A friend was in a similar situation for a while: crossing a CBP checkpoint multiple times every day for work in south Texas.
At some point he decided to try to stand up for what he considered his rights in a similar way: not being combative, just not cooperating. He was thrown in jail for 3 days, then the charges were dropped.
He talked with lawyers and the ACLU. The ACLU were quite frank that they have limited resources, and so they have to prioritize cases that have the ideal defendant and political optics. If he fought it personally, the cost would start at five figures.
The folks doing this know there's a high barrier to holding them accountable and leverage it wantonly.
The worst thing about these "contempt of cop" style arrests is, despite the charges being dropped, once you're in the system's pipeline, if you mess up about any of the restrictions, paperwork, court appearances, etc, you become a criminal. It's easy to imagine a lot of folks might fall into that trap for innocent and mundane reasons.
As a not-American stories like this make the very country itself seem like the blueprint followed by the tech giants. Illegally bullying the public at large, too big to punish, let alone reign in. It's not an ideal image, is it? And most depressing is that there's not a damn thing Joe average can do about it.
Sure there is, just be nice to the cop and identify yourself. The last part is where the guy in the story went wrong, incidentally. It's pretty clear he was deliberately protesting this, though. If you don't know for sure, and you don't want to be arrested, you can just assume that you probably are required to identify yourself [1].
As long as you're not in big trouble (some sort of felony, drugs or DUI), you'll generally get in less trouble for treating them nicely. Most of them have a bias that anyone who hates cops is up to no good and their experience will bear that out more often than not. It will get noted down that they were suspicious of factors X, Y and Z due to their training and experience.
That said, if you're part of some big crime, assert your right to remain silent by saying exactly that every time they question you until you have a lawyer. But really, if you're not into drugs or gangs or politics, that's pretty unlikely for a normal person.
And the checkpoints in the article? Just identify yourself and don't drink at all (call Lyft if you need one) and you'll be fine. Oh, and watch your speed when driving on the reservations. They make a lot of money on fines.
I get that you're probably a nice person and being nice to cops is generally a good idea. If you don't start off confrontational, things will go better. But I think you're severely misunderstanding the fundamental underlying principle that is wrong with these stops, and why people intentionally choose to not comply with them: People have the right to travel freely around without going through "papers, please" type checkpoints. Unless your behavior meets the legal requirements for a "terry stop" (google it), you should not encounter arbitrarily placed law enforcement checkpoints on public roads. The people who are fighting for this are standing up for the constitution and bill of rights.
These checkpoints are directly in violation of the supreme Court case Delaware v. Prouse.
I get why they're protesting. I'm answering for what one should do if they just want to go on their way and not get into trouble.
It's probably not very obvious for most people that he did something wrong as soon as he refused to identify himself (though the cops appear to have made their own mistakes, as well).
If it was once, or twice, I'd probably just show them id and move on. What is shocking to me are the stories about people for whom this is a regular occurrence, and where even thinking about what to do to avoid trouble at the regular police checkpoints is a thing.
To me this reminds me of my parents telling me about dealing with police checkpoints when they visited Poland before the fall of the Soviet Union.
I get why people protest this, I really do. I have spent decades in an area that has them.
I just wanted to make sure there's a clear answer here for people who are scared and just want to go through the checkpoint without getting into trouble. It's one thing if it's a voluntary protest to get oneself arrested in order to have standing to challenge the laws. It's another thing entirely if someone is scared because they just want to see the Sonoran desert and not the back seat of a police car.
It's not like being white magically stops any of that. I'm sure it changes the odds, but that still means you're risking arrest, which most of us are not keen to do.
This article is, after all, about a white guy who was arrested for not cooperating. And they clearly wanted to do worse given that they tried to get him fired.
> The worst thing about these "contempt of cop" style arrests is, despite the charges being dropped, once you're in the system's pipeline, if you mess up about any of the restrictions, paperwork, court appearances, etc, you become a criminal.
I've always wondered about describing it as "contempt of cop." Isn't that the same as arguing that it should be a crime? If you go to court and flip off the judge, you could get a fine or even prison time because it undermines the criminal justice system.
Something like "police brutality" is one thing--getting arrested isn't a reason for the police to beat someone up--but I think "contempt of cop" is something in the wrong direction.
Ideally, it would be better if most people and most cops did not start every conversation being afraid of each other and expecting to fight. Then it would be easier to de-escalate the situation. And just for the record, yes, I've been on the wrong side of an angry cop. If you actively work to calm things down, you'll find that things go much better. It's funny that showing a little respect goes a long way. Apparently it really stands out these days for being rare.
You're overthinking this. I used the phrase "contempt of cop" in a mocking sense, obviously not because I think it's a valid thing that should be a crime.
> And just for the record, yes, I've been on the wrong side of an angry cop. If you actively work to calm things down, you'll find that things go much better. It's funny that showing a little respect goes a long way. Apparently it really stands out these days for being rare.
The problem with your anecdotal reasoning is very clearly, some people fully cooperate and are dead anyhow. Phillip Castillo was respectful and proactive in his interaction. Dead. Watch the Tamir Rice video footage. They literally drove up the curb, jumping out of the still moving police car, and immediately shot him. Poor kid didn't even have a chance to be "respectful" as you're demanding.
It's weird that you counter anecdotal reasoning with more anecdotes. I never 'demanded' anything, though, I said it was usually useful and I'm hardly the only person with the same experience.
Yes, sometimes things go uncontrollably wrong. There are bad cops out there, but it's hardly the average case. Those incidents made the news for how bad they were, not how common they are.
There are hundreds of millions of people in the USA. There are millions of people interacting with the police in some capacity. How many incidents can you name?
If police can stop you randomly for 'drunk driving checks' - and they can stop you randomly if there is an 'active crime scene' (i.e. they are looking for dangerous baddies on the run) then I don't see why spot-checks for other crimes/problems is somehow considered out of bounds.
The problem with the argument is that it leans political: I think people are interested in just allowing people across the border willy nilly, without having to be stopped by such checks.
Otherwise, the ACLU might be similarly up in arms over DD checks? Wouldn't that be the case?
I try to be pragmatic about it:
+ If there's a high occurrence of Drunk Driving, then cops can do spot checks, esp. on long weekends.
+ If there are 'escaped dangerous cons' on the run, well, spot checks in a specific zone makes sense.
+ If there is a specific problem with large numbers of people who are in the country illegally travelling through - then random checks are a reasonable and proportional response to that.
Constitutional? Legal? I have no clue. But unless it gets really out of hand I don't see how it's totalitarian.
FYI I was never stopped randomly in the 5 years I lived in the US, and I was stopped quite a few times in France by the local Gendarmes. Sometimes obviously for DD checks, but other times I had no idea why but I had to show my passport and visa.
> The ACLU welcomes today's Supreme Court's decision in Missouri v. McNeely. Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor upheld the 4th Amendment's privacy protections by rejecting the proposition that states may routinely compel drivers to submit to a blood test in drunk-driving cases without consent and without a warrant.
> We know from experience that drunk-driving laws can be strictly enforced without abandoning constitutional rights. Today's decision appropriately recognizes what half the states have already demonstrated – that maintaining highway safety does not require sacrificing personal privacy.
> [...] the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit to stop a new sobriety-checkpoint program in California. The ACLU says the program is a "substantial invasion of . . . fundamental constitutional rights."
> In its California brief, pending at the state Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the ACLU argues that if sobriety checkpoints are upheld "it will not be long before the police establish roadblocks and checkpoints for investigations of other sorts of serious crimes."
As a Canadian, I know we have legal DD stops and I'm thankful for them, as society went from a period of 'DD was normal' to 'not ok'. It took a while, it was a real social problem.
I guess we (Canadians?) just view public safety a little differently, it's usually a matter of 'what makes sense' not so much a thing about constitutionality. That said, our cops are way, way more low key than US cops.
I have no problem with being randomly pulled over for a reasonable reason by reasonable cops.
I guess it gets more complicated when a) cops abuse power b) the randomness is not random c) when there's an underlying political tension d) you can be charged with 'anything' almost ...
The US cares so much about constitutionality (and hard and fast rules generally), and eschews leaving things to peoples’ “reasonable” discretion, because a large subset of the population is completely nuts. One of our au pair’s au pair friend got pulled over by state police and had a gun pulled on her. Coming from Germany she of course freaked out. (Luckily she was a white European young lady instead of a person of color.) Americans not only see nothing wrong with that, but keep voting for the sheriffs who allow their departments to run that way.
Note that irrespective of any other issue with this, the article points out that these CBP checks have a really poor track record in terms of actually stopping illegal immigrants compared to other methods when measured in terms of cost per arrest. So if the goal is truly to stop illegal immigrants, they are misapplying their budgets.
Anyone who wants closed borders, or at least harsher reactions to illegal immigration ought to be up in arms about money being wasted this way in that case- they could stop more people by investing their budgets in other ways.
I think you're misunderstanding the difference between sobriety checks and these inland boarder checks. In a sobriety check, you retain all of your rights as a citizen. In these boarder stops, you are treated the same as someone entering the country who does not enjoy the rights of a citizen in the country.
At some point he decided to try to stand up for what he considered his rights in a similar way: not being combative, just not cooperating. He was thrown in jail for 3 days, then the charges were dropped.
He talked with lawyers and the ACLU. The ACLU were quite frank that they have limited resources, and so they have to prioritize cases that have the ideal defendant and political optics. If he fought it personally, the cost would start at five figures.
The folks doing this know there's a high barrier to holding them accountable and leverage it wantonly.
The worst thing about these "contempt of cop" style arrests is, despite the charges being dropped, once you're in the system's pipeline, if you mess up about any of the restrictions, paperwork, court appearances, etc, you become a criminal. It's easy to imagine a lot of folks might fall into that trap for innocent and mundane reasons.