About the Police

[teddywolf]

One of the recent flaps that has gone back and forth between real life and online has tangentially brought up attitudes toward the police. One of the important things about modern civic police forces is that they gain their legitimacy through fair, nondiscriminatory and effective police work. So, I wanted to ask people at large.

You can make comments below. People can comment anonymously here. And for anybody who is coming here for the first time and is worried, I have never worked for or with any law enforcement agency and do not currently work for or with one.

[Poll #1974926]

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Interesting... I watched the first 15 minutes or so. I'm not impressed with the professor himself; there seems to be a lot of showmanship and he's pretty thin on hard data. His message seems to actually be "Don't say anything to the police if you have reason to think they suspect you of a crime.", although he phrases it in much more blanket (and inflammatory) terms. I don't know of any reason to believe that is incorrect.

Of course, his data is going to be skewed by being a criminal defense attorney. He hasn't been hanging around with nice people, and they're the people the police will be dealing with particularly badly.

The usual caveats should be applied: Beware if the police think of you as being intrinsically undesirable. Beware if the police think you've gotten away with a lot of crime. Beware if the police think of you as a certain sort of criminal who would be a good target for being framed for an instance of that sort of crime (that someone else committed). Don't get into dominance combat with a cop. Live your life so that a jury would find it intrinsically implausible that you would commit a crime (or at least, any crime you're not willing to take the heat for).

The system is there to protect the generic "you" (and that's only when it's working correctly). It's not there to protect you personally.