduct. This is the first time in years where I only have one lawsuit against a police agency. I also have counsel on retainer :) I believe your advice is bad because it's being given to a wide audience that very likely doesn't know better.
  - gcau 2y ago
    It's not terrible advice, it's the same advice you will hear from many lawyers. If a cop pulls you over because you were blatantly speeding - saying nothing, or admitting to it and apologising, are both reasonable things to do. Never talking to police is a safer blanket decision, but you can have some grey area.
beepbooptheory 2y ago
My father was a lawyer and I grew up hearing this advice. But then we ended up living in Texas when I became a stoner teen. I can't quite explain what its like to be on the side of the interstate for literally hours undergoing constant questioning and various forms of psychological torture. Splitting everyone up, questioning everyone to try to find inconsistencies. Multiple times I remember telling a cop "no, you are not allowed to do this, am I being detained?" And they can just respond "yes I am, no you're not, can I look through your car now?" In central nowhere texas, the cops are elite at this. Just all of us pretty much sobbing on the side of the road from the stress, pleading and pleading with them... But I would live through that everyday of my life if I knew I would never have to get to the sometimes next chapter of this kind of thing: jail in a small Texas town. There I learned about both physical and psychological torture. But its too much to get into. And yes I tried to fight the most egregious event of torture, spent alot of time talking to lawyer, explaining what happened to me. My stop was unlawful even in that case. But I came in with a some fancy Austin lawyer to Brownwood, TX and they all but laughed us out of the courtroom. And even after all that, don't even get me started on how they extract your money and sanity for years and years if your lucky like me to get probation for an eighth oz of mushrooms. I was a special case because I ended up going to grad school and it was easy for me to work the weekends to make the money I needed to pay them that wasnt covered by my stipend. I am also so grateful I kept a spreadsheet of my payments to them, it truly truly saved me from more years and money. They are really good with all their paperwork, except for anything to do with paying them money. But very important to realize in all this: this is not at all exceptional, and I am a card-carrying privileged white man. This is just how it is.
- adriand 2y ago
  I'm sorry about what happened to you!
- mkatx 2y ago
  Can confirm, 100% Texas right there. It is still worse for non-white men though, but even that won't save you here.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  [flagged]
qingcharles 2y ago
It's not always that simple. I promise you, if armed police are threatening to harm your family you will tell them anything they want and sign anything they want to get them to stop. In the USA you might be able to get the statements thrown out afterwards, but as long as the police didn't actually commit any violence then they are likely to get promoted. And you have to be pragmatic; you might be able to get the charges thrown out, but you could easily spend a decade or more in pretrial detention to do it.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > if armed police are threatening to harm your family you will tell them anything they want and sign anything they want to get them to stop Don’t do this. If the charges are serious, if the motivation is so serious they’ll use illegal violence, say nothing. Demand a lawyer. Where I disagree with this is in super minor cases. I took a left without indicating, once, and got pulled over by the town pub. I figured they were looking for drunks, so I co-operated; the worst I was admitting to was a traffic ticket.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    The charges don't have to be serious for the police to use illegal violence. They do it regularly for minor cases. If they are threatening violence, you can be sure your demands for a lawyer are going to go unheard.
anal_reactor 2y ago
It's extremely sad that things work like that in a supposedly democratic country.
tzs 2y ago
Do you really mean never? I've run into a lot of people who have heard that advice and take it very literally, to the point that when I've asked them what they would do if an officer responding to an explosion and fire at their workplace asked the people who got out if they knew of anyone still in the building said that they would not answer without getting a lawyer first.
- basilgohar 2y ago
  It sounds absurd, but people have been arrested or even killed for less cooperation than this. Blame the system, not the people who are trying to avoid being destroyed by the system. Law enforcement has become more and more hostile towards citizens with time, not less. Wariness is the only way to navigate it, unfortunately.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  Tell the firefighters, what are the police going to do?
- henryfjordan 2y ago
  Emergency situations where you are trying to coordinate is maybe the only time I would talk to a cop, and if you can talk to a fire fighter or EMT instead I would do that. In the case of the fire I wouldn't say anything except "Little Timmy is still inside, on the second floor". Do not discuss how the fire started or anything like that.

aftbit 2y ago

IMO if it is legal for police to lie to me, it should be legal for me to lie to the police too. Under oath in a courtroom is a totally different thing.

hugh-avherald 2y ago
IANAL and jurisdictions differ but in general merely lying to the police is not illegal.
- mingus88 2y ago
  In theory, sure. In practice, police will gladly make your life hell by charging you with obstruction of justice or a vague charge like disturbing the peace and let you sit in jail for a weekend until they drop the charges. There are countless ways in which they can mess with you, and they are legally unaccountable 99% of the time. Better advice is simply do not engage with police, and know your rights.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Make sure they're not feds. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  Making false statements to police is a criminal offence in most places.
Terr_ 2y ago
That's a tricky proposal, because even if you might legally lie to police without direct repercussions, the same lie could easily--and quite reasonably--be introduced into into a later court case as evidence against you. Imagine a prosecutor, or a juror during deliberations: "He lied to police about not owning a gun, and he lied with a fake alibi about being somewhere else at the time. Those aren't the actions of an innocent bystander."

Terr_ 2y ago

People will want to draw the line in different places, but to me one of the most heinously inexcusable boundaries is when the police lie about the laws and the process. Ex: "If you confess, it will just be just a week in jail, and if you don't, you'll be executed. And your agedmother will have to pay the fines, making her homeless."

coldtea 2y ago
Prosecutors allowed to make the same bullshit threats to push for plea deals is an even worse version of this.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Don't forget filing two of the same charges and offer a "deal" for you to plead guilty to one of them.
  - HWR_14 2y ago
    Two different charges, not the same one. You can plead to unlawful firearm possession, or take a chance with unlawful firearm possession, brandishing a weapon and armed robbery.
    - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
      It's convient how the Federal version and the State version on of the law for the exact same act differ just enough that 'they are totally not the same and don't violate double jeopardy' if you are retried for the same exact act in both jurisdictions. The justice system has 'by the strict definition' not 'the spirit of it' removed a lot of our constitutional rights.
      - HWR_14 2y ago
        The state and federal law don't have to differ at all. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the laws can be 100% the same and you still can get charged by both the state and the government. They ruled that the spirit of double jeopardy only applies within the same government entity. Some states forbid filing charges if the federal government already did.

briandw 2y ago

Cases like Tom Perez should never happen. He was held for the murder of his father who was alive. They told him they had video of him dumping bloddy clothes and they knew where he had buried the body. They the said that they would kill his dog and even brought the dog in for him to say goodbye. Should be illegal. https://abc11.com/post/city-fontana-reaches-900k-settlement-tom-perez-was-pressured-confess-he-killed-father-alive/15275361/ https://abc11.com/post/city-fontana-reaches-900k-settlement-...

nickff 2y ago
That’s shocking, and sounds like psychological torture. That police officer should be criminally prosecuted (though it’s difficult to get a prosecutor to go after the police).
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> They the said that they would kill his dog Someone should be in prison. This will not end untill there are personal consequences.
- guyfromfargo 2y ago
  The article says the officers got promoted.
  - simoncion 2y ago
    I'm not sure why this comment was killed. A heading in the ABC 11 article is literally "Officers involved were later promoted". The text of the article later goes on to say > Months after the interrogation, Guthrie was named a 2019 Employee of the Year for the Fontana Police Department. > Guthrie is now a sergeant. So is Janusz. > And Michael Dorsey, the lieutenant who Guthrie says told him and Janusz that officers believed Perez Jr. had killed his father, has been promoted to captain and is now chief of police of Fontana, overseeing 188 sworn officers, according to its website.
    - 2y ago

zug_zug 2y ago

It always felt like such a contradiction that police could lie to you but had to read you your miranda rights. Apparently police are allowed some threshold of deception (e.g. can outright lie but can't pretend to be your lawyer) but since 99% of people don't know this it really undermines the purpose. Like if the police can lie, but tell you that you get an attorney, how is a client supposed to know that your lawyer can't lie to you too?

Loughla 2y ago
Because the lawyer is there for you, hopefully paid for by you and therefore independent. If not, you have to assume the public defender is at least friends with the police and therefore may not have your best interests in mind. That system is fucked, but I'm not sure I know a solution for folks who can't afford representation. Thoughts?
- LgWoodenBadger 2y ago
  The equivalent of “jury duty” for every lawyer who passed the bar in the state where they have to serve as defense counsel for whomever needs it.
- zbentley 2y ago
  > assume the public defender is at least friends with the police and therefore may not have your best interests in mind What? Police fucking hate public defenders as a general rule. Like sure, a police officer might be familiar with a public defender who frequently works cases brought by that officer’s precinct. But it’s perfectly clear to both of them that they work in opposition. Absent a few extremely rural and/or corrupt cases I do not believe this friendship is often the case.
  - Loughla 2y ago
    I know that's what TV says, but my anectdata is the opposite of that. I've known multiple attorneys in the public defenders office in three different courts. One rural, two very urban. They absolutely had relationships with both street officers and leadership in the precincts of the city and town.

sfmz 2y ago

Police also use all kinds of body-language techniques, like sitting very close to you, violating your personal space and subconsciously indicating that the only way to get to the exit door is to go through them, but all you have to do is request legal council.

giantg2 2y ago

I think deception is fine if it's about what evidence they have. What isn't fine is deception about the the law and physical threats. It's one thing to say you have someone's prints at a crime scene hoping they confess, it's entirely different to threaten to kill their dog or say you aren't allowed to talk to a lawyer. The basis of our adversarial legal system is that the truth will emerge from a fair fight between the sides. Deception on the facts, but not the law or threats, seems to be balanced. There are other areas of the law that are not, but this one seems to check out. Some potential tips are to stay calm while asserting your rights and ask for a lawyer. Record anything you can, even leaving an open 911 call if you feel your safety is in jeopardy. Ask for a supervisor. If you're being forced and physically threatened to comply with something like an unlawful search, say you only consent under protest (recording needed).

AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
I also think deception in the form of "just admit you murdered the person and you can go home" should be illegal. Police aren't empowered to make plea deals and they shouldn't imply or outright say that they can.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Well yeah, that falls under deception of the law - they don't have the legal power to make deals.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> Record anything you can Ironically, I would record phonecalls and it saved my butt when dealing with a scammy company. You could do it on an old android phones but now neither Android nor iPhones allow this.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Phone calls are often covered differently under wiretapping. Then there are concerns about which states the parties are in and the consent laws. Recording police during official interactions with yourself has generally been upheld.

qingcharles 2y ago

This is one of the more famous cases I remember (won $16m payout from having spent 8 months in jail getting a regular beatdown from guards and other detainees): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Riley_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Riley_Fox This is the Illinois statute that prevents deception of minors, but not yet adults: 725 ILCS 5/103-2.1. This provision, effective January 1, 2022, renders any confession from a minor inadmissible in court if obtained through deception by law enforcement.

frellus 2y ago

While we're at it, I think it should be illegal for prosecutors -- or defense attorneys -- to lie or use hypotheticals they know are not true just to spread doubt. Law should be argued on facts, conviction and conjecture. Example: if I was caught drunk driving and blew a 0.15, my lawyer shouldn't be able to say "How do you know my client didn't just use mouthwash? Mouthwash has a level of alcohol in it." If they know that's not what happened, it shouldn't be legal to plant in the mind of a jury or judge. Rather they could say factually, "How accurate are these breath tests?" or "Are you sure you administered the test correctly?" to the officer being witnessed.

cperciva 2y ago
Attorneys (including defense attorneys), as officers of the court, are ethically barred from lying to the court or bringing witnesses whom they know intend to lie. Defense attorneys will sometimes tell their clients "if you're guilty, don't tell me" in order to avoid such ethical restrictions. Of course, not all lawyers live up to their ethical obligations and if the only evidence of an ethical lapse is protected by attorney-client privilege, it's unlikely that they would ever get caught.
lolinder 2y ago
I disagree with your example. That's a perfectly reasonable question that a good witness can have a perfectly valid answer to: "I know your client didn't use mouthwash because we tested this process and proved that mouthwash is only capable of getting up to a 0.05 (or whatever number)". If the officer doesn't have a good answer to the question, then there exists reasonable doubt, whether or not the defense attorney knows that their client was, in fact, drunk.
- echoangle 2y ago
  I think the point frellus made was that you shouldn’t be allowed to create reasonable doubt by bringing up something you know is not true/relevant. If the lawyer know no mouthwash was involved, it shouldn’t be allowed to use the ambiguity created by mouthwash to discredit the measurement. At least that’s how I understood it.

Glyptodon 2y ago

I feel mixed about it overall, but one place I don't think there's any question its sketchy as hell is when interviewing kids, especially younger ones.

foxglacier 2y ago
If you draw the line at kids, then you'd better also draw it at any adult who may think like a kid in some relevant way. And there are a lot of them. Often these doubtful confessions are from intellectually impaired people, but there are all kinds of emotional and mental health problems that can cause people to not properly stand up for themselves.

foxglacier 2y ago

It should surely be OK if they use deception to get you to reveal information that only the perpetrator could know. Like "We know you buried the body in that forest [lie], so tell us which tree it's under." And you tell them which tree, and they find the body there. Unless there's some weird circumstances, that proves you knew where the body was buried and should be valid evidence contributing to the conclusion that you murdered them or were at least an accomplice. Seems like just applying honest common sense and intelligent reasoning solves this, and I thought that was the judge's job. Maybe judges are the problem for not seeing through the bullshit.

swayvil 2y ago

While you were in the basement cell the world ended. Everything wiped out with neutron bombs. So that means the government, the laws, the legal system, all that stuff. Doesn't exist anymore. So whether you're guilty or not doesn't even matter. But just out of curiosity, did you do it?

swayvil 2y ago

We could do a VR simulation. Fake the prisoner's acquittal, release, tearful reuniting with family, later life, retirement, deathbed. And then, on his deathbed, he confesses. Aha!

patrick451 2y ago

A police officer who lies should go to jail for the maximum amount of time of the sentence they claim their prisoner committed. The only way these abuses of power end is if we hold these thugs accountable.

jMyles 2y ago

It's obvious to everyone that on sufficiently long time scales, there aren't going to be peculiar divisions of society who are solely responsible for enforcing laws, and who are given special powers and weapons to do that, right? Sometimes - when there are tens of millions of people in the street - it starts to feel like it's within our lifetime. But even if it's not, we all recognize that, in like 10,000 years, there's no chance that society will remain sufficiently centralized that such a thing can persist... yeah? So, can we just frontload this stuff right now? Make it simple: * Everybody has the exact same responsibility to enforce the law, and the same (if any) protections attached to that responsibility * Everybody has the exact same rights to own and possess weapons Then, sure, if the states still wants to pay some people to professionally engage with this responsibility, that's fine. But there's no reason on earth that they need to continue to be a special class of people with special rights. That part can end _today_ and literally nobody will suffer.

aniviacat 2y ago
> It's obvious > we all recognize that It isn't obvious to me; I don't recognize that. Not nearly everyone can properly conduct an investigation. And if a loner, without family or close friends, is murdered, noone will even attempt investigating. If there's a feared gang in your town commiting crimes, everyone would be too afraid to try to convict them. We would quickly get crime-run cities and local warlords. We need professionals who can properly investigate and who are willing to risk going up against a group of dangerous criminals. The police is necessary.
- jMyles 2y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your argument: you're saying that, in order to conduct an investigation, we need to have a special class of society that has different powers, and different access to weaponry? Investigations have been happening for thousands of years in the western common-law tradition via constabularies and courts. These have been in the hands of police for only the past 200 or so. So, just so I understand: you think that the police experiment is still going to be going on in 10,000 years?

ssklash 2y ago

I'm afraid that in this country that the desire to convict and see justice/retribution served on perpetrators is much stronger than the fear of convicting and even executing innocent people. And I think police deception is a strong cause of false convictions.

efitz 2y ago

For a confession to be accepted in a court, I think that the entire interrogation should have to be filmed and viewed by a grand jury. Separately I think that it is ridiculous that LE is allowed to lie to you but that it is a crime to lie to federal investigators- they get people on that when they can’t get them on anything else, eg Martha Stewart.

throwawayian 2y ago
Then you’d be forced to watch 8-12 hours of interrogation, in some cases multiple times to cover months or years long investigations. You can’t cut that time down across the board, it produces results. (Obviously it has drawbacks and it’s often not the right results.)
- efitz 2y ago
  Yes, that is the point. Juries are our justice system’s protection against abuse. If the crime was bad enough for police to sweat someone for 12 hours, then having a jury watch for 12 hours seems a reasonable check and balance - after all they might be saving weeks that would be spent on a trial if there were no confession. And it puts sunshine all over police interrogation practices- if they are acting professionally then that will show through, but if they are abusing someone that will become visible as well.
  - throwawayian 2y ago
    At that point you’ll end up with people doing the equivalent of filibustering. Gibberish for weeks on end.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  Have you seen how long criminal trials go? Watching interrogations would be a drop in the bucket compared in comparison.

guywithahat 2y ago

> Bradford says the officers in Yakima, Wash., claimed they had biological evidence that would prove he did it, and they weren't going to let him leave until he admitted it. I had the opposite experience. They kept promising me I wouldn’t be arrested if I answered the questions and approved their searches, I did everything they wanted, nothing suggested any guilt, and then they arrested me anyways for 5 days before putting an ankle bracelet on me. I’m sure my case wouldn’t be included but they shouldn’t be able to lie about things or the process.

noduerme 2y ago

I think there's a clear bright difference between the police lying to a suspect about her rights, versus lying about what the police do or don't already know. The former is Kafkaesque; the latter is merely Dostoevskyan. What is absurd is that anyone would fall for any of this in modern America. Every parent should teach their children that in any contentious interaction with police, the only words they should ever say are "I want a lawyer".

jimnotgym 2y ago

Are police allowed to do this in Western Europe? Everything I read about the police in the US suggests to me that they are an array of paramilitary thugs that are supported by the courts, so not suprised they do this. Curious if these tricks are allowed in the civilised world too?

Leptonmaniac 2y ago
In Germany, "means of deception" are listed in section 136a of the Code of Criminal Procedure [1] as one of "prohibited examination methods" among things like induced fatigue, hypnosis, medications or torture. I think that does count as "not allowed". [1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_stpo.html#p1329 https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stpo/englisch_st...

scotty79 2y ago

It's really silly that people refuse to believe the suspect when he says he "didn't do it" but immediately trust the same person when he says "I did it". It's a bit reminiscent of witch trials where there's only one possible outcome and the person is tortured until it's achieved because it's the easy path for the accusers.

heisenbit 2y ago

Deception in the US must be seen in the context of excessive punishments, great latitude for making deals and strong incentives to get convictions.

datavirtue 2y ago

You don't have to talk to them. When you stop there is usually no way to proceed unless they have evidence. I would never agree to an interrogation for anything or any reason. You never know if they are going to consider you a suspect. Just flat out refuse. If you want to help the cops out with what you know, get a lawyer first.

deleted 2y ago

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