Because of the Fifth Amendment, no one in the U.S. may legally be forced to testify against himself, and because of the Fourth Amendment, no oneâs records or belongings may legally be searched or seized without just cause. However, American police are trained to use methods of deception, intimidation and manipulation to circumvent these restrictions. In other words, cops routinely break the lawâin letter and in spiritâin the name of enforcing the law. Several examples of this are widely known, if not widely understood.
1) âDo you know why I stopped you?â Cops ask this, not because they want to have a friendly chat, but because they want you to incriminate yourself. They are hoping you will âvoluntarilyâ confess to having broken the law, whether it was something they had already noticed or not. You may think you are apologizing, or explaining, or even making excuses, but from the copâs perspective, you are confessing. He is not there to serve you; he is there fishing for an excuse to fine or arrest you. In asking you the familiar question, he is essentially asking you what crime you just committed. And he will do this without giving you any âMirandaâ warning, in an effort to trick you into testifying against yourself.
2) âDo you have something to hide?â Police often talk as if you need a good reason for not answering whatever questions they ask, or for not consenting to a warrantless search of your person, your car, or even your home. The ridiculous implication is that if you havenât committed a crime, you should be happy to be subjected to random interrogations and searches. This turns the concept of due process on its head, as the cop tries to put the burden on you to prove your innocence, while implying that your failure to âcooperateâ with random harassment must be evidence of guilt.
3) âCooperating will make things easier on you.â The logical converse of this statement implies that refusing to answer questions and refusing to consent to a search will make things more difficult for you. In other words, you will be punished if you exercise your rights. Of course, if they coerce you into giving them a reason to fine or arrest you, they will claim that you âvoluntarilyâ answered questions and âconsentedâ to a search, and will pretend there was no veiled threat of what they might do to you if you did not willingly âcooperate.â (Such tactics are also used by prosecutors and judges via the procedure of âplea-bargaining,â whereby someone accused of a crime is essentially told that if he confesses guiltâthus relieving the government of having to present evidence or prove anythingâthen his suffering will be reduced. In fact, âplea bargainingâ is illegal in many countries precisely because it basically constitutes coerced confessions.)
4) âWeâll just get a warrant.â Cops may try to persuade you to âconsentâ to a search by claiming that they could easily just go get a warrant if you donât consent. This is just another ploy to intimidate people into surrendering their rights, with the implication again being that whoever inconveniences the police by requiring them to go through the process of getting a warrant will receive worse treatment than one who âcooperates.â But by definition, one who is threatened or intimidated into âconsentingâ has not truly consented to anything.
5.) We have someone who will testify against you Police âinformantsâ are often individuals whose own legal troubles have put them in a position where they can be used by the police to circumvent and undermine the constitutional rights of others. For example, once the police have something to hold over one individual, they can then bully that individual into giving false, anonymous testimony which can be used to obtain search warrants to use against others. Even if the informant gets caught lying, the police can say they didnât know, making this tactic cowardly and illegal, but also very effective at getting around constitutional restrictions.
6) âWe can hold you for 72 hours without charging you.â Based only on claimed suspicion, even without enough evidence or other probable cause to charge you with a crime, the police can kidnap youâor threaten to kidnap youâand use that to persuade you to confess to some relatively minor offense. Using this tactic, which borders on being torture, police can obtain confessions they know to be false, from people whose only concern, then and there, is to be released.
7) âIâm going to search you for my own safety.â Using so-called âTerry frisksâ (named after the Supreme Court case of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1), police can carry out certain limited searches, without any warrant or probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, under the guise of checking for weapons. By simply asserting that someone might have a weapon, police can disregard and circumvent the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches.
U.S. courts have gone back and forth in deciding how often, and in what circumstances, tactics like those mentioned above are acceptable. And of course, police continually go far beyond anything the courts have declared to be âlegalâ anyway. But aside from nitpicking legal technicalities, both coerced confessions and unreasonable searches are still unconstitutional, and therefore âillegal,â regardless of the rationale or excuses used to try to justify them. Yet, all too often, cops show that to them, the Fourth and Fifth Amendmentsâand any other restrictions on their powerâare simply technical inconveniences for them to try to get around. In other words, they will break the law whenever they can get away with it if it serves their own agenda and power, and they will ironically insist that they need to do that in order to catch âlaw-breakersâ (the kind who donât wear badges).
Of course, if the above tactics fail, police can simply bully people into confessingâfalsely or truthfullyâand/or carry out unconstitutional searches, knowing that the likelihood of cops having to face any punishment for doing so is extremely low. Usually all that happens, even when a search was unquestionably and obviously illegal, or when a confession was clearly coerced, is that any evidence obtained from the illegal search or forced confession is excluded from being allowed at trial. Of course, if there is no trialâeither because the person plea-bargains or because there was no evidence and no crimeâthe âexclusionary ruleâ creates no deterrent at all. The police can, and do, routinely break the law and violate individual rights, knowing that there will be no adverse repercussions for them having done so.
Likewise, the police can lie under oath, plant evidence, falsely charge people with âresisting arrestâ or âassaulting an officer,â and commit other blatantly illegal acts, knowing full well that their fellow gang membersâofficers, prosecutors and judgesâwill almost never hold them accountable for their crimes. Even much of the general public still presumes innocence when it comes to cops accused of wrong-doing, while presuming guilt when the cops accuse someone else of wrong-doing. But this is gradually changing, as the amount of video evidence showing the true nature of the âStreet Gang in Blueâ becomes too much even for many police-apologists to ignore.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/7-ways-police-will-break-law-threaten-or-lie-you-get-what-they-want
One of the biggest realizations with dealing with cops for me was the fact that they CAN lie, they are 100% legally entitled to lie, and they WILL whether youâre a victim of crime, accused of committing a crime or anything else
Everyone needs to reblog this, it could save a life.
Important
Seriously if you ever find yourself in custody donât say shit until youâve got some counsel with you. No cop is your friend in that situation.
the us police force is practically a terrorist organization
This is important.
Hard to write out my thoughts hereâŠ. Iâve always respected the difficult situation of a good cop, and prepared to deal with a bad one. People need to understand that all of them just want to go home at the end of their shift, have a beer, kiss the wife, and watch a show with the kids. Yes there are assholes who abuse their power. You see them everywhere in every profession, Iâve seen them in Nurses, Doctors, Medics, and even in EMTs. People like that are everywhere, but donât shit on everyone just because a few are rotten, give the good ones their props when theyâre earned, and freeze out the bad. Yes, they take on the job, they take on the risk, itâs their duty, but weâre all trying to get home at the end of the night. How many of you give a guy or gal in uniform a dirty look because of the shitheads you see on TV? How many of you would like the same shit thrown your way at your job because you dumbass co-worker pulled something fucked? If you want to dish it out then you better have the balls to take it when it happens to you.
While I think your intention was correct, you are missing the point.
The above is methods taught by to and used by good cops. None of that is legally considered âbadâ by cops or courts.
Yes, bad cops exist. And they do way worse than all of that stuff up there. Cops for the most part are a neccesary evil just linked govt. But they are still and evil. Thatâs why courts exist to keep them in check. Iâve been arrested on bullshit charges several times just because a âgoodâ cop wanted to âsolve a problem peacefully.â
They donât give a shit or know about the law. There is case law that says they donât have to. They only exist to investigate and maintain order. Itâs up to others to actually practice law.
âNecessary Evilâ, sad to see thatâs all people see the uniform as, funny really. Iâm sorry you had a shit run with a few people, but if thatâs what you think and this is what you have to say then you missed the part about those who abuse their power. I know they have it, the power to royally fuck up your life for trumped up bullshit, but thatâs not the job. A âGoodâ Cop has that power, and chooses not to use it, and then he has to take shit for the guys that do. That is my point, you throw them in the grinder with the old assholes who donât give a shit, then you call them a âNecessary Evilâ when they show up to the worst humanity has to offer, you compare them to the Government. Itâs always easier to think of them as a uniform, a badge number, instead of your neighbor who wanted to protect your town, that guy who has a wife and kids that lives on your street. Yeah he has all these tricks up his sleeve when heâs on duty, and no the Courts donât find them âlegally consider badâ (those same courts that keep them in check) but you want to support the source poster of this when he calls them a âStreet Gang in Blueâ? A Good Cop swears to and KEEPS an Oath, compare it to your source poster for reference and tell me again that I missed something.
Way to miss the point, yet again. I am not criticizing all the people that are cops. I am criticizing the job. Good people do morally bad things in the name of keeping the peace.
All laws, all govt, are a necessary evil. By extension all those who serve the laws and govt are.
There should be no reason for cops to exist. There should be no reason for laws to exist.
They exist because bad people exist.
All laws are inherently restrictions of free people at gun point. All those who enforce laws are restricting free people at gun point. Thatâs a neccesary evil. Can you at least concede that?
I am not saying they are not good people. I am saying their job and what it entails is evil that is needed for a civilized society as long as bad people exist. Itâs a neccesary evil.
As long as humans have free will a force is needed to restrict that free will because humans are flawed and will abuse that.
There is not a single cop on the world that knows every law. Itâs impossible. Itâs impossible to find a single cop that 100% vigilate on your oath. Every single one has done something. That guy down the street that you are sanctimonious about? You going to say he didnât let a friend off or never help someone with a ticket? Never let someone slide one something? Thatâs all corruption and a violation of your oath at some level. Itâs not a matter of if cop is good or bad as person. Itâs a scale of how corrupt. You can not say there is not a single cop out there that has not abused the power in some way. Parked illegally. Ran someoneâs info. Ran a light. Speeding. It may be small and insignificant to most, but itâs an abuse.
For the most part most cops are good people. I will never say otherwise. But every single cop is a neccesary evil. That does not mean they are bad people. I know this will go over your head yet again.
No, Godzillrolls is not missing the point. As someone who is a LE Trainer and monitor of all the trainers in my State i have never seen or heard of ANY LE Academy teaching the use of the above as you have described. Sounds as if you live in an extreme Left Wing fantasy land.
