I'm a little confused by the framing of this article, because LAPD actually can't demand the social media information of everyone they stop. They can ask, and it is problematic that they do since many of the people they stop won't realize that they can simply decline, but the police have basically no authority in the general case to require it.
Without individualized suspicion, the police can barely even ask for ID. They've lost cases over it. Even with suspicion, it's unlikely that they can forcefully demand social media information. (They can, with sufficient evidence, arrest you and conduct a search of your person to try to uncover it, but arrests are a big deal; they can't dragnet arrest.)
With that in mind, I assume the productive article to write here is the one framed around informing people that they shouldn't cooperate with requests like these.
What the police can ask for legally and what they ask for based on a credible threat are rather different.
If 99.99% of the people comply and .001% of the people refuse and the cop involved slugs the non-complying person, giving them a life changing injure. and even if that cop "doesn't get away with it" - gets filmed, get drummed out of the force and the city pays a million dollar settlement, the cops, collectively, will still get away with it and keep doing it since it nearly always works. And the one cop being caught is extremely optimistic.
Even with suspicion, it's unlikely that they can forcefully demand social media information.
How can a cop request information in fashion that isn't forceful? The softest, most polite question is backed by the threat of both violence and arrest.
> How can a cop request information in fashion that isn't forceful? The softest, most polite question is backed by the threat of both violence and arrest.
This is an American-centric attitude towards government and government representatives. The power the government holds over you and I is a monopoly on violence (defined broadly) that they license to specific representatives to enact their will in order to form some loosely held cohesion among chaotic ideas. More simply put, something has to stop us from taking something that is not ours out of perceived hierarchial need.
I'm a liberal man raised by classically conservative parents, the lessons I was taught as a young man were that the government by it's very nature always wants more power and to exercise that power over you. More simply put, if you give an inch the government will forcefully seize a mile. As a result I was taught that innocent men go to jail all the time for a litany of reasons, most of them bullshit to laypeople. This is the foundation of healthy distrust for government and government representatives. There are counter-balances we carry with us, as a yin and yang of sorts.
So, with that explained, how does one take a request for information as non-violent? You don't. You expect that the government is willing to enact it's monopoly on you and choose to seek the most amicable (for you; which is likely less violence) solution. You exercise your fifth amendment, you request representation, and if the representatives so desire it the best you can do is hope to represent your claims at trial. Democracy is fought in the court room, not with the enforcement representatives of government.
The government has won. I say that because the majority of the people in this country are living paycheck to paycheck and they cannot afford any hiccup or else they will be underwater. From there it is an easy spiral down to the bottom. They cannot afford good counsel or even afford to take time off to fight this. This is the perfect environment for a population that will not fight back.
The only hope is that people who are able to fight back do fight back for the rest of us. However we have seen that many people who are able to do this benefit from the current situation. Effectively 80% of this country live to serve the other 20% and thats why I believe we don't see as much progression of many areas as we should.
Agreed. From my perception people knew the system is and always will be imperfect, and relied heavily on the idea that not all people can afford to fight the government, but that at some point the government will mess with someone who can. Democracy in the US is like standing on the shoulders of giants who bravely carved the way ahead for us. One of my favorite examples is Larry Flint who lost his ability to walk, much less his representation as human among other humans, for the principles of free speech. Although you may not agree morally with Larry Flint, you likely stand in his shadow when you say things other people and the government don't like.
That said, when the middle, and upper middle class are so squeezed that they cannot fight the government anymore -- then who is left to? When economic (or class, whatever your favorite rhetoric) mobility has chilled, who will rise to the ranks of those who can fight who have memories of the time when they could not?
Anyway, this is the way these problems are postured in my mind.
> the majority of the people in this country are living paycheck to paycheck and they cannot afford any hiccup or else they will be underwater
While possibly true, that doesn't necessarily mean they are poor. Plenty of middle class people operate on see-money-spend-money. There were plenty of them at Boeing when I worked there - the paychecks were distributed on Thursday morning, and at noon a flood of engineers would run to the parking lot to deposit the paycheck before the checks they wrote bounced.
This number is probably the truest measure of a person’s real wealth: What is the largest unexpected financial shock you could sustain without the cost of that to you suddenly becoming ten times the original cost or more? That number isn’t something easy to calculate; it depends on whether you have a family that can help you out, on your income, on whether that shock involves losing your job (and thus your health insurance, if you live in the US), on whether you have access to any other sources of security (including public assistance).
From Yonatan Zunger's "Your 'Financial Shock' Wealth".
Other commentators have similar arguments. Economist Emma Rothschild makes the explicit point that Adam Smith's "liberal philosophy" was one of material liberty, that is, of an abundance of material wealth at the individual level, which allows for a freedom of actions without catastrophic consequence.[1] Several recent modern commentators have noted that the chief characteristic of poverty is a lack of choice: if there's only one way to do things right, without consequence, you have no freedom.
Among Zunger's references is the point that very nearly a majority of US households, 47%, cannot sustain an unexpected $400 expense.
Whether or not living paycheck-to-paycheck is necessarily a characteristic of poverty is of course debatable in specific instances. But one cannot look broadly at the population of the US and claim both that market economics succeeds on the basis of individuals making intelligent and rational economic decisions and that many millions of those people, very nearly if not majority of those same people fail to do so.
Something is very rotten in the "free market".
________________________________
Notes:
1. I'm trying to track down the Emma Rothschild reference, though I suspect it may be in Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment.
That "47% can't sustain an unexpected $400 expense" conclusion does not follow from the actual survey data involved, as far as I can tell. See https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-4... for some details (yes, you may not trust the source), or the actual response data at https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2018-appendix-b-... questions EF3, EF5B, EF6B if you want to do your own analysis. The only way to get numbers in the range "47%" out of that data is to add up _all_ the choices other than "put it on my credit card, which I pay off in full" and "just pay cash" in the EF3 responses. But that's an odd thing to do, given that respondents were instructed to select all the methods they would use, not just one method.
Fair point, appreciate your digging out the source. Interpretation of survey responses is ... challenging.
The question works well to answer the question "what sources of emergency financing do you have access to?" It's less well-structured to answer "could you pay for an emergency expense without either selling off nonfinancial assets or incurring long-term usurious debt".
Since multiple selections apply, adding percentages isn't applicable. Though 50% of respondents do mention paying with current cash savings --- that could apply to all or part of an expense.
I do read "unable" and "by selling something" as mutually exclusive, which suggests a 20% portion of the population at least who'd be severely stressed by such an incident.
I really wouldn't assume those are mutually exclusive, based on my experience with survesy, but I agree that 20% is likely smaller than the actual number here. And 14% is an absolute lower bound which assumes that no one checked both "charge and pay off" and "pay cash", which is clearly an unrealistic assumption.
Even 14% is much higher than I would wish for answers to this sort of question, of course.
Anyway, if I had to read the tea leaves I would guess the "real" number is somewhere in the ~30% range based on EF5A and EF5B (EF5B was only asked if the respondent answered they would pay all bills in full for EF5A). That is, 22% of the respondents are having trouble paying existing bills in full (though what that means is another complex question, I bet) and another 11% (14% of 78%) would have trouble doing it if they had an unexpected $400 expense. That gets us to 33%; some of those might be able to recover from the $400 expense over the course of a month or three by temporarily running a small credit card balance and then paying it off, but it's not going to be too many I expect.
Which is pretty horrible. Not 47% horrible, but horrible.
These paycheck-to-paycheck middle class people are not poor. They live rather high on the hog. It's your neighbor with his and hers new cars, and a ski boat on a trailer in the driveway. No matter what their income, they spend it all.
You can feel sorry for them if you like, but I don't.
You seem to be missing or ignoring much of what I'd had to say above.
50 millions live below the Federal poverty line.
47% of Americans cannot meet a $400 emergency expense.
You deny their poverty?
Your personal experience with a comparatively small cohort of Boeing engineers and employees may have been illuminating in any number of degrees. It's a poor basis on which to make assessments of national wealth, poverty, and/or inequality. And even if it were, it still knocks a rather major hole in a foundational premise of free-market economic theory.
Robust sampling and measurement methodologies exist for quite substantial reasons.
> 47% of Americans cannot meet a $400 emergency expense. You deny their poverty?
Yes. You yourself posted: "About 15% of the US population (50 million people) are at or below the Federal poverty rate." You refuted your case.
> small cohort
I've seen these middle class people everywhere I've worked. They're not a "small" cohort. In fact, most of the people I've worked with fell into this category. As far as I could tell, I was the only engineer in the office building who did not deposit the paycheck the same day. I know this because others expressed shock that I didn't.
> it still knocks a rather major hole in a foundational premise of free-market economic theory
No, it doesn't. These people chose to behave this way. It's their right to. Nobody made them buy the boat. One of these boating people would sell his boat when he needed cash, and when he had cash, he'd blow it all on another boat, or a new car, or an RV, or whatever caught his fancy. Free market theory posits that people have a free choice. Not that what they do makes fiscal sense to anyone else.
> It's a poor basis on which to make assessments of national wealth, poverty, and/or inequality.
How much cash is in your bank account is a very, very bad assessment of wealth, poverty, and/or inequality. But that's what you're putting forward.
For another example, I have next to $0 in my checking account, and don't have a savings account. But I'm not poor, even though you'd classify me as poor. I keep it all invested. I only use cash as a transfer mechanism.
P.S. I actually did have a boat once (!) and me and my friends had a couple marvelous summers waterskiing on Lake Washington.
Almost all the young (20s and under) people in my businesses that work low wage jobs have no qualms spending $15 to $20 ordering food delivery for their meals during their shift.
I and most of the rest of management bring leftovers from home or eat a yogurt and some fruits and nuts. My parents would have been very disappointed in me for spending that much on delivered food, especially with how low quality and mal-nutritious it is.
> 47% of Americans cannot meet a $400 emergency expense.
As I pointed out above, this does not seem to be a correct interpretation of the actual survey data involved.
> You deny their poverty?
Yes, given that the claim is based on a misrepresentation (or, more charitably, misunderstanding) of the actual survey data.
I do not deny that there are plenty of people in the US who are in terrible financial shape and really would be thrown for a loop by a $400 expense. They do not make up 47% of the survey population.
The other interesting question that I do not have an answer to is whether the survey sampled individuals or households, and hence how to translate the survey percentages to population (of non-dependent adults?) percentages.
They may not be poor, but the point is that if you live like that, and get arrested, even if you are innocent and released within a few days, you may have lost your job in the meantime, or have incurred fees that you can't cover, or something else the knocks down the house of cards that is your finances. It doesn't matter if you make minimum wage, or $300k/year. If you spend all of your paycheck before the next one arrives, any unexpected cost is going to break you.
A huge imbalance is money, specifically enough to have a lawyer appear on your behalf ASAP. Those with means usually won't ever see the inside of a holding/processing cell because there lawyers are there before they are booked.
This means they need to bail hearing, since the lawyers will even demand immediate bail based on charges.
No jail time, not even 24 hours. No dealing with bail bondsmen. That is huge. Most jails only offer free calls within their area code. Not being in jail means their life continues uninterrupted, as does their job/income. A poor person will likely lose their job if they can't afford bail, as they are stuck an inmate until their hearing. If their public defender is backed up, which they always are, they will likely push thw court date back for more time.
It's just a complete nightmare. The rich have straight up taken control of everything, including the government.
I'd more say that "the US hates poor people". It doesn't help me, as a rich person, that poor people get screwed by the government regularly & repeatedly. In fact it makes my life much worse in a bunch of ways.
Most people everywhere on the planet are either living on today's wages or are dependent on the government itself. In a sense, even if you have financial freedom, you're still dependent on the government ensuring that freedom continues. Money is paper without the body behind it.
If you require a safety-net to speak up for your rights, be prepared to lose them.
>> How can a cop request information in fashion that isn't forceful? The softest, most polite question is backed by the threat of both violence and arrest.
> This is an American-centric attitude towards government and government representatives.
Of course, you're right. The US does have this unique tilt. it's not all bad, IMO, good to have some distrust of those in power.
But the real problem is decades worth of thuggish behavior by police officers. The awesome power we grant them is sought out by those who would abuse it. This is compounded by 20th century crime and violence which caused police forces to ratchet up their process for dealing with the public to treat each interaction as potentially life threatening.
So the real threat is implied by the unpredictable reaction when you describe the limits of the police officers' power. Some would recognize their bluff has been called. Yet others would double down.
If there were no implicit threat of violence, I (and most other people I think) would never stop for a cop in the first place, let alone utter a word to one.
A wide variety of government authorities occasionally walk around and talk to citizens - zone officials, fire fighters, etc. People talk to them without them carrying any threat of immediate violence (they carry the threat of later legal action sometimes but that's different).
You might be right about the cops depending on how you mean it. Now, American police may well have created some much distrust in public no one would willing speak to them, everyone would prefer some other level of authority. If you mean effective policing in general requires the constant threat of violence, I'd disagree with you there.
If people thought the reward for talking to a firefighter was a hundred dollar fine, they wouldn't be so willing to casually chat with firefighters either.
This is exactly why in the U.S. when there are evacuations for things like hurricanes, most towns and cities sometimes send firefighters to knock on doors and notify people. They used to send cops, but too many people simply wouldn't come to the door.
It depends on the situation. I have been approached by cops twice--and had no problem with talking to them.
The first case involved a detective investigating an accusation by someone we knew against someone else we knew. There was no suggestion we were anything but observers, no reason not to talk.
The second time was out at a trailhead, I had just finished a hike. They were working with search & rescue extracting someone who broke a bone. They correctly deduced where I had been and came over and asked about the snow conditions high on the mountain. In hindsight I was a little annoyed at how they asked it as I responded a bit too literally--addressing the snow conditions but forgetting the three trees that had fallen across the trail, one of which would have been a substantial obstacle to a stretcher evacuation.
In a working system you stop because someone needs something who provides a valuable service to society. And, we are all part of what makes that system work. That said, the USA does not seem to be there yet.
> In a working system you stop because someone needs something who provides a valuable service to society. And, we are all part of what makes that system work. That said, the USA does not seem to be there yet.
Personally speaking, I don't think the American ideology will ever lend itself to this idea. Our country was born out of revolution and inherent distrust for government. What you're describing seems to align itself more to a world where citizens have a cooperative relationship with government. Both attitudes have ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses, and potential vulnerabilities in my mind.
Australia was originally settled (by white people) by criminals and their prison guards, by your analysis we should be a bunch of people who never talk to the police. However this is not the case, most people will happily give the police assistance if they are asked. Whilst dobbing people in directly is not something that is in the culture, generally we don't fear the police.
Could be something to do with the fact that the police don't generally draw their weapons unless faced with violence.
Of course there are areas where policing is more direct and there are groups that have been historically given a hard time by the law, but these are comparatively small.
To my recollection the Australian government was formed because the colonies voted to unite in 1901. American government was formed to fight the British.
That is a warped view of history IMO :), America was born out of the idea that we can make a better place for everyone, one where everyone counts and has a chance to build the life they want (historically a big one was to practice their religion without discrimination as well). It wasn't born out of revolution, it was born from people escaping British society in order to live a better life. And, regardless that was a long time ago, we've reinvented it since then, it is a land of immigrants who want to build a better life for themselves.
I believe American Culture is one that supports each other and society, we have just lost our way and we are in a bit of a battle for the soul of America. It is being hijacked by super individualist who forget they are part of something bigger and that they have a responsibility to society as much as society should respect the individual.
If you have a bike accident people will stop to help. If your car breaks down, people will stop and help. If you have a medical emergency, people will stop and help. If you need directions people will help. The media likes to show fear and we think that is the norm, when in fact the vast norm is that we are always going to help our fellow humans. Cops are still human, despite really bad training that causes them to fear everything and everyone. If a cop asks you to stop and the only thing that makes you stop is the threat of violence I would seriously rethink who I am and my values.
> If a cop asks you to stop and the only thing that makes you stop is the threat of violence I would seriously rethink who I am and my values.
People who deliberately speed don't accept speeding tickets out of civic duty. If you accidentally went five over and are embarrassed by your mistake and want to make it right by eagerly paying the fine, good for you I guess. But if you are instead deliberately doing double the speed limit because you think it's fun and don't care about the law, you are clearly not the sort of person who is inclined to willingly accept the ticket because it's the right thing to do. If you were that sort of person, you would not have been racing your car on public streets in the first place.
There is not a country on this planet in which nobody ever chooses to willingly break the law and flagrantly act in antisocial ways. And there is not a country in this world which will not eventually resort to violence when all else fails to convince a criminal to stop committing his crime. You might be thinking that if the cops don't have guns, then what they do isn't violent. But if you think that, you're obviously wrong. Unarmed well trained police will still wrestle you to the ground when all else fails. Unarmed police officers won't shoot you for refusing to comply, but they sure as shit will manhandle you to the ground and wrestle you into handcuffs. That is violence, and the implicit threat of that violence is used to convince people to go along with them peacefully in a dignified fashion.
That's when our first/temporary government was formed, and it's purpose was the fight the British.
> I believe American Culture is one that supports each other and society, we have just lost our way and we are in a bit of a battle for the soul of America. It is being hijacked by super individualist who forget they are part of something bigger and that they have a responsibility to society as much as society should respect the individual.
We are a nation that celebrates political individualism, which is where the term "liberalism" (little L) comes from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism Individualism is not at competition with the characteristics you described, but it does put freedom squarely on the individual for better or for worse. The counter to this, which you might favor in the moment but regret in the long-run, is collectivism.
If I choose to drive 80mph in a 60mph zone, I am also going to choose not to voluntarily stop to receive a fine for it. I don't believe the average European is any different. The implicit threat of violence in Europe might be more tenuous, indirect or vague, but it is still there. Normal people don't voluntarily fine themselves if they have another choice.
A common assumption is that when dealing with the Police in the US the problem isn't that they will operate within the law and apply it as intended to punish you but rather that they will not operate within the law which almost invariably end with someone getting needlessly harmed.
So the issue isn't that you're speeding, the Police stops you and writes a $50 ticket. You voluntarily speed and voluntarily stop for the fine because you voluntarily try to avoid a bigger punishment under that system. The problem is that you're speeding, the Police stops you, overreact, pretend they saw something dangerous (smelled marijuana, something looked like a gun, you were acting suspiciously, had the wrong skin complexion, etc.), you get pulled out, roughed up, hurt, or killed.
Even if I were to assume that all police officers are perfectly honest and reasonable, virtually anybody who is choosing to break the law would also choose to not voluntarily subject themselves to the consequences. Nobody chooses to speed down the highway then calls the local cops to confess and accept the fine. And if police sirens were nothing more than polite requests to pull over, not demands backed by implicit threats of violence, virtually nobody who is choosing to break the law would heed those requests voluntarily.
But policing requires the trust of the public. How often, what percentage of interactions go not by the book, before people are worried that it will happen to them? Look at 9/11, so many people terrified of "terrorists" from a desert on the other side of the world while ignoring the local ones who had a pretty strong spree in the 90s.
Trust is earned, not given. Police and supporters can cry all they want about how rare it is for a police officer to shoot you with no reason or warning and get away with it, but the fact that it can happen more than once is enough to destroy any faith in policing for plenty of people
> A common assumption is that when dealing with the Police in the US the problem isn't that they will operate within the law and apply it as intended to punish you but rather that they will not operate within the law which almost invariably end with someone getting needlessly harmed.
I read a lot of nonsense about the US on Hacker news everyday to the point that it doesn't really bother me that much anymore (I assume it's just temporary ignorance that enough real life experience and context will clear up), but this does bother me for some reason. It's one thing to misrepresent the scale of something or not understand the nuance of something, it's another thing to literally make things up.
> If I choose to drive 80mph in a 60mph zone, I am also going to choose not to voluntarily stop to receive a fine for it
What nonsense is that? It's only the fear that the police officer will beat you that will cause you to stop. Not that you might wake up tomorrow to a towed car, a summons nailed to your door and a jail term?
> Not that you might wake up tomorrow to a towed car, a summons nailed to your door and a jail term?
Both enforced through the implicit threat of violence... What happens if I ignore a court summons? Eventually the cops will find me and wrestle me into handcuffs. And if I try to resist the tow truck driver taking my car, guess what they'll do? They'll call the cops. Or they'll put a lien against my property, which if I refuse to pay, will eventually culminate in me being wrestled out of the building.
And how exactly do you think people are kept in jails? If there were no implicit threat of violence, I'd just walk out of a jail. In many jails this would be possible, but when you do they'll send men to wrestle you into handcuffs and bring you to a jail with stronger security. And of course, they'd never have gotten me into the first jail at all, if not for their threats of violence.
> If there were no implicit threat of violence, I (and most other people I think) would never stop for a cop in the first place
I think this is outlandish. Most people are law-abiding and happily comply with the law and government authority without any threat of violence. I don't think I've ever had it factor into my decision-making.
> Most people are law-abiding and happily comply with the law and government authority without any threat of violence.
Most poeple have never had a practical opportunity to decide whether or not they will choose to comply with the law or government authority without any threat of violence, because the threat of violence is always present if they fail to comply.
This obviously does not mean that people would never comply if the threat of violence were removed. Much of the time the law aligns with what people would choose to do anyway, so compliance comes naturally. The interesting case are those where natural inclination is at odds with the law (or with the orders of a government official), and in those cases I think you might be overestimating the average person's willingness to comply without being forced.
You have taken a theoretical question - the definition of sovereign government and the monopoly on violence - and applied it to reality. It's Alice In Wonderland stuff. That's not how real people function, including (almost certainly) you.
> You have taken a theoretical question - the definition of sovereign government and the monopoly on violence - and applied it to reality. It's Alice In Wonderland stuff.
I'm not seeing an issue here. Theory which one cannot apply to reality is rather pointless; wouldn't you agree?
> That's not how real people function, including (almost certainly) you.
Which part are you objecting to, exactly? That (a) people tend to follow the law when it aligns with what they would have chosen to do anyway, or that (b) they tend not to constrain themselves to following the law when the law doesn't align with their own moral standards and no one is plausibly threatening them with violent repercussions should they fail to comply?
Why does there have to be an implicit threat of violence? If you didn't stop, the cops could take your license plate, find where you live, and send you a ticket for a much bigger crime. Cops don't have to use violence to solve all their problems.
If you continue your scenario, so that the subject refuses compliance even further -- does not pay the fine, ignores court summons -- physical coercion crops up when they are arrested, and perhaps later sent to prison. This may not be "violence" as you meant it, but it is one aspect of what people mean when they say "state monopoly on violence".
If you don't stop, cops will happily chase you in violation of department policy, endangering innocent bystanders[1], then shoot you when you are running away. If you happen to get away the next step is sending a paramilitary team to your house to shoot your dog and throw a flashbang in your baby's crib.
>Cops don't have to use violence to solve all their problems.
They don't have to, but its usually the first resort. There's literally thousands of hours of videos online of cops knowingly making illegal 'requests' on video and threatening arrest for noncompliance.
[1] I had to ride my motorcycle over a curb because a police SUV somehow thought he could outrun a race bike and came flying around a blind stop sign in my neighborhood at a fast enough speed to hit the opposite lane. Policy in my city is no pursuit.
Fake plate or stolen car and you probably can't prove who was driving anyway. That's why camera tickets are generally just fines to the registered owner, no points to the actual driver.
If a police officer has given you a life changing injury simply for refusing to disclose your Twitter account, we've left discussion of the law and what the police "can do" and entered a discussion about what to do about the problem of overtly criminal police. Nobody could have paid attention over the last 2 years (or the last 20) and come away believing there aren't criminal police officers; that is a real thing. It has not very much (some, but not very much) to do with official LAPD policy or their incident questionnaire cards.
But that just brings me back to my point about the framing of this article. If The Guardian believes this question is problematic --- and I agree with them, if they do --- they should write an article about how you don't have to tell the police anything about your Twitter account just because they've stopped you on the street.
> we've left discussion of the law and what the police "can do" and entered a discussion about what to do about the problem of overtly criminal police
I genuinely think this point has long since come and gone. Most encounters with police are going to end fine, but there's basically no recourse in the majority of cases where they don't.
I'm not saying that's not true, I'm just saying it's a totally different conversation. In the world you say we're in, it doesn't matter what LAPD's policies are. The police will just ignore them and do whatever they want.
The situation is that American police are generally there to enforce the law, generally follow policy but, depending on area, are infested with a minority of types who use or threaten violence whenever it makes their job easier or simply serves their ego. And these forces also tend to have a much larger group who won't say anything about the overt criminals - out of conformity, alienation from civilians or because the intimidation factor is convenient to them. This situation, that is effectively well publicized at this point, fundamentally changes the way police and civilians relation because it goes a lot of police actions a threatening quality and so, as I said earlier, it's hard to have question appear "optional" to the average person stopped by the police.
> How can a cop request information in fashion that isn't forceful?
They can explicitly inform you that you are under no obligation to accede to the request and will face no adverse consequences if you choose not to.
Except where explicitly legally mandated to do so, they do not tend to this, specifically because even if it is true, they wish people to perceive and act upon an implicit threat of violence for noncompliance.
>How can a cop request information in fashion that isn't forceful? The softest, most polite question is backed by the threat of both violence and arrest.
I agree, but also they are pretty well trained in scripts for extracting confessions/assent for searches/etc. People simply don't know the law and there's always the hope you'll catch a break.
If Live PD were still on, you'd notice how often the same phrases are used throughout the US. It all sounds like a lawyer wrote scripts for traffic stops and that those training materials were used nationwide. 'honesty goes with me a long way' 'you are being detained you are not under arrest' or whatever.
If my boss is making small talk, and asks what I did at the weekend, of course I am under no obligation to tell him. I can tell him it's none of his business, and I'm quite within my rights to do so. Some people would.
But in the long run, whether it's right or wrong, not answering probably makes my life harder (passed over for promotions, etc.).
So I don't ask this question from those who report to me, because I can't easily ask it in a way that doesn't seem to carry an obligation to reply.
And neither I nor my boss have a gun and a pair of handcuffs.
> How can a cop request information in fashion that isn't forceful? The softest, most polite question is backed by the threat of both violence and arrest.
With a smile and a calm voice. Do you really believe every single cop is going to punch you if you don't comply?
It's the same as how a burglar "can't" rob your house. Of course they can, and then you get to attempt legal recourse afterward, which sometimes works.
Especially given that the officers were told by higher-ups, you wouldn't want to press criminal charges against the individual officer anyways - you'd be better off with a civil suit against LAPD.
Legal recourse? I suppose people could maybe bring civil suits against burglars, but generally they face criminal charges, and you make an insurance claim?
It's not that bad. No, really. If a cop pulls you over based on speeding and asks for anything else unrelated to that, you simply and politely decline. It's very rare that a cop will risk their job or go through the hassle of taking people in simply for exercising the 4th or the 5th amendment. As a citizen you have many avenues for recourse, your cynicism is unwarranted.
Simply and agreeably assert your rights. More people do it than you think.
And then the cop calls for the drug dog, and suddenly, you're dealing with a dog trained to please it's handler, which in this case means telling the cop that you have drugs in your car. And off to jail you go. As far as the cop is concerned, his thuggish behavior is now vindicated because you're a drug dealing degenerate.
Alternatively, the cop uses a bunch of highly sensitive field drug tests on your car and gets a false positive. In america it seems that's enough to jail people. And then they lose their jobs, their home.
And the SCOTUS has already ruled that a cop cannot make you wait for a drug dog without probable cause (Rodriguez v. United States 2015). So in your scenario you've got a cop who is willing to break the law, and in that case all bets are off.
SCOTUS has made many rulings that cops both know and regularly ignore. There's hundreds of videos online of police threatening a camera person with arrest if they don't provide ID and then blinding or obstructing the camera. All three of those have been explicitly ruled on and leave no question, yet they continue to do it en masse.
“I smell marijuana” is probable cause… it’s been weakened recently, but probable cause doesn’t have to be proven. “Bloodshot eyes” is another one that works for DUI cause.
> You’re not going to jail unless you have drugs in the car
No, you aren't going to jail unless the search “justified” by the drug-dog “hit” reveals something that the police can spin into probable cause of a crime.
The usual full expression is something like “probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has committed a particular crime”.
> "Probable cause" can be used to justify a search.
“Probable cause” is a constitutional requirement for search warrants, arrest warrants, warrantless arrests, and warrantless searches; for searches, the probable cause is that the search conducted will uncover evidence of a crime, which is different than the probable cause for arrest.
> You would need to actually be suspected of a crime.
Well, no, there needs to be probable cause to believe you've committed a crime. Actual suspicion is a much lower standard.
> If the cops don't find drugs, what crime are you guilty of?
There are...like thousands of other crimes, and millions of possible configurations of things that are not drugs that could support probable cause to believe you've committed one of them. Spray paint cans consistent with a recent spate of vandalism (graffiti) in the area is one I’ve personally seen used, beyond things that are inherently actual or apparent contraband, and the “actual or apparent contraband” category extends to more than just drugs.
In america you can be hauled in and convicted of nothing more than "resisting arrest", with no other prior crime or suspected crime. If a cop tries to arrest you and you do ANYTHING other than comply, that's a crime
> Yes, but without evidence you aren’t going to jail, and if you do you can sue for wrongful arrest.
You can sue anyone, anytime, for anything, but even if charges aren't filed or a court dismisses them at the preliminary hearing stage for lack of sufficient evidence, wrongful arrest suits against police are very difficult.
> "Probable cause" relates to searching or entering private property.
It also relates to arrest. The Fourth Amendment provision applying the standard explicitly applies to searches and seizures of persons, houses, and effects. Arrest is seizure of one’s person.
There's plenty of DUI arrests where no drugs are present, the driver blows 0.00 on the breathalyzer, and the only "probable cause" for arrest is an officer's subjective "expert" opinion.
People have been arrested because the police claimed that a standard dose of Tylenol the night before was driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. If a police officer wants to take you to jail you're going to jail.
There was a guy I read about recently who was arrested and jailed on suspicion of methamphetamine possession for Krispy Kreme donut sugar found in the floorboard of his car. He was released once the lab determined it wasn't meth, but he did go to jail.
> Simply and agreeably assert your rights. More people do it than you think.
Police culture in America is based around disgust and disdain for the notion of “rights”. You can try standing up for your rights, but that is likely to be responded to with “stop resisting!” and a subsequent (constitutionally protected) physical assault.
This might be true if police brutality and disregard for rights were new problems, but they're not. The reason these problems with the police are finally being discussed is because there are cameras everwhere now.
There's no way to agreeably assert your rights. The cop wants something from you, and you're saying no. Being extra polite merely increases your chances of a neutral interaction, but you're already starting off on a negative feeling.
You're talking about legal authority, which is important. However, de facto, police have far more power than that. Remember the police who act without restriction or regard for legal limits, including physical, emotional, and legal abuse, arrests, fabricated charges ('resisting arrest', threatening an officer, etc.) etc.
> They can, with sufficient evidence, arrest you and conduct a search of your person to try to uncover it, but arrests are a big deal; they can't dragnet arrest.
Police do arrest people arbitrarily and without cause; it's not so rare. They don't need a dragnet, they only need to arrest you.
> I assume the productive article to write here is the one framed around informing people that they shouldn't cooperate with requests like these.
That is an illusion, or just words on paper. Look into geofenced cell phone requests by law enforcement for everybody within x boundary at x time of a crime being committed. Look into law enforcement using "predictive policing" software from companies like Palantir. All of those people are individually under suspicion? No one cares anymore. We are slowly becoming a police state, but as long as we're not as bad as x country's police state, it's ok, right?
Congratulations, with this citation you've gotten us to the point where the police can lawfully demand identification from you, which is something I concede they can do. You haven't gotten us anywhere near the point where they can compel production of social media accounts during a stop, and you won't be able to.
> You haven't gotten us anywhere near the point where they can compel production of social media accounts during a stop
Well... but they're doing it. The memos tell them to demand social media accounts, and it warns officers that failing to collect this information might come up in reviews and have negative impacts on their career. So we're at that point, regardless of what they are or aren't legally able to do, and regardless of what a judge would rule during trial.
Of course, it's good for people to know their rights; it's good to educate people about what the law says. And sure, the average low-wage, stressed out, busy commuter can roll the dice about what will happen if they say no. Maybe they won't get arrested, maybe they'll just get a harsher ticket written up. Maybe the cop will get visibly angry and demand that they unlock their phone and then hold out their hand, and that person can then try to overcome an entire lifetime of social conditioning to avoid placing their phone into that hand. And maybe the cop will shrug it off and walk away. It's a fun gamble.
But the base action of a cop saying to someone, "you need to give me this" is still going to happen to people regardless of whether or not you say it's supposed to happen. It is good to educate people about their rights, but rights are not a panacea against police abuse.
The awful thing is that it's entirely rational for people who are scared, who are busy, who are stressed, who are poor, and who don't want a confrontation to decide that they're not going to roll the dice and that when a cop tells them to unlock their phone or write down their Facebook username, that it's better to comply. For some people, that might be the correct choice, because antagonizing a cop is too risky for them. In a situation with a large power imbalance, "demanding" or "compelling" information doesn't always need to be backed up by a specific law. It's enough for a cop to tell you that you have to do something, with the implicit suggestion that they could arrest you or injure you if they wanted to, even if they aren't likely to do it.
So saying that cops aren't allowed to do something (while completely legally correct) still doesn't mean much unless you also have a working enforcement strategy that's going to prevent them from doing it. Eventually getting your case thrown out in court over an improper stop is still going to be a traumatic experience for most people, it's still something that someone scraping by on minimum wage can't realistically afford to risk.
You point out (accurately) that arresting someone over this would be uncommon. But this is still a situation where one party might be risking something life changing, and where the police officer is realistically risking very little. Nor does an officer need to arrest everyone who refuses the request, they just need to have a credible threat that they could arrest you. A power imbalance is enough on its own to allow an officer to demand something that most people see as a small concession -- they don't need laws to back that up.
I noticed the same thing. I kept waiting for the writer to say the obvious and responsible thing, "While the police may ask for this information, there is no legal way for them to compel you to provide it." This is part of the problem with living in a quasi-police state: questioning whether the police are allowed to do a thing is literally unthinkable.
This could only be said by someone who is completely disregarding the coercive power of a police "interview".
There is always, always, a subtext of "if you don't wish to cooperate, I may need to exercise my discretion to ...", with the ellipsis being anything from literally tearing your car apart in a "reasonable suspicion" drug search, to some made-up traffic infraction, to anything else that police are trained to use as coercion.
Just because you have some theoretical rights that a judge may at some point months later grant you, doesn't mean the officer can't violate the hell out of you right now and probably get away with it - and end up getting a baseless conviction, or a paper trail in police records, or just make you late for your job interview.
Yeah, I feel that people who dismiss these concerns by saying "well you can always tell the cop no" haven't had many/any adversarial encounters with the police.
I haven't had many, but I had a few when I was in college. When you lawfully refuse a request from the police, they don't just say "ok" and move on. They apply all kinds of pressure. They make veiled threats, they detain you longer, they get angry, they scare you. It is a lot easier to say what you would do while you are safe at home behind your keyboard.
The comment you're responding to was not at all naive: it only says there's no _legal_ way for police to force you to provide this information. You are correct that they can in many ways force you to comply, but none of those ways are legal.
Those ways of applying illegal coercion also break down as more and more people realize their rights and refuse to comply. The more people who force police to act illegally, the more risk there is of trouble for the cop. They can get away with it better if they don't have to do it too often.
I have been interviewed by the police, actually, many years ago. I was 20-something and had long hair and a shitty attitude. I stuck to my guns and told them nothing. It cost me some time, but nothing else. Now, I was privileged in some ways that others are not (ethnicity, location), so some of my good outcome was luck.
So no, I'm not at all disregarding police coercion. However it has not, does not, and will not convince me to surrender my rights.
If you'll forgive me for saying so, your response also is a symptom of living in a police state: regardless of what is right or legal, you expect the police to act with disregard for it and to suffer no consequence for their actions. It's a common-enough belief, but is not universal in civilized societies. This is wrong, nearly as wrong as anything can be in a democracy.
Sounds like something a cop would say: "oh, if you don't cooperate, they'll make life difficult, so you best just keep those civil rights thoughts to yourself!" Thanks, officer, but I'm going to keep refusing those unreasonable searches even if it makes things more difficult. And experience says, those difficulties aren't a given, or even to be expected.
There's what the police can legally demand. And then there's what the police can legally do to make a civilian think they can legally demand anything. Turns out they can pressure you quite a bit during the length of a Terry stop.
Probable cause operates quite different on the street from the way it works in a courtroom. After all, there are few to no penalties for police who make an incorrect call in this regard. Lack of promotion might be an incentive, but not all cops are trying to make detective or captain.
It's not just formal career consequences. It's also that a full request involves a whole rigamarole that the arresting officers have to go through that basically takes them out of their workday for as long as it takes to get you processed, and to complete the paperwork. They have actual jobs they're supposed to be doing. If they routinely arrest people for not revealing Twitter accounts, they won't be able to do that job.
I think for the most part people are well served by being told that they should simply say "no" to requests like these. The article has a different framing, that Californians should instead feel angrily but passively victimized by the process, which is I think not productive.
Cops dislike paperwork, but many of them also don't give a shit about their jobs except insofar as each day gets them one step closer to early retirement, with the payout based on whatever overtime they were able to rack up a few years prior.
Sure, people should just decline to share any information with police and many police won't push the point because it won't play out well. But some portion of the desirable assignments will flow toward those eager beavers who most assiduously supply the desires of the brass for more information. Legalities are one thing, the incentives and internal dynamics of the police department are something else, and they don't always line up neatly. Furthermore, not all police officers are rational utility maximizers who base their decision-making on optimizing their future wellbeing.
The gist of the article is not 'you're being passively victimized again, oh no' but nor is it, as you point out, 'they have nos uch right so don't be fooled.' The news here is that LAPD management have instituted a policy of maximizing data collection for pre-emptive surveillance purposes, which is something quite different from individual cops being overzealous or prosecutorial standards having shifted.
I think it's reasonable for the writer to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and that it is not his job to act in loco parentis or in loco advocatus.
You know overtime is time and a half, right? Cops aren't worried about OKRs, if they're on patrol then whatever they do in a day is their job. If there's additional must-do work, hey, overtime hours.
Overtime has to be approved by supervisors. Officers can’t just decide to arrest someone with 1 minute to go before the end of each shift to pad their paycheck. They have to find another officer to hand off the arrest processing if they don’t have enough time remaining in their shift. Source: California police officer married to my sibling.
Also I think tptacek’s core point holds. Scarcity is the civilian’s best friend: scarcity of LEOs, scarcity of their shift hours, and scarcity of their time to collect some info which has absolutely zero bearing on their current case.
No doubt some LAPD gang unit officers may request this data more frequently from suspected gang members (even if it doesn’t sound like an optional request), but I tend to think tptacek’s suggestion that this article could have been better written by informing the reader when they are legally obligated to comply with police requests and when they can be denied without increasing any legal liability.
My impression is that it's all about negotiating the interaction without winding up in a contest of your rights vs them doing their job. If it goes that way, it seems like "this guy was being a real asshole, boss" is all it takes from the officer for justification.
I guess, on the advisory front, tips on non-escalatory language are probably the biggest win.
Unless an officer openly admits to deliberately wrongfully arresting someone good luck prevailing on that in court. Even if a prosecutor was willing to, the bar for qualified immunity is extremely low.
Ah, yes, I don't know why I was conflating criminal prosecution with civil litigation around police misconduct. Prosecutors could charge and convict them in many cases but you're right, they won't.
Stop resisting! That's it, we're taking you in for public obtuseness and resisting arrest. Yeah, yeah, you can make a phone call at the station, stop resisting.
> My bet: refusing to give up your social media information will be considered probable cause.
It won't be. That won't come close to holding up in terms of legal challenges. And it won't take long to get challenged legally. It's not a close debate, it's not a maybe situation, it won't come close to holding up.
The LAPD may attempt to use that angle - probable cause - in some isolated circumstances short-term, before there's anything specifically legally blocking them, if they're going to get aggressive with trying to procure social media information from people. They would know that refusal to provide social media details as probable cause can't hold up legally to a challenge and they'll risk getting barred from asking entirely, so they'll likely be careful about who they try that tactic on.
Being falsely arrested and sent to jail is bad enough. Many people who experience that have no desire to relive the experience through a long-=drawn out and possibly expensive process of litigation.
You can get shot for/while/after complying with police lawful orders. That’s not a good excuse to pretend like an inquiry is the same as a legal order or forced coercion. Better to know your legal rights so you can know what your options are.
Better to know and exercise your rights when the risk trade off works for your risk tolerance.
In the end, most officers will give more scrutiny if the civilian they are dealing with “fails the attitude test”. Remain calm and when you disagree / reject a request, do it politely and that will increase the odds that the officer won’t spend extra time to find a reason to cite/arrest you.
It becomes a gamble whether the officer wants to spend more time looking for a reason to detain you.
In my experience, police make lots of quick judgements about whether you are “a criminal” based on how compliant you are with their instructions and how normal your behavior is. If you are a nail sticking out, expect most officers to at least consider putting more effort into looking into what they can cite/arrest you for.
The joke is that given enough time and incentive, any officer can cite any person for a vehicle infraction. Take that, but assume there are tons of other laws (not just vehicle codes) that a sufficiently motivated officer can use.
I suspect it actually takes a lot to make an officer turn just a Terry Stop into an arrest. Maybe a verbal or gesture threat against the officer, maybe an admission of a crime, maybe behaviors that a jury would agree describe a person under the influence. I don’t think just saying “no” to a question on the first ask will cause any arrests. LEOs are very experienced at using small psychological tricks/nudges/anchoring to get what they want with compliant detainees.
> I suspect it actually takes a lot to make an officer turn just a Terry Stop into an arrest.
If I've learned anything over the last few years cops hate being recorded. It doesn't take much to set them off. And they'll use the fact that you are recording them, you don't stop, and therefore resisting their command.
In my college years I would drive from SE Florida to the mid-Atlantic and there were lots of small town ticket revenue towns along the way. I've never been arrested but have been detained, illegally, many times for petty, imaginary reasons.
There are a lot of things the police can't do, but do do and get away unscathed because of union or department backing. I wouldn't be surprised if they beat a person to death for refusing to give this info up.
Personally im not taking a fucking chance. If they ask, I'll provide any info I have. I am trying to live, not demonstrate to a cop that I know my rights he is violating. If you think that's a wrong mentality to have then maybe we should step back and figure out how to make actual progress to de-escalate a police state.
Which gets an officer no further than they were by itself. That accusation may slightly hurt your character if that officer testifies against you, but politely declining to give that info and remaining calm during the stop is the best chance you have of not being unnecessarily arrested.
A rogue officer acting under color of law with an axe to grind against you won’t act any differently if you are compliant with the social media handle info or not.
Presenting your government ID is sometimes a legal order (depending on state laws and what the context is). Enumeration of these social media handles is not (AFAIK).
More confusing to me is that interview cards have effectively always had a aka field and police records have “known” associates fields. I remember my parents gleefully showing me their FBI files that outlined that info (and how frequently wrong it was).
Is it bad that cops dragnet data? Probably? Is it shocking? Of course not, it’s one of the reason the proponents of the bill of rights demanded it. It’s what cops do.
> If I was asked by a cop during a traffic stop for my social media account I’d give them either a link to Rick Astley or goatse depending on my mood.
That's stupid. Don't do that. Refusing is fine and legal. It's your right! Lying is not fine and is illegal, and you can be arrested. Supplying false information when you can supply no information is a bad idea.
Lying to a local LEO is not always illegal. My (non-lawyer) understanding is that lying in ways that misidentify you is always illegal in California. Especially during a traffic stop. Basic Googling suggests CVC 31 (or CVC 20 if it's a state trooper)
I can't see why you're confused, since your second sentence is the basis of the entire story. The article offers a summary of research establishing that collection of this information is treated as a departmental priority rather than being collected on the initiative of individual officers; thus it's news, not life or legal advice.
You as an individual will have no clue if police have reasonable suspicion or probable cause to detain and identify you. Police do not have to tell you why, they do not have to prove they are in the right. If you do not comply then you are criminally charged with non compliance, refusing to identify, obstruction of investigation, etc. And now you are arrested.
Reality is police have far too much power, and the few cases they lose mean nothing to them. That's covered by insurance, paid by tax payers, and those officers never face criminal charges for their criminal acts, because DA's value their jobs.
It's not alway illegal to lie to the police. Each state is different, but in most states you only have to be truthful about your identity and when you are under oath.
In California, if you give false information to a police officer and they in some meaningful way rely on that information to their detriment, you're probably culpable for some offenses. As a general rule, you should not lie to police. I think this is like 60% of the "don't ever talk to police" meme; the reality is much more subtle, but if you take away the message that you can troll them, you can actually get in trouble, and it's better just to shut up.
That’s an interesting one. The validity of your past statements ultimately rests on whether you understood what you were being asked. If someone does find themselves having talked it seems at least a court in the US would throw out the “statement” if you had a good lawyer. This is why people are often acquitted when a witness either changes their story or becomes non credible. Besides if the court believe that someone is lying in any way, nothing about their testimony can be trusted
> This is why people are often acquitted when a witness either changes their story or becomes non credible.
Citation needed.
I would argue that charges are more likely to be dropped, but juries overwhelmingly convict (something close to 98% of all cases that make it to a jury trial IIRC).
The article is yet another unsubstantiated piece by the author (will not mention his name here), in line with other extremist and poorly sourced clickbait pieces like this one:
‘A nightmare scenario’: how an anti-trans Instagram post led to violence in the streets'
The documents released by the Brennan Center simply do not support the claims of the news article. This fits a pattern of the author citing anonymous sources and then public sources which do not back up his story. It's unfortunate how low the Guardian's standards have fallen that they would allow this mishmash of agit-prop on their newspages.
Wonder what they would write about me on their cards: "Sometimes posts to this orange hackers-only discussion forum. Says has no Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, FB or Reddit accounts..."
/Of course, you shouldn't talk to them without a lawyer, this is mostly a joke comment
We've had ANSI escape codes with colors since I don't know when, time for you to update your command line browser and join the rest of us with our colorful terminals :)
i told a CBP officer that i didn't have facebook (i don't) when i was trying to enter the US a bunch of years ago (she said she was literally searching me on facebook and couldn't find me).
I keep social media accounts around but I don't really post anything. I guess it's only a matter of time before some cop looks at that and decides I'm abnormal enough to be investigated.
Yup--I have a FB account, only used for participation in some FB hiking groups, I never even look at my wall. I have a couple other accounts that were purely because it was needed to read, I've never written anything with them. I must be extraordinarily suspicious. Combine that with a clueless look at my travel history and it's straight to Gitmo time. (I have been in some countries that would be big red flags if visited now--but back then weren't an issue.)
The original note (Series A) talks about retention, ~~not collection~~.
>... directing concerned personnel to retain information gleaned from social media that “may disappear before, during, or after a crime.” The memo advises that retaining this information enables investigators to obtain a warrant for a social media account more easily.
> The I-Series includes two documents relating to Field Interview
> (FI) cards. LAPD officers fill out FI cards to document people they
> have stopped or questioned; these cards can be completed on anyone
> an officer comes into contact with. The first document is a July
> 2020 memo from the Chief of Police, Michel Moore, to all LAPD
> personnel. In the memo, Chief Moore urges officers to diligently
> record all information in the FI cards, which would be subject to
> review by Department supervisors “for completeness and validity.”
> As noted above, former Police Chief Charlie Beck had sent officers
> a memo in May 2015 telling them to collect social media and email
> account information in FI cards. The second document is a copy of
> the FI card form, which shows that LAPD is gathering subjects’ date
> of birth and social security number, with a disclaimer stating that
> subjects are obligated to provide their social security numbers
> upon an officer’s request. The FI cards also have a field to collect
> social media and email account information. The Brennan Center
> surveyed other cities’ policies regarding FI cards and found no
> other police department that collects social media and email account
> information, though details are sparse.
It's weird that the actual index card[1] seems to contradict that paragraph. There aren't separate fields for social media info and email addresses. They're just both listed as examples of what to put in the "Additional Info" field.
TBH I think the Guardian article is a bit alarmist. Basically they're combining the implications of a pair of memos:
1. A memo from 2015 basically saying "We're updating the description of the additional info field to suggest that you collect someone's email address or social media names"
2. A memo from a different chief 5 years later, basically saying "please don't get lazy and put incomplete or inaccurate info down when you fill out these forms". My perception of the July 2020 memo is that the Chief encouraging cops to CYA when talking to witness about what happened at last summer's protests. Anyone who has worked in a documentation-heavy bureaucracy has probably seen similar memos.
Sure, it's technically true that the second memo is encouraging LAPD to be more thorough when filling out the forms. But it's not like there's an expectation for everything on the card to be filled out (for example, if you're just walking down the street they're not going to arrest you because they're afraid to leave the "booking number" field blank[2]).
FWIW I've had multiple interactions with LAPD and they've never asked for my social media, email, gang affiliation, booking number, or anything on this form other than "Name".
[2]: However LAPD did get caught fabricating gang affiliations that didn't exist, which IMO is a much more outcry-worthy problem than a cop trying to see if you posted evidence of lawbreaking on your public Instagram
A few months ago I was pulled over by police for speeding (in a very rural area). The cop was very polite and handled it well, especially since I was yelling at him quite a bit (family was going into hospital for serious problems, which was the reason for speeding).
He took my info and when he came back to my car after running license, told me "Look, I know you don't like cops. It says that when I pull up your file."
I don't have any idea where they could have gotten that information at all except from my Facebook years ago when I openly voiced that I didn't like cops at the time. Those posts have since been non-public (for years) and now have been deleted this year. I have donated to police in the last couple/few years, so... there's that... which may come to an end.
I sent a FOIA request, requesting as much info as I could get about this clear implementation of a 'social credit' system. They returned the request to me just today saying they didn't have any video on file (convenient!), and included useless standard info like the statute they used to pull me over for speeding and the basic log of the stop. Nothing at all about "I know you don't like cops."
This is clearly a violation of the spirit of 'all men are created equal' and 'innocent until proven guilty' and I find it shocking and dangerous that the police keep opinions of the population on file. I'd like to pursue this further but don't know where to go from here.
Thanks for sharing this anecdote, I remember it from when you've posted about it in the past and it's stuck with me.
> I have donated to police in the last couple/few years, so... there's that... which may come to an end.
In my opinion, there's a good reason for it to come to an end that has nothing to do with this.
In the states I'm familiar with, PBAs and police unions were the top (and sometimes only) spenders when it came to lobbying against marijuana legalization. They use those donations to lobby and ensure that they can continue to arrest, fine and imprison scores of people for victimless crimes, while also ensuring their job security in doing so.
The whole idea that there can be some monetary flow in to the police based on what types of things they do seems baffling to me. Donating to a governmental apparatus? That's just asking for influence and abuse.
Don't like what the cops do? Threaten to pull some multi-million 'donation' and suddenly everything becomes possible. At that point it's not law enforcement but money enforcement. Same as being a cop: need more money? Bust some people for whatever happens to be convenient and 'make money' on off of that.
The only money should be coming from the government, and everything they collect should be going back into the government. If you turn it into a corporate system where money is a motivator you're doomed from the start.
And it should be one that we tolerate. There are lots of infringements on speech, especially professional speech.
The idea that somehow a group empowered by the state to commit violence in defense of the states policies have a more sacrosanct right to speech than doctors or teachers is absurd. These aren’t individuals speaking as individuals…this is effectively government speech and we ought not wrong our hands about restricting it. The government has no right to speech.
So what is your solution to prevent law enforcement becoming influenced to do things other than realistic law enforcement for the betterment of society in a designated violence monopoly?
You are apparently mistaking my description of the world as it is for an endorsement of the world as it is.
I guess I don't think that police should be (somehow) specially prevented from any police related political activity, but that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge the age old question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
In one state where legalization was approved by public mandate, the legislation that passed made it so anyone under the age of 21 could only receive a warning for possession, and no charges or arrests.
This is important because any drug arrests, charges or convictions make individuals ineligible for federal student loans or assistance for college, meaning the kids who do get arrested might have their plans to better their lives ruined by a cop who doesn't like the smell of marijuana.
Police unions spent months and millions of dollars lobbying the state government so that they could still arrest and charge kids for pot possession.
In that state, a significant amount of arrests, convictions and revenue from fines came from marijuana charges. Each conviction came with hundreds to thousands in fines.
Not only that, each conviction created busywork for probation officers, as low level offenders were given the option to have their record cleaned of their conviction if they went on probation programs where they are drug tested regularly. The probation program came with more fines/fees, as well. It also opened opportunities to keep people in the system, because violation of probation has its own penalties. Kids' parents have the incentive to push kids through this program and to pay for it, too.
There are those reasons, and then there's the simple fact that cops know they will have less to do if they can't arrest people for pot, which might be bad for job security. Losing "I smell marijuana" as a method for establishing probable cause was a big deal, as well.
Arresting you improves their metrics and helps justify the labor hours that ultimately pay their bills. Also it's used as a pretext to steal billions of dollars via civil asset forfeiture much of it in less than $1000 increments.
See literal highway robbers stealing $500 from citizens via lawsuits like state vs 535 dollars and 75 cents where criminal intent is inferred but no proof is given.
He took my info and when he came back to my car after running license, told me "Look, I know you don't like cops. It says that when I pull up your file."
Another simple explanation is that ... he made the file part up. Not that the scanning your FB page thing is impossible but one has to consider multiple factors here.
> I was yelling at him quite a bit
...
> "Look, I know you don't like cops. It says that when I pull up your file."
...
> I don't have any idea where they could have gotten that information at all except from my Facebook
I wasn't there, but this gives me the feeling that stalking your Facebook might not be the only way for them to infer this, especially if you've ever been stopped before this.
Very interesting. They may be using a third-party service that pulls data in, thus they can say "we don't have that info." So the next step in your FOIA is to get records on how their systems work and contracts with third parties to provide data for driver records.
> I don't have any idea where they could have gotten that information at all except from my Facebook years ago
Well, you were yelling at that cop. Maybe he had just added it to your file. Maybe you yelled at other cops. Maybe you had no notice in your file and he was lying to you. Maybe you had a Black Lives Matter or Democrat bumper sticker. Who knows.
If someone is yelling at a cop, it's not a giant stretch to think they don't like cops.
Meanwhile, unless you were speeding because you were transporting someone to the hospital, were racing to donate an emergency organ or needed to be there to supply a legal signature, I'm not sure you have an excuse. A cop should probably cut you some slack, but there's no "I was in a hurry for a decent reason" exemption. It's a "hurry for a good reason" exemption.
Or it was just his idea of a joke. He doesn't need to pull up a file to know that this guy didn't like him. People are especially dense to punchlines when they're stressed out and don't expect someone to be pulling their leg.
> except from my Facebook years ago when I openly voiced that I didn't like cops at the time
Hmm, I wonder if this is why Reddit keeps asking for my email address. I'd rather remain anonymous for exactly this reason. I don't hate all cops, some friends and family are cops, but there's no profession where every employee is good and fair all of the time.
Heads up, and not because of any stance I hold on this issue:
I don't know if OP posted this story multiple times, or if this is a template that people are using, but I've definitely seen this story with incredibly similar wording and pacing on HN before.
If they weren't bluffing and you're in the same county, it could just be the dispatcher remembered you from last time.
I had something analogous to this where the local PD left a voicemail saying my brother had gone missing and left a name with the same last name and a name similar to mine.
When I called back, I told the dispatcher and they refused to leave it there and wanted to transfer me to the cop in question which I thought was really weird. He took it down but it seemed like there was something else there. And I realized he was probably fishing to serve an arrest warrant or something.
To see if I would go, "No, my brother isn't missing. That's my cousin and he's at <address>." Cops do that type of shit all the time.
really just sounds like a cop telling a small lie based on your reaction in an attempt to spread good PR on behalf of the police all the while establishing a position of authority, unintentionally making you think there's darker forces at play then there really were, when in reality he was just defusing the situation with a lie. obviously one can't know for certain but that seems like the most plausible explanation. I can see this being an informal personal technique a cop might use in situations like this, all the while being completely oblivious to the terrifying implications of what he's saying.
I doubt there's any way to ever prove what happened here, but this is what I was thinking too. It was a lie to cool things down. Someone who's angry to the point that they're yelling is dangerous, not just to the cops but to other drivers on the road.
The last time I read your account of this incident, you left this part out: "I was yelling at him quite a bit"
I can certainly sympathize with that reaction, most traffic stops are chickenshit and to be interrupted with that nonsense when in the middle of a medical emergency must be infuriating. But I think your FOIA requests looking for this file will never turn up anything, because the cop was almost certainly fucking with you. He figured you didn't like cops because you were yelling at him, not because of anything some computer file said.
"It says in your file that..." ... Uhh, hey, look at that, I think you are right, ...sure had me going there, LOL.
I really do hope they aren't "keeping a file on" me but I think I would definitely believe it was true, if they said it was so. I guess I'm easily conned. Generally trust authority.
I didn’t berate him at all. I was yelling because he stopped a long way behind me, and I wanted to finish the conversation ASAP because of my bleeding family member. So I started as soon as he got out of the car.
"We can take this in front of a judge, and I doubt your probable cause will stand up... causing a lot of issues for both of us."
^ This line will get many officers to back down. It's calm, reserved and true. They will then argue with you and you just repeatedly point back to, 'I see what you're asking and you're trying to do your job, but I don't see our judge / warrant / district attorney / etc. I will now go about my day, thank you.'
A superb reason why FB, Twitter and Google should leave the realm of the laissez-faire private sphere that spawned them and enter a new dawn of being regulated as utilities, and having a mix of both protections and 1st Amendment obligations.
Between the Silicon Valley-government staffing revolving door, and border agencies (and now police) so closely aligned with these giant corporate interests that have our data of the past forevermore, this is no longer OK.
I don’t have any Facebook social media accounts, and my Twitter gets auto deleted after 2 weeks. I have no other social media of any kind.
Neither my Reddit or HN accounts are related to accounts that can easily be tied to my other identities. I’m not saying they can’t, but my Reddit is used for read-only.
With Apple encouraging its users to simply hand over their iPhone as Photo ID [0], how long before the police simply dock your voluntarily surrendered phone into some automated search gadget and don't bother asking.
It's already the case that if you let the police search your vehicle, they will, and what's found will be used against you. It seems obvious the same will be applied to smartphones. Protect your rights people.
I have an extremely difficult time believing this. I actually don't know another person IRL over the age of 18 who doesn't have a FB account. I know a couple of people who've claimed to have "deleted" or "deactivated" theirs, but not another person whose never had one.
To be fair it was from a self reported survey and they were asked if they ever used FB. If it were me I would probably answer no, even though that is not strictly true. I did use it once in 2010, but I didn't inhale. :)
Police encounter many non-citizens, who still have many fundamental rights. Any given person might be a citizen, a green card holder, a temporary visa holder, an undocumented person, or a tourist who is not subject to visa requirements. I don't recall the percentage offhand but something like 10% of US residents are not citizens.
The point was the militarization of the police, that they are adopting militarized language when dealing with the general public. I used citizen with a lowercase 'c' here, as in "private citizen" and not as in legal citizenship status to a sovereign nation.
Thing is the 'civilian' distinction goes back decades and some definitions extend the nen-civilian status to firefighters as well as police. It's neither new nor uniquely American, though I'm sure exactly when it expanded beyond the purely military use fo the term.
It’s almost as if they’re saying the policy doesn’t apply to interviews with fellow law enforcement officers...
The way we (Americans) have allowed the line between “police” and “military” to blur is certainly concerning and it seems like this is just another example.
I'd love to see the line blur a bit more. Specifically, by making police officers be investigated by military police, and to be judged by military tribunals.
Police officers are civilians. I know it's a pedantic point but I think it's important to reiterate this whenever I see non-police officers described as civilians. American society at least has started to elevate them to a special super-citizenship, it seems.
They certainly don't get treated like civilians. Just recently a court decided it would believe a cop over video of an event which I'd be shocked to see applied to anyone but cops.
Not according to the LAPD, whom the story covers. Police, firefighters, and paramedics are not considered "civilians" in their lingo. See how the LAPD has "civilian employees" like clerks and scientists to fill out their non-officer roles:
I have actually been in many negative encounters with police. Far more serious than traffic violations.
You can still tell them to fuck off and remain silent. Sometimes they will threaten things like X or Y charges, or someone told us this, but it really does not matter.
and of course it makes it very easy to step into the "lying to an officer" trap or even more serious. You're willingly give up everything (if you aren't keen on playing the lottery of how annoyed that cop is today, or if you're of the race not fully afforded those nice Amendments what white people got to enjoy) and confirm that there is nothing more. Or may be that isn't all, and you're trying to remember the other accounts. You can't. You get nervous. Make a quick automatic movement to pull your phone from a pocket...
Much like WebMD devolved into every symptom being cancer and the side effect of any medication being everything, (including death), such a virtual lawyer would devolve into "everything is complicated; hire a lawyer." In essence, it would just be an app that said IANAL.
You have the right to remain silent. For example, you do not have to answer any questions about where you are going, where you are traveling from, what you are doing, or where you live. If you wish to exercise your right to remain silent, say so out loud. (In some states, you may be required to provide your name if asked to identify yourself, and an officer may arrest you for refusing to do so.)
It's really hard to know what you have to do and what is optional unless you're actually a lawyer. And not answering optional stuff might still end up with you getting your ass kicked by the police.
Also, you presumably have to know or be willing to contact a lawyer and starting paying their fees for what could well be a non-issue. I can understand the risks in the US, but it just seems very adversarial.
I have no qualms regarding speaking with police in Australia. I don't have fears of them planting evidence or tripping me up on something. But that might not be true of all Australians, I guess.
I love the intelligent discussions here. This is the difference between the general reddit audience and the HN audience. I have read many of the well-written and well-articulated points in this comment section, and feel like I am walking away smarter....unlike with reddit, where I definitely leave a few braincells on the keyboard.
The most prominent difference between the two platforms is age.
The median age on Reddit has dropped into the teens.
I believe that is why the Reddit redesign specifically hid more of the comments - to both hide the rampant low-effort comments, and to discourage kids in high school from commenting in the mobile app.
When it comes to social media platforms - less is more. Trying to get literally every human to participate reduces the quality of the conversation.
If they do this for long enough, they will be able to identify real people versus pseudonymous accounts on social media. Effectively denying anonymity and free speech online.
No matter how to look at this, this is 1984 light.
Let's hope google or apple lobby against this, it appears the governments rather listen to them than citizens.
Anyone remember a fews ago, one of their LAPD police officer went rogue and started shooting at them. It took a few days to hunt him him down. In the process ended up shooting two totally innocent people through a back car window. I totally forget the names of the people involved, its been a few years. It seemed like something a mafia movie more than real life. Made me wonder why the guy turned against them.
The guy you're referring to, Dorner, apparently published a manifesto, detailing why he did what he did (he claims to have reported excessive use of force, and that he was fired in retaliation for reporting it). Wikipedia has some of the details:
And how about this police lunacy, related to the manhunt for Dorner:
"Torrance to pay $1.8 million to settle surfer David Perdue’s lawsuit in mistaken Christopher Dorner shooting"
"The city of Torrance will pay $1.8 million to a Redondo Beach surfer who was mistakenly shot at by its police officers during the manhunt for rogue Los Angeles police Officer Christopher Dorner, officials announced Thursday. The agreement settles David and Lizzette Perdue’s lawsuit against the city and its Police Department, ending the acrimonious battle over what occurred that chaotic week in February 2013. Officers rammed Perdue’s truck thinking he was Dorner fleeing a shooting, then fired three shots at him."
Apparently there were three separate mistaken shootings by police in one day, where they thought it might be Dorner. Including one instance where police fired dozens of bullets without warning at two ladies in a Nissan truck delivering newspapers (both survived it amazingly).
"In three separate incidents in the early morning hours of February 7, 2013, police fired on people who turned out to be unrelated to Dorner. Dorner was not present at any of the incidents."
Dorner himself doesn't get much sympathy (he murdered people who weren't police, despite having grievance with the police.) But the exact circumstances of his death are probably worthy of examination, since it seems the police opted to burn him out of a building instead of wait him out in a siege (he was obviously going nowhere, and had no hostages.) He probably shot himself after the building was partially demolished and lit on fire, but what justified that demolition and fire-starting in the first place? Why were they in such a big rush to drive him out of the building?
I think they wanted him dead. They knew if they lit the building on fire, they could either shoot him when he ran out, wait for the fire to kill him, or let him kill himself. I believe the police had already decided he would not be taken alive.
I agree on the no sympathy, even if his grievance against the LAPD (regarding retaliation against him) was legitimate. No question they wanted him dead in the case of what happened. There was probably no scenario where they didn't end up killing him. They nearly murdered several other innocent persons that had nothing to do with Dorner, in the process of the manhunt, so it's clear they were very eager to murder him on sight (officers opened fire on the ladies in the Nissan truck with zero warning, so the intent was clear; and they rammed the surfer's truck and immediately fired upon it, similarly).
This ended in my neck of the woods; a friend of a friend is who spotted him. Before they found him, they closed down the roads for vehicle searches to make sure he didn't flee the area.
I rolled down my window at the stop, the cop looked around, and waved me through. I hesitated and said, "what if he is in the trunk?" - the cop's eyes got wide. I then said, "no, he is not back there, but that's what I'd do, I'd hold a family member hostage back there."
The next morning at the check point, they were checking trunks.
The article says that the LAPD is also using "Media Sonar" (https://mediasonar.com/) to provide basically Minority Report style "pre-crime" data. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that LA is most influenced by one of its own movies.
No. They should avoid activities that are majority negative value to themselves, their freedom and their liberty.
If you use social media, you are a fool. You are completing your own STASI dossier for FREE and WILLINGLY. You are aiding and abetting in your own enslavement and oppression! You are an idiot.
Problem is that there is so much data collected that if the government ever gets better at connecting the dots, then just using most digital devices will put you in a similar spot.
Example: I have an app for a well known convenience store. I decided one day to disassemble it to see what libraries are being used. In addition to all the tracking one finds in most apps, there was a Bluetooth library that apparently allows the store to track where you walked around the store because of strategically placed Bluetooth beacons.
You basically have to be a hermit to avoid a lot of this and even then its not great.
I personally dislike social media as well, but this is really over the top. Social media has advantages. That's like saying never tell anyone your name or anything about you - sure, it could at some point be used against you, but humans are still social creatures.
That isn't over the top at all. "Don't tell anyone your name or anything about you" is good advice for online. I think extremely carefully before I do post online under my real name. I think it's crazy that people don't.
IRL interactions are strongly bounded by geography and the frailty of human memory. Online isn't. The difference is scale and persistence. Our social intuitions aren't calibrated to it. It only takes one deranged person to ruin you, and that person might be on the other side of the planet, and might not even have been born yet.
You can be public on HN and absolutely anonymous on any other social media network too. It's on you if you gave zuckerberg your real name. I remember in middle school over a decade ago when we were still too young to use facebook (or for some kids hiding that they had a facebook account from their parents who were on facebook) everyone would have some alias account instead and it was an open secret who it was.
No, I am not saying to start shooting at the cops if they ask for this. I am saying to refuse, go to jail if they require it, then meet them in court, accusing them of wrongful arrest and violation of the 4th Amendment.
[Edit: This approach can get you in trouble that can take you years to get out of. Don't follow it if you aren't willing to face that.]
There is another saying, "it is not vote that counts, but who counts the votes."
We need to push for transparency in all aspects of elections, if someone says fraud, we need to be able to have evidence that no fraud occurred that is indisputable. Anyone should be able to examine the proof.
The hard part is to provide anonymity and transparency.
The harder part is getting people to agree to making transparency and accountability part of the process without one side or another providing a back door to the process.
I don't think so; I believe it's foolish to expect to solve 21st century political problems with 18th century political technology. I think concepts like a wikiocracy and contractual citizenship of virtualized territory are where things are headed in the longer term.
The notion that you'll get good results by delegating all your political power to a representative for a period of years is asinine on its face, doubly so when their decision-making is subject to all sorts of perverse incentives, no matter how decent of a person they are. That seemed viable in a bygone era where the pace of change was glacial, to the extent that the America of 1776 would have been easily comprehensible to a Roman or Greek time traveler. In the early days of the American Republic, legal issues fo rhte average person did not change so much from before, except insofar as royal prerogative no longer existed. Many of the early landmark legal cases were about matters of state rather than relations between individuals and the state (obviously a generalization for the sake of brevity).
Over time the US (and other state) legal systems have inexorably grown in volume and complexity, for reasons that are still debated but ably summarized here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73623-x
This increase comes at a cognitive cost, both for individuals who enter or are caught up in the legal system, and for lawmakers and those who elect them. Endless patching with no practical opportunity for refactoring or rewriting in a situation that should be familiar to most HN readers and whose outcomes are quite predictable: either you freeze the code and it becomes increasingly brittle as the environment continues to change around it, or the code turns into an unmanageable mess that is in various aspects oppressive, corrupted, or exploitable by different actors, and social goods of coherence and predictability are inexorably eroded, a situation in which we arguably find ourselves at present.
Radicals of all political stripes (including myself) regard this as unsustainable but disagree on the values and mechanism that ought to replace it. Those who insist that everything is working fine and as the founders intended tend to be either successful collectors of political rents or naive optimists who have never seriously experienced or imagined life under other conditions, , like users of a software tool who have never felt any need to explore the preferences dialog or examine the paradigmatic foundation of the tools they've learned to use.
> Those who insist that everything is working fine and as the founders intended tend to be either successful collectors of political rents or naive optimists who have never seriously experienced or imagined life under other conditions...
"If you were honest and actually thought about it, then of course you'd agree with me." So everybody who doesn't is either thoughtless or on the take. You are, at a minimum, not assuming good faith.
You can see the problems with the current system and still disagree with all the values and mechanisms that are proposed as replacements, thinking they are inadequate. That leaves you, by default, supporting the current system, not because you think it's the perfect system, but because you don't think any of the alternatives are better.
So everybody who doesn't is either thoughtless or on the take. You are, at a minimum, not assuming good faith.
Thoughtless people are operating in good faith, but I consider them to be naive. I see no reason to assume good faith in all, that would be as foolish as assuming bad faith in all.
You can see the problems with the current system and still disagree with all the values and mechanisms that are proposed as replacements, thinking they are inadequate. That leaves you, by default, supporting the current system, not because you think it's the perfect system, but because you don't think any of the alternatives are better.
I presume by 'you' you mean you, not me. This isn't relevant to the first paragraph because I was critiquing 'people who insist that everything is working fine', not people who see and acknowledge problems.
I do believe so. There were many candidates that ran on a reform or defund the police platform (careful though, there were also some who were accused of doing so, but weren’t.) Some of them even won elections last year.
Failure to comply with commands given by an officer. Suspicious activity. Belligerent conduct. Whether these are actual charges or not don't even matter, as officers aren't legally required (by supreme court decision) to understand the law they enforce. If they want to arrest you they can.
So to restate your question: On what basis do the police think they can arrest you?
It is not the case that you can be lawfully arrested simply for failing to comply with any given command given by an officer. See, for instance, the last 10 years of case law regarding people recording the police despite their urgent demands that they stop.
It's fair to point out that the police can arrest you unlawfully, and that's a real risk you run when saying "no" to them. But it's important to know that saying "no" to a request for your Twitter account name is legally very safe, and that the police would be way out over their skis arresting you for doing that.
Being detained for questioning is not a big deal, but being arrested is a very big deal, and it does not happen as casually as message boards think it does. If the police routinely arrest people without lawful cause, there are consequences (though they aren't the consequences any of us would hope there'd be).
Are there consequences to them for detaining you for no good reason? Because that seems to me to be their best strategy if someone refuses to give them their social media accounts. Make it kind of costly, but not to the point where the officer involved gets in any trouble.
There are more- and less- formal restrictions on how long they can detain you, but my mental model is just that they can detain you for basically any reason --- it is not my claim that there are magic words that can get the police to go away, or to stop asking you questions, and you might just have to put up with it until they get tired of you.
The next step, though, where they trundle you off to a police station for interrogation --- that's an arrest. It's a big deal. Actual cause is needed.
You've made good points on this. My concern would be that police officers have an obligation to gather this information as it states in the article, and that they would lean on their powers to detain and arrest in order to coerce that information.
Let's run through a hypothetical. Routine traffic stop. Cop pulls out one of these cards and asks for your handles. You refuse, claim Miranda rights, or something similar. Cop says you, "match the description of a known suspect" (in a city as large as LA everyone matches a known suspect) and this is part of the ID process. "Of course, we can do a check using the computers at the station but you'll need to come with us until we confirm your ID ..."
Now, following through on that threat is an arrest, but under California law police have 48-hours to investigate before either charging you with a crime or releasing you. I doubt most officers would use the entire time, but letting someone stew for the afternoon in a drunk tank seems entirely within reason. During that time their car has been impounded and they're either missing work or missing time with their loved ones. Refusing to self identify could carry an effective fine in the hundreds of dollars, and that worries me.
I don't think it's plausible that the police will routinely rely on arrests to get social media information from random stops, for a bunch of reasons; part of it is that it's unlawful for them to do so, but the bigger part of it is that it's incredibly inefficient and painful for them to do that too.
If the argument is that the police will use this as a pretext to arrest people they want to arrest anyways, well, it's a dumb pretext. They have dozens of pretexts that aren't overtly unlawful; the idea that they're going to haul people in for an offense that they won't be able to articulate when they process you at the station (because it is not in fact a violation of any California statute) seems, to me, far-fetched.
It is problematic that they ask this question. I'm not lobbying for its inclusion. It's bad because people will, as has been pointed out all over the thread (including by my top comment) believe they have to answer. But the response to that problem should be to educate people not to answer the question, not to accept the victimizing framework of the article.
The police, by the way, cannot hold you for 48 hours while looking for something to charge you with. To arrest you, they need probable cause of a specific crime, which they'll need to provide when they book you. They can then charge you with other stuff they dream up while they hold you, but they need something to start with. Again: refusing to answer this question isn't "Obstruction of justice" (which isn't a California offense in the first place); the California "resisting" statutes generally require force or violence on your part, or your interference with their questioning of someone else.
You can't technically, but if they do so without probable cause then they stand to get smacked down in court and pay heavy fines to the person they falsely arrest.
This will still be a very unpleasant time for you, with more consequences down the line (you might miss work, for example). And if the officer can convince the judge that they truly thought arresting you was reasonable, you won't get much in the way of compensation, either. Lastly, the fines don't get paid by the officer themself, so even if it is a full smack down, it won't hurt too much.
Refusing to answer an arbitrary question from a police officer is not in fact obstruction of justice. You don't have to wonder what the elements of "obstruction" are; you can look them up.
Here, by the way, it's helpful to know that California doesn't even have an "obstruction of justice" statute (it has "Resisting arrest laws", which you can read more about to see that not giving your Twitter account up is not going to get you convicted of that).
In theory. In practice, refusing to cooperate can initiate a lengthy process of them asking you why and using that for probable cause to do further searches or even arrest you. You may be right in the end, but you'll have a few bad days plus be out of quite a bit of money. That's why this is quite effective against people who really think they don't have anything to hide.
Do people actually have an defense attorney on retainer? Even if they do, it seems like a pretty effective resource exhaustion attack. The cop gets paid for his time, whereas you have to pay $300/hr to have your lawyer around.
No. The words to use here are "an attorney", not "my attorney", and it matters mostly after you're arrested, not when you're on the street (on the street, you just say "I'd rather not answer that, sorry").
I've wondered about that. In the context of a police interview, either after being arrested or when you're fairly certain the officer intends to arrest you, the statements "I'd like to speak to an attorney" and "I'd like to speak to my attorney" convey very different things.
The second phrasing says: I have ready access to professional counsel. If you choose to continue with this confrontation, you're the one who's asking for legal trouble. On the other hand, the first one says: I don't know any attorneys, and certainly haven't engaged one. I'm unprepared and scared. I can haz public defender?
Seems like you're always better off trying to bluff.
Just because there's notably wacky people doing this doesn't invalidate the suggestion. Part of a real problem with police is that they often have no idea what the limits are. If everyone had the same standard script, police would get away with much less, and the good ones would learn how far they and their colleagues can take a stop. Holding them to account is a civic responsibility. Record everything and know your rights, and never talk to the police if you're stopped. It will never help you or anyone else.
I subscribe to a legal service. It costs about $20 a month, and provides me access to an attorney. The service provides phone numbers that are accessible 24 hours a day. The service provides a certain number of hours of legal services and the number of hours accumulates over time if you don't use it. It's like an insurance plan, but it provides access to an attorney.
Yes and no. Laws on when you must identify yourself to officers varies wildly from state to state but social media isn't a part of that. Lawfully refusing will usually be enough, but there are cops who don't care and will arrest you for obstruction (watch YT channels like Audit the Audit, it happens all the time). It looks like this article is about LAPD cops adding this to information they ask for, just like they ask where you're going or if they can look around the car. Just assert your 5th amendment rights and decline to answer questions.
That being said, if you ever end up in court your social media activity is pretty much always discoverable. This is different from an officer demanding it during a traffic stop but still important. It is all accessible.
> Lying to a police officer could get you in trouble
That does not seem on point with the original question. You can lie to a [non-federal] police officer about almost anything with impunity, except your identity. That is specifically what CA 148.9 refers to.
> Better to just keep quiet
That is for sure the best answer. Any information, truthful or not, can and will be used against you by the police. The best option is to give them nothing at all.
But it is situational. Asserting your right to remain silent during a routine traffic stop where nothing indicates the cop is fishing for something unrelated is more likely to make things worse rather than better.
> Asserting your right to remain silent during a routine traffic stop where nothing indicates the cop is fishing for something unrelated is more likely to make things worse rather than better.
Even though you'll always get some absolutists arguing against it, this is the proper advice. Admitting to what I've done has gotten me out of multiple traffic tickets.
They would count HN if they wanted to get you for obstruction or lying to a police officer. I think that's the material point.
Just better to not say anything and let them discover that your social media is HN on their own. That's the only course of action guaranteed to generate no more trouble than you may already be in. Even keeping quiet may not help if the police want to use that against you. Or they could out and out lie. No guarantees really I guess. Just try to be in a place with officers possessing some degree of professionalism I suppose. Then keeping quiet helps.
Playing devil's advocate: Social media data is public, and morons brag about their crimes on Facebook all the time. Law enforcement should use it to help catch crooks or prevent crimes.
This is obviously ripe for abuse, as in OP's case, but if some MAGA cultist Tweeted about hanging Mike Pence, and he got pulled-over driving into the Capital on the morning of January 6th, maybe the cops should give him a little extra questioning. Not so sure I'd be mad at that.
The only way you can justify this point of view is by using the most extreme case where you have implied violence in a public medium.
99.9% of people's facebook posts don't look anything like that. You're essentially using the argument of "if you have nothing to hide, why should you be against this"
Good point (extreme case). However, the "nothing to hide" argument isn't relevant because nothing is hidden; this is all public data. The quick counter-argument seems to be, "You're not trying to hide, so you've got not claim to any sort of privacy rights."
And, once again, I'm pretty much just playing the devil's advocate. My real concern isn't so much the visibility of the data, it's the analysis of the data. Any conclusion can be drawn from any data set, given sloppy enough analysis. I learned this back in the 90s, doing performance testing for a large pharma, comparing an app written in C and the same app written in something called "Java". My mentor, and old school C programmer, told me, "The data is what we say it is." Guess what? The app written in C performed better, and the young punk "Java" programmers lost the contract. The bad old days. The point is, if cops are buying this data and the analysis, the data companies know what the cops want, and they'll give it to them. That's scary.
I can imagine why honestly as a local. Recently there have been a LOT of street races and especially takeovers, where 300 people with drugs and alcohol gather at a random intersection in LA and watch some dumb people do donuts until the cops show up and clear it out. There have been a lot of injuries and deaths from both innocent pedestrians walking by, and people bringing guns to these events and getting into shootouts with other people who bring guns. Where do I see these videos of people getting hit by cars at these takeovers and sideshows? On instagram, on the public account of one of the assholes who owns these cars and does this stuff every single weekend.
This is 2021, people live stream themselves on social media committing crimes like illegal racing, flaunting unregistered guns, and breaking into federal buildings in D.C.. If a cop is able to connect these accounts to individuals and make arrests, all the better. A lot of people are reckless idiots that just put others in danger constantly, and they rarely are stopped before they put someone else in harms way.
Police have no "need" to collect any info on anyone, but regardless of that people do things that they don't need to do every day. In this case, it seems like they've decided that it makes their jobs easier if they ask for this info, so they do.
How in the WORLD does this type of article even make sense? Do you realize how many traffic and other stops there are?
JUST based off the headline I can guess that this headline is total BS.
When social media makes a lot of sense. If you are doing any kind of investigation - social media would be a goldmine. Someone filing a complaint but social media tells a story - you should be getting that. Prosecutor, defense attorneys will be for sure.
So what WOULD make sense is not to do a social media thing for every stop (of which there are tons and tons), but focus on investigations and interviews. They should already be collecting contact info like email / phone and address etc, so you would add it there.
Anyways, someone else can read and summarize for us, because this headline looks like absolute trash and even if you are a conspiracy nut, the idea that every stop is getting social media written down is fantastical.
Journalism is basically crap at this point. Can we stop rewarding this outraging clickbait stories?
Most of the traffic stops I've experienced have involved a long series of questions followed by a long computer look up. "Can you give me your social media accounts" wouldn't slow things down. The cops would just write it down and send it to a database. Of course, a person could lie and the cop wouldn't check it then-and-there but there's the implicit threat that the cops might check it later if they were interested in you.
Is there any actual evidence AT ALL that they are asking for social media at traffic stops?
There is a big diff between "license and registration" and what this headline is claiming.
[edited] - Correction: There has been a big push to collect data on all stops (primarily race etc) so it is actually likely it looks like that all stops are getting FI Card completions in many jurisdictions.
The OP, a detailed article from creditable news source saying that the LAPD has directed officers to do this, would normally be considered evidence. What is your concept of evidence.
Your complaint seems addressed to the OP, perhaps you should post it at that level rather than a reply to my particular comment. My (original) comment here being simply that adding a question concerning social media would be practical for police officer making a traffic stop.
It makes sense to do it at the stop when you have people with crimes all over their social media. I'll give you an example:
Cop pulls over someone with a fast car and burnt rubber all over their rear bumper. They didn't see a crime but its obvious that this doesn't happen going the speed limit and driving like you are sane. They ask for the drivers instagram account, then they see their page where this driver and car were doing donuts in an intersection last night, and rightfully the driver gets arrested.
So they say it was a different driver or a different car. Or they give a fake Instagram handle. Or they say the post is faked.
If you see evidence of a crime online, you should go and find the perpetrator based on that, not hope that you randomly stop him and find evidence because they are stupid enough to give the right handle.
Also, do you think it's okay for the police to totally ransack your car, because you might carry drugs or a corpse and get "rightfully arrested" because of that? I'm pretty sure you agree this would be over the line, so I don't see why scouring your social media in the hopes of getting a conviction is okay. Especially since this is just a minor extension away from looking through your DMs, and then your WhatsApp chat history ...
Without individualized suspicion, the police can barely even ask for ID. They've lost cases over it. Even with suspicion, it's unlikely that they can forcefully demand social media information. (They can, with sufficient evidence, arrest you and conduct a search of your person to try to uncover it, but arrests are a big deal; they can't dragnet arrest.)
With that in mind, I assume the productive article to write here is the one framed around informing people that they shouldn't cooperate with requests like these.