Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

[emerges from hiding]

I sat in on a panel for LTUE this year about law enforcement and I got to hear from someone (Robin Ambrose, if my notes are right) who's worked on the lawyer end of things when it comes to cops and cops messing up. She said that sometimes a cop would tell a suspect that their friend just confessed to a crime and implicated that suspect. Even if the suspect is completely innocent, they might "confess" so that the cops would be more lenient and, in the process, actually implicate themselves. Prisoner's Dilemma in reverse.
A cop, once they have a suspect, will do everything they can to prove that suspect is guilty. It is their job, after all. But in a job where you're looking for evil (and you have to fill quotas to prove that that is what you're doing), it's easy to see evil that isn't there and make things worse in the process.

Also, some free advice she offered if the police are interrogating you:
Ask "Am I free to leave?" If yes, then leave. If no, say "I want my attorney" and shut up.
And I didn't write down the exact context to use this in, but: "I am not resisting, but I am not consenting."

[goes back into hiding]

I heard that you should never talk to the police about an incident you were involved in without getting a lawyer, for the very reason that they are looking for a culprit.

Dead Cat wrote:Ask "Am I free to leave?" If yes, then leave.

This is something my dad definitely taught us growing up. You can be detained without being arrested, but the longest they can reasonably detain you is like, 45 minutes. After that you can just say "Hey, if I'm not under arrest then I'm free to go." He also stressed that you should never lie, especially to the police, but that whenever possible it's best to just not talk to the police to begin with. Then they can't trip you up.

My dad is kind of paranoid.

Call him paranoid if you like, but he's right. Unless you have reported a crime, there is nothing the police can really do for you, but a lot they can do TO you. It is quite easy to get in trouble by saying too much, even if you've done nothing wrong, and even in something as simple as a traffic stop.

And it's worse if you're a person of color (which I outwardly very obviously am). You better believe I will NOT talk to the police for ANY reason unless a crime has been committed against me or they are 1000% sure I'm just a witness and not a perpetrator. Thankfully I'm naturally averse to getting in trouble, so my interactions with police have been limited, but the ones I've had have been very stressful and scary.

That said, I do live in a city with great police officers, and our chief just died. It has ROCKED our community. He was amazing, transparent, and did not protect crooked cops. He will be greatly missed.