• Reality check. 9 times out of ten, you’re way better off just being a good little citizen and co-operating. Cops are people, and you get better results by playing nice.

    If you get stopped randomly by a cop, just show your ID and tell him where you’re going. They can arrest and hold you if they want, and the chances of you suing are pretty low. They have the power, and you don’t. The place to assert your rights is in the courtroom, not when you can be arrested and or beaten for acting proud.

    Don’t be these guys

    https://youtu.be/hz28DDlnKn0

    • Yeah, no. Glad that it’s worked out for you (so far), but it doesn’t always work out for everyone. I agree that you shouldn’t be aggressive and standoffish, but you sure as fuck should not trust the cops. All they’ve shown is that they are a gang that believe they’re above the law. They’re out to protect and serve each other — not us.

      • Where did I say ‘trust’? I will repeat my basic message. Assert your rights in the courtroom and not the street. I know of plenty of instances of cops killing civilians and not spending a minute in court, let alone jail.

        •  Cethin   ( @Cethin@lemmy.zip ) 
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          411 months ago

          I agree handing over your ID is probably good, even in a state where it isn’t required. That is unless you’re doing something obviously illegal and they don’t know yet and you think you can hide your identity somehow, but I doubt it.

          However, the right to remain silent and to an attorney are important. The location you’re coming from or going to can be used as bullshit reasons to arrest you even if it’s not bad. The way you speak can be used to arrest you. The smell of your breath can be used to arrest you.

          Basically, hand over your I’d through a crack in the window. Keep your hands on the steering wheel in plain sight. If they ask questions, tell them you won’t be answering questions and invoke your right to remain silent, then STFU. You won’t win their game. Cooperate with the basic requirements, but don’t give them more than the basic information. It’s their job to figure out what you were doing and if it was illegal. Don’t help them do their job.

    • In 2015 officer involved homicide averaged four a day, a factor that has only increased in the following years during the rise of Trump-led hate rhetoric. (also not including those covered up by precinct coroners, which was discovered in studies to be routine)

      50% of the victims were neither armed nor resisting.

        • At the point that a law enforcement officer is ready to kill, they’re not going to get much intelligible out of me at all, since I would panic myself right into a face full of lead, and joining the disproportionately high statistic of people with mental illness massacred by law enforcement for no good reason.

          Asserting my rights would be at the point I find myself detained and they’re asking me questions, at which point, I’d hope guns might no longer be involved. But I expect a dark room, hours or even days of detention without food or water might be involved. Black sites and enhanced interrogation might be as well, since it’s not easy to extract a confession from an innocent man, but the Reid technique insists they try.