> After hours of interrogation, police told one of the teenagers, Terrill Swift, that if he just confessed to being at the scene he could go home — so he did.
What's the advantage to society of allowing interviewers to lie (to anyone, let alone kids)? Not just insinuate something like "your partner's in the next room, it's only a matter of time until he talks so you should come clean now", but blatantly lie and then be able to rely on the result of that in court?
It kinda feels a little like the common law doctrine of Promissary Estoppel [0] where if someone relies on something you've promised, you can't then hold them responsible for relying on that thing.
I also never understood this. It almost seems as if interrogations aren't for discovery of information but moreso "we have this lead and we're going to beat you into submission until you confirm our lead".
You see it all the time with wrongful convictions and people signing confessions to crimes they didn't commit. I often wonder in these cases, do the officers, does law enforcement in this case really care who did it? If you bring someone in and interrogate them for 12+ hours and eventually they give you the answer you want to hear, do they never stop and ask themselves if the reason the person gave that answer is simply to make whatever they were doing stop?
It seems like some of these investigations the point isn't to solve the crime, but to dot the I's and cross your T's. It seems like actual public safety is an afterthought as long as you "catch the criminal" on paper.
I saw something before that said something like 80% of cops thought they had never arrested an innocent person. From that, it is likely that they believe these people are the criminals but the crafty villains won't admit it without being tricked.
It's slightly less disturbing to think that the cops legitimately think they're doing a good job over the alternative of intentionally ignoring their responsibility. Still troubling to think they could be that deluded.
This attitude is less hard to understand when you’re not looking at it through the filter of cases where that happened not to be true. When I worked for a federal judge I saw a ton of criminal appeals. Most criminals are dumb and usually there was just a plethora of evidence in the case. I can see why it would be very easy for cops to think that every case was that way, rather than just 98% of them. I have public defender friends. They’ll tell you, in almost every case their client is guilty of something. Their job is to make sure the police and prosecutors don’t overreach or act abusively and save the rare person who really is innocent.
That’s the key factor that outsiders looking into the criminal justice system overlook. They think it’s easy. “Just stop being racist, corrupt, etc.” It’s a system where day in and day out, almost everyone you encounter is a really shitty human being. Reforming the system is important, but it’s much harder than people think.
> It’s a system where day in and day out, almost everyone you encounter is a really shitty human being.
This is categorically not true. Police have to deal with some very problematic people, sure. But bad days are far more common that bad people, and most interactions aren't even that.
Every police force has its share of assholes too, who are net cause of more problems than they solve. The most effective ones I've known have been aware of the systemic problems of thinking like you suggest, and intentionally work against it.
When I say “criminal justice system” I’m talking in the context of this article (people who are arrested and prosecuted). Obviously most interactions with the police are with normal people and don’t lead to anything major.
But randomly pick out some sentencing hearings one day at your local federal court. They’ll go over the rap sheet of people who actually go to prison. It’s eye opening.
You can even see this in the criminal justice advocacy materials if you read carefully. I love the ACLU but if you read beyond the headline in many cases it’s quite revealing. I remember a case a few years ago where the headline was some “child” was imprisoned simply for being at a scene where a pizza delivery guy was murdered in broad daylight. Turns out he was actually in a gang, who murdered the guy in cold blood, and the legal theory is that the cops can’t prove which kid actually fired the shots. You can find the legal theory compelling (and I do) while acknowledging that this is the kind of shit that turns up even when social justice types are trying to pick impact cases.
Or heck George Floyd. I think the media overlooked a really important angle on this story that would have spoke to religious people. Floyd was a guy who spent most of his life being a pretty bad person: https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-us-news-ap-top-new...
But he had found Jesus, he was turning his life around and reaching out to kids, and when Derek Chauvin murdered him he cut short what could have been a path to redemption. Reflexively saying “criminals don’t deserve to be murdered” when Floyd’s background comes up is a tautology. Sure. But does pretending that stuff never happened help you understand the real human story of Floyd, Chauvin, and the people in that community? Why making progress on criminal justice reform is so hard even as it’s extremely necessary? Is your phat dismissal and reduction of people to a demons and angels binary persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already agree with you?
Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic.
It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police work which was more my point; lots of people make excuses for the excesses of these systems based on this sort of "98%" (or whatever big number) argument; mostly those excuses are pure fertilizer.
> Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic.
Good people don't rob their neighbors because they're "having a bad day." They're shitty people. And no, poverty doesn't excuse it. People in Bangladesh, where I'm from, are vastly poorer. If poverty caused crime, they'd go around stealing, joining gangs, etc. But mostly they don't. In Bangladeshi villages, crime is lower than in U.S. cities. And when they do those things, nobody hesitates to call them shitty people!
I'm extremely sympathetic to police reform, because I think even shitty people don't deserve to be abused by the state. But let's not mince words here.
> It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police work which was more my point
That may be your point, but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding. My point was in the context of this article, which is about someone who was prosecuted for brutally raping and murdering a woman.
The narrative that you can perform some sort of binary classification into "good people" and "shitty people", and the the latter is who shows up nearly exclusively in the justice system (and, critically that the converse might be true) falls apart under any real scrutiny.
> but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding.
Neither was I. I was talking about the majority of all the work they do.
Everyone can identify clearly horrible behavior, and often it is police who have to deal with this as part of their job. This is difficult and unfortunate, but it is not the defining characteristic of the work. Pretending that it is in order to somehow excuse bad behavior on their part doesn't do anyone favors.
It depends on what part of the system you’re in, and much of the criminal justice system exists after an initial filter and with a particular pipeline that it’s almost impossible to avoid a bias against on a day to day basis.
If your job is to do image/video forensics on hard drives of people already arrested or served with warrants, it’s generally either unremarkable or traumatically upsetting. The latter is going to have the most impact on your perception, and would likely color your worldview on things like encryption or the overall goodness of humanity.
This is true, I originally had a comment about narrower roles but thought it was a a distraction. If you are looking at the justice system as a whole, the pool of people shifts a fair bit. However, you have to pick an extremely narrow role before you are anywhere close to GP's "almost everyone is shitty" characterization.
My comment was more aimed at general policing, the vast majority of which fits my characterization.
> Every police force has its share of assholes too
Due to the nature of the job, and the perks and impunity of it in the US, it actually self selects for assholes. The military does as well, to a much lesser extent. There were some days when I went to bed thinking, "everyone I talked to today was a self important asshole."
>This attitude is less hard to understand when you’re not looking at it through the filter of cases where that happened not to be true
Nope, the attitude of "I never make mistakes" still baffles my mind. I get that most people they're dealing with are causing some amount of trouble, they should still regularly doubt their instincts. That would also go a long way to answering demands to "stop being racist."
>It’s a system where day in and day out, almost everyone you encounter is a really shitty human being.
If they hold that mindset, they should just extend it to themselves and the other people in the criminal justice system.
Perhaps the FBI should "adversarially test" police forces with fake People of Interest, the way DHS adversarially tests TSA agents with fake bombs. Set up a fake BOLO for an individual of a certain description, then hire a set of undercover actors who all fit that description, and drop them in the area, telling them to wander around acting suspiciously.
If the officers don't realize, upon bringing five separate people in on the same description, that at least four of them have to be the wrong guy, then they fail the test. If they end up eliminating four of the five but then concluding that the last guy actually did it, they also fail the test.
No offense, but this is exactly the kind of proposal I would expect from a software developer. It would work perfectly with a program where everything is nice and clean:
INSERT fake_actor() 5 TIMES
SELECT suspects()
CHECK officer_state_of_mind()
In the real world, as somebody already said, the logistics of hiring 5 actors to act "suspicious", get themselves arrested, set up plausible backstories that you would somehow have to keep from the police, potentially expose them to bodily harm, the legal consequences if something go wrong, etc?
I'm going to assume you're proposing this as a thought experiment and not something that could actually work.
[And I mean this in the nicest of ways, I construct these kinds of "solutions" constantly too]
I wasn’t so much proposing hiring five professional actors; rather, doing what police forces themselves do to set up a sting — finding five FBI officers that all happen to look similar, cleaning them up to look even more similar to one-another, training them in espionage / counter-counter-intelligence techniques, and then phrasing the BOLO in such a way that it avoids mentioning their differences.
> potentially expose them to bodily harm, the legal consequences if something go wrong
Presume that the FBI is staking out the police building and has (compelled) the cooperation of the local sheriff, in exactly the same way white-hat social-engineering pen-testers work in cooperation with the management of the organizations they attempt to penetrate. Presume also that, unknown to the police, no real suspects are being simultaneously processed (all have been redirected to other neighbouring precincts) and so all police suppression equipment has been swapped out for non-working versions. (If you try to taze or shoot the suspect, you lose.)
To be clear, this is a setup that already happens when there is an officer under FBI suspicion of being complicit/involved in criminal activity. The FBI comes in and works with the precinct to set up an internal sting. The only difference, here, is that this involves all the officers of the precinct, rather than just one.
You think it's a bad idea just because of logistics? Compared to other things the FBI does I don't understand why you think this would be unreasonable from a logistics standpoint
No, it's higher. Because you aren't just a random person you are purposefully intending to look and act like someone accused.
I get the whole purpose of "yes, people are stopped every day because they resemble someone wanted", but this is "I am going to go out of my way to purposefully resemble and act like someone who the police will take a negative interest in".
It'd certainly lead to deaths and injury if it were implemented today, but after police get the idea that anyone they pick up might be innocent and that they'll be held meaningfully accountable for shooting first and asking questions later that would change. I think in our current system it's totally unrealistic and not worth the risks but in a place where police weren't routinely abusive it'd probably be fine.
>It's slightly less disturbing to think that the cops legitimately think they're doing a good job over the alternative of intentionally ignoring their responsibility. Still troubling to think they could be that deluded.
Stalin truly believed what he was doing was for the greater good of the USSR. It's extremely easy to justify bad deeds and fool yourself that the ends justify the means.
Great illustration of why respect for individual rights is so important.
There will always be some megalomaniac, whether dictator, president, cop, or some authority figure, who "knows best".
Individual rights are the brakes. They're the lines we've agreed not to cross as a society, even when we're really sure we "know best". Example: property rights. No matter how sure you are that there's stolen property in the building, even law enforcement doesn't get to enter without a warrant.
Imagine if each of your cells had individual rights or every bee in a hive has freedom to do its own thing.
Sometimes (most?) having centralized systems of power can be misused but that doesn't mean that centralized systems shouldn't be tried, there are evolutionary advantages to them.
I don't know what your point is, GP's comment already mentions a case where authority can intrude on individual rights: warrants, and there are many additional exceptions. The point of this system is not to make individuals untouchable, its to lift the authority to intrude on personal liberties out of the hands of individual beat cops and into a well-defined system and public observable record through the courts.
This is a breath takingly disgusting over simplification and you know it.
How am I not surprised that you're the founder and CTO of a proctoring company that does facial recognition + AI to detect lying with "100% unbiased results". Fucking gross, man.
> Based on established models such as Big 5 and intrinsic values, TBI adds AI-powered Natural Language Processing to process data and help you make unbiased hiring decisions 100% of the time.
> TBI stack ranks candidates according to their performance in the assessment with regards to the competencies predetermined by the enterprise, ranging from 'essential' to 'good' and then 'critical'.
> Leverage psycholinguistics to analyze a candidate’s response and predict behavior in half the time.
So this company has layered AI on top of pseudoscience and is selling it as an automated hiring tool. I guess the hiring decisions are 100% unbiased if the results are indistinguishable from noise? Or maybe your hiring decisions are "unbiased" if you launder them through this software to produce a team that looks like your existing team?
Either way, this Talview company is doing some really evil stuff.
A personal attack is not appropriate for this forum. I wouldn't have a made personal attack on you even if you had put what is you do in your profile.
FWIW I am proud of what I build, our products for half a decade have helped people to be able to take assesments from their home, whether it's disabilities or those cannot lose time on their jobs or would have to travel hundreds of miles just to an exam center to be certified. I am proud to have helped all of them.
There are plenty of discussions to be had on universities or certification bodies insisting on stringent requirements to do remote assesments to protect their integrity but a personal attack is not really the way to engage on this topic
This seems like a valid, if hyperbolic, point to me. I think that one could make a plausible argument that one of the most basic implications of the principle of rule of law is that, at least where the police are concerned, the ends don't justify the means. Allowing them to behave otherwise isn't a slippery slope that leads to rampant abuse of power; it's a dead drop.
> Stalin truly believed what he was doing was for the greater good of the USSR. It's extremely easy to justify bad deeds and fool yourself that the ends justify the means.
Hitler as well.
I went to Catholic school. Had quite the debate with a nun over why I thought Hitler and Stalin both went to heaven, since both thought they were doing the right thing and were just horribly misguided.
Good point. More likely, he did what was good for himself personally, to stay in power etc. Whilst saying to others that he did what was good for the USSR. And then, seems many people still today believe him
>More likely, he did what was good for himself personally, to stay in power etc. Whilst saying to others that he did what was good for the USSR. And then, seems many people still today believe him
Stalin remained true to the Marxist ideal of a classless and stateless world society until his death in 1953. This is the conclusion of researchers at Amsterdam University (UvA) who studied Stalin's annotations in books by Marx, Engels and Lenin in his private library.
The notes originate from the period between 1917 and 1953 and show that the dictator continued to adhere to such Marxist goals as the abolition of the state and the creation of classless society. Moreover, Stalin's correspondence and discussions with such Communist leaders as Mao Zedong and Palmiro Togliatti show a continuing faith in the spread of communism and "world revolution".
A false preacher using his power for selfish purposes will carry a bible for show, maybe have a few stowed away. A false preacher certainly wouldn't have accumulated years of theology literature in his personal/private library over his lifetime. Seems like a true believer to me, but you may see it differently. Him being a true believer and having done what he did makes his particular flavor of human nature even more frightening.
Thanks for the quote and link, I didn't know about his annotations. Makes sense then that he was more a true believer
Still I'd think that primarily important thing for him was himself and personal power, and that if he had had to make a choice between ideologies and himself, he'd done what was better for him personally. I wonder if he looked at communism etc more like a powerful tool (or so he thought) for him to use, and then not surprising if he spent time studying it
From the article:
> show a continuing faith in the spread of communism and "world revolution".
That'd almost made him the dictator over the world? Who knows if that might have been a main goal, and communism a tool?
Police deal often with people who have long histories of arrest and so I think there's also a perverse component of, like, sure it's possible they're innocent of this particular crime, but we're not dealing with an innocent person, more broadly.
The show on Netflix "Making a Murderer" has some scary examples of this. Not only of the lying during interrogation but of just how pervasive this mentality is.
During an appeal to the 7th (iirc) District Court, the ADA's argument always came down to "What about Justice for the victim'a family?" like somehow it isn't even relevant anymore if they have the wrong guy or not - if they decided that the recently convicted was wrongfully convicted, it would be unfair to the victim's family to let him go, even if he isn't guilty.
Interrogations are where they think they have a case against you but it's not good enough so they try and mislead you into making their jobs easier by giving them more evidence against you.
If they're going through the effort of asking you questions in a controlled setting it's because they're trying to make sure anything they get is 100% unambiguously admissible in court.
>does law enforcement in this case really care who did it?
Law enforcement is an organization and all the baggage that usually comes with organizations still applies (eg maintaining the organization is a priority). LEOs are people that want to do people things - it's a job, not a way of life.
They also have a lot of political pressure to "solve crimes," which is literally a score board. I'm not excusing what they do in any way. It's a big mess of a system with too many incompetent bureaucratic careerists who seem to be short on ethics.
I liken it as a game which didn't take hackers into account when designing the system, and the hackers are now rampant, ruining the game, except it isn't a game.
They also have a lot of political pressure to "solve crimes," which is literally a score board.
While also being handicapped (budget cuts) and undermined (blamed) by politicians. On the one hand politicians demand lower crime, but at the same time denounce the police as the source of societal conflict.
Maybe looks are deceiving, but officers and their vehicles sure look like they're having a whole lot more money spent on them than they were in, say, the 90s. They have more stuff, it all looks fairly new, and it all looks slicker, meaner, and more "apart" from normal folks, than it used to. I'm not talking about SWAT or armored cars or any of that stuff, either, but normal stuff that ordinary officers wear, carry, and drive.
This. The rules that allow them to confiscate and sell or use materials deemed to be "having been used in aid of committing a crime" means the funding is actually drastically higher than it once was.
High enough for them to buy APCs for staging public relations events.
This does raise the question of how many cases are actually up in the air at all. One would think that given the IQ distribution of criminals a majority of cases involving arrests are quite open and shut, with suspects usually being caught either red handed or after not covering their tracks at all.
A justice system optimized for public safety will err on the side of putting aggressive, anti-social individuals behind bars rather than making absolutely sure they really did do the thing most of them were caught doing. Public safety is therefore orthogonal or even somewhat opposed to the pursuit of truth.
I think your baseline assumption about the US "justice system" should be that it is a horror show from top to bottom. If you expect any kind of rationality, fairness or common sense idea of justice, you will not find it.
You might find these videos interesting as they analyze interrogations and the subject's behavior. Sometimes the lying is part of eliciting responses that can be analyzed.
I completely agree. Some of the Jan 6 protestors have recently plead guilty to trespassing or similar petty nonsense after being held im solitary confinement for over 6 months in a DC jail. Solitary confinement for what ends up being a trespassing misdemeanor.
Actual public safety is an afterthought. The point isn’t to solve a crime, but to punish enemies or to boost conviction rates.
Are we talking about the people who participated in a violent insurrection against the US, or is this another group?
If you want to have nice things (eg: a democracy) then you can’t be letting people who commit some mild treason off just because they’re dumbasses who got caught up in the moment.
The next yahoo who decides they want to try and block the peaceful transfer of power needs to 100% understand that they will be prosecuted.
The parent comment says they "plead guilty to trespassing or similar petty nonsense" so I'd assume they weren't charged with "violent insurrection" and "mild treason."
And they got Capone for tax evasion. Brushing off a conviction under 18 U.S. Code § 1752 -- which seems to be what people are being charged[0] with -- as "petty nonsense" is itself misleading, as it's the part of law that deals with "PRESIDENTIAL AND PRESIDENTIAL STAFF ASSASSINATION, KIDNAPPING, AND ASSAULT"[1]
If you don't think the goal was violent insurrection then what, specifically, do you think the people were doing there?
They were protesting just fine outside of Congress, why did they go into congress? Why were they trying to find Nancy Pelosi? Why did the Capitol police think they needed to use deadly force?
There seems to be a lot of ignorance in this thread about interrogation techniques. The Toronto van killer interrogation is really instructive as to how the best interrogators conduct themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyHgtSy41VM
The suspect is repeatedly reminded of his right to counsel, given water, asked if he is hungry, etc. The intent here is to firmly establish that the suspect's rights have been respected - key to making sure the interrogation tapes are admissible in court.
The interrogator then proceeds to tell a series of lies about his background and interests to build rapport with the suspect - he's clearly done his research beforehand to understand which buttons he needs to push.
By the end of the two-hours-and-change video, Minassian has opened up and produced a confession so good that his defence counsel could only try to argue that he wasn't of sound mind.
Not all interrogators are this skilled - this was a very high-profile case, so the Toronto Police deployed their best - but it seems obvious that better training rather than banning useful techniques would result in more favourable outcomes.
There is still the issue of innocent people getting caught up in the system or admitting to crimes they didn't commit, but I'd suggest that there are better approaches like, once again, education of the public. You might be uncomfortable and scared for some period of time, but you do not have to talk to the police.
> The interrogator then proceeds to tell a series of lies about his background and interests to build rapport with the suspect - he's clearly done his research beforehand to understand which buttons he needs to push.
I feel like there's a fundamental difference between an interrogator lying about his own back story to build rapport and them lying about other evidence, witnesses or their authority to make a deal, etc.
From what I've seen in the USA they normally lie about evidence and witnesses but they are careful to never lie explicitly about making a deal. That can apparently screw up the entire case, I think because of a supreme court decision.
Note that -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- Canada has a weird system where the suspect isn't allowed to leave the interrogation (but surely there's a time limit?). I've seen videos where the suspect just sits silently while an interrogator mentally exhausts them by asking the same question over and over. I believe in America the suspect would either just leave the room or, if already in jail, go back to their cell.
Not a lawyer, but Canada's system differs in a few ways from the US. There's no right to have a lawyer present, only to speak to a lawyer (usually by phone). So you're on your own in the interrogation room.
If you're not being charged with anything, you're not required to voluntarily show up for an interrogation. If you're detained, you can always ask "Am I free to leave?" and, if they answer yes, just walk out.
Police are permitted to keep asking you the same question even if you repeatedly say "My lawyer has instructed me not to answer questions", but obviously there's a line where it will start to look abusive on the tape and where the interrogator will just get frustrated and end the interview.
You can't be compelled to testify against yourself, but others can potentially be compelled to testify against you (on the condition that their testimony can't be used to incriminate them in the future).
Simple: The attitude held by many in the law enforcement and justice system is that if you get swept up by police, you're probably guilty of something, so getting you off the street - even by coercing a false statement - makes the world a better place. The end justifying the means.
My neighborhood in Chicago has a cop enclave inside it and they are absolutely lighting up our neighborhood political discussion group irate about this law, talking about how many murders and rapists are going to go free.
How likely are they to solve rapes and murders? Afaik, rapes are solved very rarely. Murders are more likely to be solved, but the numbers are still not all that great.
Based on arrest histories of gang members and failures to prosecute even closed cases, one should assume that there are a large number of serial killers operating in Chicago, many of who started as minors.
While most middle and upper class Americans dismiss this as just gang members killing each other, so it’s no big deal, this clearly would not be tolerated in a largely white suburban setting, gang associated or otherwise.
JFYI, you may be inferring "gang-caused" from "gang-related".
> An additional concern is the varying methods by which homicides are classified as “gang-related.” The most commonly used is the “member-based” approach, in which a homicide is classified as gang-related if the victim was and/or the perpetrator is a gang member.
Also, tons of people (850k - 1.4m) are classified as gang members. The criteria for being a gang member is very broad and includes friend groups who've been arrested:
- The group has three or more members, generally aged 12–24.
- Members share an identity, typically linked to a name, and often other symbols.
- Members view themselves as a gang, and they are recognized by others as a gang.
- The group has some permanence and a degree of organization.
- The group is involved in an elevated level of criminal activity.
You can compare these numbers to the total population of males (90% of gang members are male) in the 14-24 age range (I excluded the 10-14 population even though it's included in the 12-24 age range). Classifying 10% of the population as being in a gang basically makes the label useless since you can then call almost anything "gang-related".
{ latino: 5m, black: 3m, white non-latino: 15m }
{ latino: ~10%, black: ~10%, white non-latino: 1% }
It’s just an acedote, but: a friend of mine ended up in a gang database for identifying a gang member and stating he went to the same K-8 school as the gang member. This flagged him as someone with “known gang associates”. Years later, it almost cost him a job that conducted a background check, but he was ultimately able to dispute it.
Time and time again, we've seen how the justice system doesn't benefit society at large. At this point, I think it's naïve to think that's its goal. Instead, we see how it's about controlling people like Terrill Swift & feeding the prison industrial complex. In a lot of states (including Il), you can't vote while in prison. Having a conviction greatly lowers your ability to find a job, get a mortgage, or access to some government benefits.
Also Promissory Estoppel is a concept in contract law. Do you think a reasonable person would think that a police interrogation is a contract? Does it meet the elements of a contract? I don't think so.
I think the only layer that we can fix these kinds of issues is in court.
Juries should only be allowed to hear objective facts. No character testimonies, no eye witnesses, no confessions after a 12 hour interrogation. Objective facts only.
This would likely mean guilty people don't get convicted, but I think that is a worthy tradeoff for a more fair justice system. An innocent person going to jail is much more egregious than a guilty person going free.
The whole point of a jury trial is for the jury to decide what they believe are the facts from the evidence, testimony, and arguments provided by the lawyers on both sides. You are essentially proposing that we kneecap juries by taking the power of fact-finding away from them and handing it to another authority. That would undermine the check on government overreach juries are meant to provide.
You woefully undershoot the position of power that juries hold, and this is no surprise
The judicial system frowns on those who understand the concept of jury nullification.
The jury is the People's seat and primary check on the exercise of Governmental power. It's one more layer to the overall setup of checks and balances.
Good luck telling an eye witness that what they saw isn't an objective fact, or the DA that the handwritten, signed confession in his hand isn't an objective fact.
>>Good luck telling an eye witness that what they saw isn't an objective fact,
The thing is, we have studies upon studies upon studies that show repeatedly and undoubtedly that witness testimony is shit. If you show 10 people an event and ask them to describe what they saw an hour later, they will describe it in 10 different ways, frequently changing facts, adding things that never happened, or omitting important details. In trials, you get witness testimony from years before, and it's treated as if every single word said is absolute objective truth - like, we have the science to prove that no, actually, most likely it isn't, and it should be treated as "maybe true" at best.
But disregarding witness testimonies puts us on even more dangerous path: in order to know "objective facts" you need to put surveilance cameras and microphones everywhere so there is a video footage of every crime.
> The thing is, we have studies upon studies upon studies that show repeatedly and undoubtedly that witness testimony is shit.
Like so many things, I think the mistake here is to assume you can educate your way out of this. You could send every citizen through a six-week course on the problems with eye-witness testimony and some percentage of them will come out on the other side of that training insisting that, nah, if somebody says they saw the crime, then they saw it. We're talking about deep psychological biases carefully shaped by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
An eyewitness will tell the DA that they don't remember shit about what happened years ago, and the DA will reassure them that they police have ways of making them remember.
Source: A close friend of mine is getting pulled in to testify in a criminal case about some junkie that they may have called the police on three years ago. He has called the police so many times, and has dealt with so many sketchy, drug-influenced people, he can't even remember what the person in question did.
> Time and time again, we've seen how the justice system doesn't benefit society at large.
Do you mean to imply that we've seen examples of how the justice system, on balance, does not benefit society at large? As in, adding up all the positives and negatives of the justice system, we'd be better off without it? If so, I'd want to see what those examples you mention are.
I completely agree about Promissory Estoppel and contract law. I was (perhaps unclearly) trying to demonstrate that other areas of the law do address the principle of relying on a promise when making a decision.
I think the principle could and should apply to some extent in this situation here too.
Something like: if you were misled into making a confession - perhaps relying on a promise or lie told to you by the interviewer - then at the very least that confession should be considered deeply suspect.
Oh boy, I don't think you've seen many interrogations.
I've spent the past two weeks watching JCS - Criminal Psychology on YouTube. Lies are clearly a core part of interrogations. I haven't ever seen one where lying wasn't a core part of the strategy of the interrogator. Go watch some videos on that channel. It's really, really interesting.
Because the purpose of the police are not actually there to protect society. They’re there to protect the existing social order. Anything else is a fringe benefit, at best.
What would be the difference between those two things? As in, what would a police who’s job it was to “protect society” do that current police do not? Or vice-versa, would such a police still protect from theft or violence?
They would still protect from theft and violence, of course. Lets keep in mind that as it stands now, the police don't do that great in the realm of theft anyway.[0] But there are many shortfalls in the system as a whole, and not just the beat cops doing the policing. We need police back in neighborhoods, doing beat patrols, living the in cities and suburbs they police, not commuting in from an hour away. Being rich shouldn't be an easy out because you can hire a high power lawyer, or treat most offences as a minor fine. Why does robbing the bank from the inside get a relative slap on the wrist, while robbing it through the front door gets you shot?
Lets hit a few high points:
End the 'boys club', actually go after sex crimes with a sense of urgency and not let rape kits pile up in evidence rooms, untested?[1]
Not run straight up black sites?[2]
Properly allow freedom of speech and expression, and not come down harder on protests the police themselves don't agree with?[3]
Do a little introspection and address the rampant domestic abuse perpetrated by police?[4]
> Why does robbing the bank from the inside get a relative slap on the wrist, while robbing it through the front door gets you shot?
Because when you rob it from the outside you're probably using violence to threaten people with their lives. You don't think that's many, many times worse than someone cooking the books or stealing from the register?
There are plenty of cases where the social standing of the defendant is determinant of the level of violence brought. Consider shop lifting vs. wage theft. Both are non violent, the latter is estimated to be many times more prevalent than the former. Only one will get you violently arrested though, and one is far more likely to be prosecuted than the other.
> What would be the difference between those two things?
The difference between those things is who the police actually do anything for. Who gets (violently) arrested and who gets away with it is strongly connected with your position in social order. Simply put, steal $20 from the register or a loaf of bread from the store and the state will pony up tens of thousands of dollars to try and arrest you, detain you, prosecute you, and punish you. But if you decide to steal overtime from your employees, what do you think the chances are of you finding yourself in cuffs? It's estimated that wage theft involves three fold as much theft as other kinds of robbery combined; why is violence necessary to stop 1/4 of theft, but not the remaining 3/4?
Take a look at protestors too, and see how the police change treatment based on the content of the protest. It's been shown that cops are 3x more likely to react violently to left wing protests than right wing protests in general, and 3.5x more likely to attack peaceful left wing protests than peaceful right wing protests. That is not protecting society, that is protecting the social order.
> As in, what would a police who’s job it was to “protect society” do that current police do not?
Processing all the rape kits they have sitting around would be a fantastic start. Nationally the clearance rates for all kinds of violent crimes are abysmal, maybe cops should stop focusing on grifting overtime and do something about that?
More importantly, a cop whose job is to protect society should stop doing things that are actively harmful to society. Such a list would include but is not limited to:
Not shooting unarmed people, not choking a handcuffed man to death, not tear gassing whole city blocks after being ordered not to by their bosses, not pulling over black people at unusually high rates, not destroying homeless camps, not destroying cooling centers for the homeless during a historic heat wave, not lying to children to make them confess, not beating a family near a protest and then pretending that "antifa" abandoned the child at a "riot", not arresting citizens that they ran into while driving recklessly, not lying in court repeatedly and constantly to get convictions of the poor and powerless, not abusing people in their custody, not raping people in their custody, and not protecting other cops that blatantly break the law.
Cops in the United States have effective blanket immunity for anything short of calmly strangling a handcuffed man on camera[0]. Not only is there no effective means for them to be prosecuted, given the close reliance DAs have on cops, but there is also a specific carve out for them to be protected from civil liability that is absurdly protective of them. Simply put, unless if a cop does something that has specific precedent for, you cannot sue them. And very little precedent can be made because nobody can sue them in order to create precedent. This gets down to the level of "sending the attack dogs against a surrendering person in the woods is a violation of their rights, but not in a 'grassy ditch' because there is no precedent for that in a ditch. Case dismissed". A police force that is supposed to protect society would itself be expected to actually follow the laws that they are nominally enforcing, not be given special protection from illegal conduct.
> Or vice-versa, would such a police still protect from theft or violence?
Do you believe that cops actually protect you from theft and violence? How soon do you believe a cop will be there if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night? Cops are really there to punish people after the fact, not to protect you[1][2]. How much effort they'll put into actually solving the crime is very much dependent on who you are and what happened to you. Ask a rape survivor how sympathetic and helpful the cops were, if you can stomach such stories.
0 - Make no mistake, Derek Chauvin would still be a cop if that had not been video taped. The official police press release after that was that a man died due to a "medical incident" in their care; a blatant lie. Makes you wonder how many citizens cops have murdered and blamed it on drugs or "medical incidents".
1 - Well, that and arrest random people to find drugs and steal money from citizens to fund their own department.
2 - They in fact have no legal obligation to try and protect you from violence.
It seems to me like there's two main kinds of lies that interrogators use:
1. Lies about the process / promissary lies. e.g. "If you just confess, you can go home."
2. Lies about evidence. e.g. "We talked to {Friend|Family|Co-conspirator} and they said you did it and they have the {item} to prove it. It's not going to look good if you continue to lie to me."
#1 seems obviously bad to me. Too high of a risk of tricking innocent people into thinking they can end the stress by falsely confessing.
#2 seems less bad, possibly beneficial. There are other comments about how this can speed up interrogations by getting people who are guilty to think they've been caught and confess. I could be convinced otherwise.
In my opinion, sounds like 1 and 2 should be illegal for minors. But 1 should be illegal in general, for adults too.
An innocent person who hears #2 may reason that the police are faking evidence, they'd better give a fake confession because otherwise the police will just use the faked evidence in court. He may not be up to date on the laws about exactly at what steps in the process the police are allowed to use the fake evidence.
Alternatively, he might think that his friend actually implicated him and that he has the choice of saying nothing and being convicted because of that, or confessing to a lesser charge.
Alternately, he might just think that police who'd fake evidence are corrupt, and that corrupt police could do a lot worse, like fake evidence against his whole family or just shoot him, so he'd better confess just to come out of this alive.
Police are allowed to lie to you [0] and it's been a staple of police investigations and interrogations ever since. In reading this article I'm horrified that police were ever allowed to lie to children.
Not exactly. The jury is explicitly allowed to infer that the suspect had a reason to hide something if they rely in court on something that they refused to reveal during interviews.
Is that strictly the case? I thought it was more like "if you remain silent initially that can be used against you if you later try to make statements in your defense"
My understanding is that it's both. If you bring up an alibi during trial, but never mentioned it during interrogation, it is an indication of guilt. If you don't say anything at all during either trial, or interrogation, it is also an indication of guilt.
I'm not sure how much difference it makes in practice. It's the jury that decide. A jury in the US might equally be suspicious of an alibi that the defendant didn't mention until late in the process.
Also, it's not really true that merely remaining silent is taken to be an indication of guilt. The point is that an adverse inference may be drawn from silence in basically the same way that an adverse inference may be drawn from a statement made to police. The prosecution can't just say "the defendant said nothing when questioned and is therefore guilty".
The jury can, of course, decide to convict a ham sandwich, or to let a blood-on-his-hands killer go, but the instructions given to the jury differ. That difference matters. If it didn't, the US could safely do away with the fifth amendment, and nothing of value would be lost.[1]
The point is that in the US, the prosecutor can't even suggest (well, they can suggest, but an objection will be raised) that the defendant's silence is an indication of guilt.
[1] Anyone who was compelled to testify against themselves would just point out that they did so under duress, and surely, a reasonable jury would throw that testimony out. I certainly would. For some reason though, we don't expect juries to be reasonable on this point.
I'm not seeing the analogy with the Fifth Amendment. The point about the Fifth Amendment is that you can't be punished for refusing to offer self-incriminating testimony (e.g. by being held in contempt of court). So it's not merely protecting you from whatever prejudices the jury might have about someone who refuses to testify. It's preventing you from being punished for the mere act of refusing to testify (whereas you cannot punish someone in the UK merely for refusing to answer police questions – except in a handful of very specific circumstances).
Indeed, yes, prosecutors have more free rein in the UK to suggest to the jury that someone's silence during question is incriminating. I just wonder if this makes much of a difference in practice. Do you know of any examples of cases in Britain where a conviction would most likely not have been obtained if the prosecutors were not permitted to do this?
On a more basic level, how is the context of the conversation less relevant than the exact wording of any given uttered sentence? IMHO, if a judge hears "well he told me to lie so I did", the whole interrogation ought to be thrown out as ineligible.
I ran into a similar situation once: an officer wanted to hear a very specific thing from me, so he asked me a question, then interrupted me mid-sentence when he heard the substring he wanted (the full sentence was along the lines of "we were planning on doing X, but not for another 5 years", where the point of contention was whether they could prove whether I was planning on doing X immediately), never mind that I was explicitly explaining how his theory was all wrong.
Thankfully for me, this was with the Canada Border agency, which has an appeals process, and surely enough, when they read my side of the story, they overruled the officer in my favor.
> IMHO, if a judge hears "well he told me to lie so I did", the whole interrogation ought to be thrown out as ineligible.
So, the defendant saying those magic words should automatically erase any statements the defendant made, whether or not the magic words are true? Or should perhaps, both the claim of inducement and the other statements remain in evidence, with the trier of fact deciding on the weight to give each?
IANAL but my understanding is that there are specific criteria for what is admissible and what isn't. For example, there are very specific heuristics for determining whether something is hearsay. What I'm saying is that there should be a clear cut list of criteria regarding which circumstances are admissible (e.g. was the confession made freely or was there coercion/promises/negotiations/etc involved, was the conversation recorded/unadulterated, etc) and that this list should be properly followed to disqualify potential foul play, just as is done w/ hearsay.
The advantage is that a criminal confessing to their crimes is better for everyone else. Most people would rather see criminals not doing crime.
This is so obvious, it's not clear why this has to be spelled out. The purpose of civil rights like the fifth amendment is not making life easy for criminals, the purpose is protecting innocent people.
You can argue that the harm inflicted by some particular procedure to innocent people exceeds the benefits, but that becomes a utilitarian debate, rather than one about philosophical dogma.
This is one of the times I think Brazil manages to beat up the USA: we do not accept confessions unless they are confirmed in front of a judge. (Chapter V of the Brazilian Penal Process Code)
Also, if you report yourself before the authorities know that the crime took place, you get an automatic reduction in your sentence (article 65 inciso II item b of the Brazilian Penal Code)
US society is designed so that a significant percentage of people will live in cages, far more than any other society on Earth currently. I guess this helps make that happen? I personally don't think this is right or beneficial, but it's something the US works very hard to accomplish and seems incapable of dialing back.
If interrogators can't lie then interrogated individuals can distill information about police investigations from their comments. I don't believe in misleading people about the law itself, but I cannot deny that there is power in the insinuation that you have more evidence than you actually have.
> there is power in the insinuation that you have more evidence than you actually have
This is true and there is power in all manners of things, including very abusive, immoral and possibly illegal things; there is a lot of power in threatening physical (or psychological) violence to people, for example.
I guess the question is about which usage of power we should (ideally) endorse as a society as a matter of course .
The problem is that things get worse if you mandate the other side - that officers are prohibited from lying in any interrogation. If that's the case it becomes trivial for a guilty suspect to get information out of the officer because they know that if the officer lies [s]he'll get in trouble. So you end up with this weird area where you want them to be able to lie if necessary, but in general prefer that they didn't. There's not an easy answer.
I'm not sure that's "worse" - it seems that's actually what the situation is today but with the tables reversed.
AIUI, it's pretty common that when they can't get you for the crime they think you committed, that they'll just goad you into a casual mis-statement (i.e., lying), and lock you up for the lie. That's exactly what happened to Martha Stewart, for example. What (apparently) seemed to her to be a minor omission that had no bearing on the case, suddenly becomes the cause for her prosecution.
The end result of this is that anyone with a clue knows that the best policy is, simply, never talk to police. There's nothing you can say that will make things better (the die is already cast), and you can do yourself a world of hurt. And you can't even know ahead of time whether you're suspect. So the best course of action is simply to refuse to talk to police ever.
How is a situation in which the public refuses to help the police any worse than taking these tools away from the police?
Obligatory anecdote: I went skeet shooting with a friend. The next day, for some reason, I still had a bunch of spent shotgun shells sitting on the table. That morning the police came to my door, and I let them in the house to talk since it was cold out. They started asking for information about an incident where someone had shot out a car window with a BB gun. Later I realized that I had those empty shotgun shells sitting right in their sight. If you're not aware, "BB" is actually the designation of a particular small size of shot (like #8 being used for deer and #4 or #0 used for turkey or birds; BB is smaller than #0). So although I knew nothing of the BB incident, and was certainly innocent, I had inadvertently given the police some reason to suspect my involvement. In actuality, nothing came of this, but given the way these things go, I would have been safer to have just said "sorry, officer", and refused to deal with them.
If a minor is clever enough to manipulate a police officer into self-incrimination via dishonesty and somehow make it to court and the officer is actually held responsible then honestly, good for them!
(I highly doubt officers will still be held responsible for violating the law. Look how much noise and chaos had to happen for a single on-film execution by cop to have consequences.)
Because it's effective I guess? A couple hours of successful interrogation can save tens or hundreds of hours of investigation. And one of their main goals is to elicit information that can be independently confirmed. For example, if someone confesses to a shooting and tells the police where they hid the gun, and the gun is found there, that's a good indication that the confession was probably legitimate.
Edit: Geez, I was just answering the question... At the end of the day, it's up to society to determine whether it thinks the effectiveness of the method is worth the potential moral hazard of false confessions under pressure. In my opinion, there does need to be better policy for police departments to assign little weight to confessions with zero corroboration that cannot even accurately describe the facts of the case.
And that’s how authoritarian police states are build. One “but it’s effective” and “they’re just criminals” at a time. By the time “good citizens” discover that it’s being used against them too, it’s far too late.
Agreed, and moreover is there even any evidence that it is effective? Or rather, effective at uncovering the truth as opposed to effective at eliciting a [potentially untruthful] confession?
What if wrongful convictions based on police officers lying in interrogations penalized the police officer doing interrogations? Do you think the interrogators would still continue using these methods?
Eg the police officer that interrogated Terrill Swift will now be held criminally responsible for inducing a false confession.
I think better rules on what quality of confessions police and prosecutors take into consideration would probably be sufficient. Eg. if the suspect says "okay, fine, I did it" after hours of interrogation but cannot describe what the victim looked like, what weapon they used, where they hid it afterwards, etc, that confession should be considered near-worthless. The real issue isn't inducing the false confession, it's assigning it such a high evidentiary value and presenting it to a jury out of context.
Doing away with anyone who may possibly commit a crime is even more effective at combating crime than the existing options. Let's go with that. Heck, let's take care of it at birth, most efficient of all! /s
> What's the advantage to society of allowing interviewers to lie (to anyone, let alone kids)?
I suppose in many instances lies and bluffs have resulted in the desired outcome.
But not all lies/bluffs are the same, and I agree with you that telling a suspect in interrogation that they have immunity if they just say X is problematic, but I think it is reflected in the current case law and any evidence obtained in such a scenario would likely be suppressed.
I’ve seen more than a few interrogations, a similar one went something like this:
Cop: look, we just want to recover the gun, we don’t care about anything else, just tell us where the gun is.
Suspect: oh…you just want the gun?
Cop: yeah.
Suspect: yeah, I bet you do.
Now the thing is this suspect actually shot someone from his car into an adjacent car, he fled and discarded the firearm, then returned to the scene after police had arrived and he was immediately arrested. It always amazed me someone so dumb as to drive right back to the scene of the crime and deliver himself into the hands of police was so aware and savvy during the interrogation.
> "What's the advantage to society of allowing interviewers to lie (to anyone, let alone kids)?"
no one would ever get convicted if police didn't lie. If no one can ever get convicted, either we can murder rape and steal without consequence or we'd have to live in an absolute monitored police state. I think its beneficial they can lie.
the real world isn't a SVU episode on TV with DNA, high resolution video, and witnesses. I don't know the percentage, but the vast majority of crime has and never will have evidence other than a witness or a confession.
Also saying they can't lie is not easy, as you need an oracle of truth. So if something untruthful is said, does that mean they have to be let go? you mistake the date and they can go free? its impossible to police truth.
Edit:
The lawyer made a follow up video clarifying that in routine traffic stops police do have autonomy. So as long as you are reasonable and just showing the policeman you aren't a public menace is seems ok. For any other reason I'd have my lawyer on me no matter what.
Also this video specifically pertains to the 5th US constitutional amendment.
Unfortunately, that advice isn't great, either. The police have the authority to arrest you for pissing them off. They may not be able to charge you with anything, but they can make your day a lot worse before releasing you. And there is basically nothing you can do about it.
If a police officer pulls you over and you start pulling the "I've been told never to talk to the police", you're escalating the encounter before it even starts. That's no excuse for police abusing their authority, but they've got the authority and you don't.
Lawyers have told me to use your best judgment. Cooperate as long as the police are being cooperative, and the odds are you'll go about your day with only minor aggravation. Only escalate to the "I don't talk to police" when they start getting hostile with you. This is, I'm told, what the lawyers themselves do.
This is for minor encounters, like traffic stops or ordinary questions. If you're actually taken in or you're a suspect, yeah, shut up and wait for your lawyer.
And, uh, this is the advice they give to me as a white man. It may not apply if you're somebody more likely to be subject to abuse.
None of this is good. It's very, very bad. This advice is not about fairness; it's about trying to make your life as least-worst as possible.
Hard agree here. I've had two run ins with the police (in the UK - I made a mistake driving and was pulled over, and the other was just wrong place wrong time) and in both cases just being civil removed me from the situation in less than 15 minutes. If I had started parroting the "I refuse to speak to the police" line in either scenario it would have been a whole whole lot worse.
Aggravatingly, in the US, even the most routine traffic stop frequently runs considerably more than 15 minutes. I don't know precisely what's going on. They take your driver's license and registration back to their car, presumably to run it through some kind of database.
Does that take 20 minutes? I dunno. Or maybe they're doing paperwork, or playing solitaire, or maybe just wasting your time because they can. The process is incredibly opaque. Even if it's necessary, it's unclear why, and I've never had a traffic stop that didn't feel abusive.
I'm always super placating about it in an attempt to keep it from getting even worse. Fortunately, it has only happened a very small number of times -- all of which were for minor violations that could easily have been "Hey, I saw you do X. Don't do that again." (Which actually did happen once -- for failing to turn my lights on in the daytime. Which was written on a sign. Presumably about some kind of visibility, I guess. But at least they didn't fine me over it, or take up more than 5 minutes.)
Having worked with some law enforcement records software I can say that "paperwork" (which now involves filling out electronic forms) and waiting for state database queries to come back are definitely a time suck. The officers who I know would like the process to be faster as well. Being stopped on the roadside is a dangerous situation that nobody wants to be in longer than necessary.
Not sure where you live but 15 minutes is way long for a traffic stop. I was in a traffic accident and it took 15 minutes for the police to do everything he needed including an automated print out with my court date (hit someone at low speed from behind). Same deal when I was speeding, less than 10 mins with a full print out with pay X fine or appear on Y date. All automated.
The pot brothers at law made a video of how they got a guy off at a weed distribution plant because he kept his mouth shut. The prosecutor couldn't prove he was an employee, customer touring, or what. All because they shut up and didnt say anything.
I had two police officers at my door a couple of years ago, turns out my neighbour had died and they wondered if I'd heard anything or not heard anything from him.
Apparently the correct advice is to refuse to say anything without a lawyer, which I'm certain would be the end of the matter. I wonder if it's lawyers (paid $500/hour or whatever) who suggest that advice.
I am pretty sure it is lawyers who are suggesting the advice but not sure if that makes it based out of greed.
If you look at it from a lawyer's perspective: The majority of my clients who speak to the police(either before or after employing me) have a large amount of trouble. So therefore it is ill advised to speak to the police.
What they are missing: All the people who spoke with police and had no problems.
The guys a lawyer yeah, but the advice isn’t to offer the cop a chance to talk with you with a lawyer; it’s to avoid talking to cops at all. Then if the cops try to force an interview anyway, that’s where the “without a lawyer” comes in; if they’re arresting you then they should have other PC and you’ll be needing a lawyer anyway.
And the whole point is that even in your case, it’s not directly beneficial to you to answer even innocuous questions about your neighbor’s death; at best it doesn’t change any suspicions on you, but at worst there is a chance that your answers could make you a person of interest when you weren’t one before.
If you have a disfunctional police force that may be the case, but when I cold shoulder my local pc (who I've spoken to a couple of times at parish council meetings about speeding issues in the village), that's clearly going to be increasing suspicions on me.
Your claim "not directly beneficial to you" is also odd. Not talking to the police and thus not finding out there's a murderer around?
Maybe it's different in third world countries where the police don't care about the public and are just a law to themselves, that's certainly not the case where I live.
The lawyer made a follow up video clarifying that in routine traffic stops police do have autonomy. So as long as you are reasonable and just showing the policeman you aren't a public menace. So I can agree that is reasonable. For any other reason I'd have my lawyer on me no matter what.
A traffic stop is its own thing. You've presumably given them probable suspicion that you've committed some sort of infraction. Everything from something very innocuous like weaving within your lane to them seeing you run a red light. You're officially being detained, you're not free to go, and you have to answer their questions. Depending on your state, their questions may have to be related to the original purpose of the traffic stop unless they've got probably suspicion of some other infraction.
Nobody with a law degree has ever suggested that at a traffic stop you start off by saying you're not answering questions and to call your lawyer.
Technically they don't have that right. Detainment without reasonable suspicion, and arrest without probable cause, are crimes called Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law. It is a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison. Funnily enough, if you've ever heard a cop say a variant of the phrase "you can beat the rap but not the ride", that is essentially admission of such criminal action by the cop...if they think that the evidence is sparse enough that you won't be charged with a crime, then they do not have probable cause grounds to arrest you, and by continuing with the arrest, they commit a felony.
Unfortunately, we can probably count the number of cops charged with that crime on zero hands. I'm increasingly convinced that our entire police problem in the US boils down to our incentives that we give to prosecutors which make them avoid any attempt to hold cops accountable for their crimes. I'm not sure what the solution is, but having independent prosecutors for police crimes might be a good start.
With regards to your point about cooperating until the cop starts acting adversarial, I think that advice applies to someone who is intelligent and informed about the law enough to understand when a cop is actually trying to coerce an admission. It might be good advice for you, but it might actually be terrible advice for someone else.
Unfortunately, I am well aware that I don't know when they're trying to coerce an admission. One of the things I'm most terrified of is being asked "Do you know why I pulled you over?", and I can't think of any answer that doesn't have the potential to land me in a lot of trouble.
I feel like that question is going to be hostile no matter what. I've been told by police that they don't use it, but didn't rule out the notion that others might.
I've never had an encounter with the police worse than a basic traffic stop, so I've never really had to apply the "don't talk" advice. I hope I never do. Because I'm quite certain I'll do the wrong thing, regardless of what I do.
The only safe answer to that, period, is "No". Even if you think the cop pulled you over because you were going 100 in a 55, you still don't know, it's not ever going to be a lie, and anything else can legitimately be taken as an admission of guilt in court
> I'm not sure what the solution is, but having independent prosecutors for police crimes might be a good start
It would have to be an almost entirely separate career path once you stepped into it. Once you've prosecuted a few cops, I'm sure that will follow you as a prosecutor wherever you go, and good luck hiding it. Gotta either stay in that game or advance to the point you no longer need to work with cops (become a judge I guess)
The problem is if in doing your job you piss off the wrong cops, you too become a target.
I'm a firefighter / paramedic.
Cops have arrested paramedics providing patient care on accident scenes for varying slights.
Cops have come to hospitals where their off-duty drunk buddy runs a red light and t-boned someone else, and demanded nurses do blood draws (without a warrant) of the other party looking for intoxication, and then arrested the nurse for refusing.
All groups that (rightly or wrongly, I'm making no judgment here, just observing) are considered to be "on the same side", are only on that side as long as it is not inconvenient to those cops, then they're as much a target as anyone else.
> Cops have come to hospitals where their off-duty drunk buddy runs a red light and t-boned someone else, and demanded nurses do blood draws (without a warrant) of the other party looking for intoxication, and then arrested the nurse for refusing.
It should be noted that the cop claimed he did nothing wrong and sued for wrongful termination for $1.5M, and the police union, representing all of their officers, supported him.
The Overton window that cops believe exists about acceptable cop behavior is unfathomably out of line with reality. That's the reason why police oppose citizen backed reviews of their conduct. Makes me wonder how many people with similar circumstances but less publicity get swept under the rug.
His advice probably works well for himself. It is easy to tell for anyone who pulls him over from the way he talks that he is a lawyer. And a decent lawyer can make a lot of inconvenient paperwork for the police department when he's working "for free".
Even a simple traffic stop should make one cautious of what they say. E.g., when the cop says "What's your hurry?", and you say something trying to excuse your behavior, such as "I really have to go to the bathroom, sir!", you have just admitted guilt, and they will note that on the ticket and use it against you in court. I'm not saying to tell them "Sorry, I don't talk to cops", but rather don't admit to anything. Say something like, "I'm in no hurry, sir. How's your day going?". Then just take your ticket, and take your chances in court.
After some time educating myself on this manner, I ran into police while (maybe) speeding. I hit brakes as soon as I spot them to get on speed limit, and as I passed them they started to follow, stopping me shortly after.
The conversation went exactly like parent comment describes: "You must be in a hurry when you drive so fast". I, knowing they probably have no proof of my speeding, responded with "Well, I drive a car", intentionally evading anything incriminating.
They tried again a few times with "You drive always this fast?" And "Well you must have driven fast, since we saw you breaking hard when you saw us", to both of which I replied with a smile and "I drive a car".
After roughly three times I told them I drive a car, it seemed they got the hint they aint gonna get anything on me, so they gave me 10$ fine for my two weeks expired driving licence (I had no idea), for which I thanked them for letting me know.
Funny thing is, they tested me for alcohol, but regarding drug test they told they wont test me as they think I am not a drug user. That surprised me, as my two stops before I was tested for drugs. I account that to my confidence (and good mood thanks to it) during this last encounter, as the two before happened before I educated myself and was nervous.
Tldr: educate yourself to the point of being confident during traffic stop and it might go much smoother
There's a movie I saw a while back where the main character was being interrogated by police, and in the scene the suspect just kept responding "Lawyer" to any question they asked.
IANAL, so take this with the requisite grain of salt, but the justice system has the power to be real dicks about how the right to a lawyer has to be invoked[1]. I would go with a very explicit request for a lawyer.
There's a bit of a stigma, in the U.S. at least, that if you ask for a lawyer, you must be guilty. Probably comes from too much propaganda type television.
Asking for someone who understands law to come and help you is a very smart move.
If you explicitly tell the cops that you are invoking your right to remain silent and request that your attorney be present, they have to immediately stop questioning you until your attorney is present. But you don't get that by simply being silent, saying "lawyer" repeatedly, etc. You have to explicitly say it.
I am not so cynical as to think it would be a bad idea or "against self interest", in most cases, to report a crime to the police.
I am cynical enough to think that a defense attorney might act like a paperclip maximizer and optimize for "nobody goes to jail, ever, whatever the consequences to society" when giving advise on a Youtube video.
One might also suspect the reason that video is so often cited is because it is so extreme, and people are biased to repost wacky "meme-like" catch phrases like "don't talk to the police" instead of more even-minded advise.
Reporting a crime where you are not the victim is a bad idea unless you can do so anonymously. The crime could be part of organized criminal activity, and organized crime is often in cahoots with, or at least has informants within, police departments. It could come back to you. This is not fantasy; I know of people in New York that his happened to.
To your first point: Cops have "meme-like" thoughts and sayings as well ("9 out of 10 times, the spouse did it", etc.) that would prove the attorney's point: by involving the cops, you're going to get investigated to some degree. The more serious the crime, the more likely this is.
It's not cynical for a defense attorney to have the goal of "the people I represent never go to jail". It's literally his job. The fact that he then takes that advice out of his office and onto YouTube as part of his advertising his practice also seems reasonable.
IDK if you murder-raped 100,000 people. Due process is due process. The worse the charge the higher the level of effort I'm expecting from the cops. If they can't get charges to stick, what are they even there for?
You wrote "It's not cynical for a defense attorney to have the goal of "the people I represent never go to jail"
You are responding to something I never said. The attorney does not represent people watching the Youtube video. He isn't giving advise to clients but saying things to society at large.
I have a feeling you would not actually folllow the attorney's advise in the real world. If you saw someone being raped in front of your house would you call 911 or would you say "the Youtuber with a law degree told me not to. "
I suspect you would do the right thing and talk to the 911 operator. So why defend the video?
To respond to what you feel is your point: 911 operators are not police officers in my state (NJ). They take and log calls and information, and may hand it over to the police, but they are not responsible for investigating crimes.
I can call 911, report a crime is being committed with the intention of having the police intervene, provide no additional details beyond that, and then never speak to a police officer unless they subpoena testimony from me (and even then, issue statements through a lawyer).
This is why I'm defending the video. We live in a society, and I fully accept that while also accepting that I don't trust cops ever under any circumstances period.
And suppose the cops are actually aliens, and they take me on their starship, and head out for the skys.
They'll say, come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me.
Stop moving the goal posts. I'm going to do exactly what I said. But by all means, find me IRL and do a rape in front of my house to see what happens. It's the only way to actually prove any of this.
Even if you're right (which I personally doubt) - that would more be a commentary on how people can be convinced to assume risk without any upside rather than a rationale of why it's a good idea to voluntarily talk to the police.
I'd argue it's more a commentary on how the lawyer making the video is pretending to be less moral than the median human being and is probably not as lacking in human decency as he is pretending to be for performative career reasons.
Though your framing in terms of pure selfishness (risk and upside to the person talking to the police without consideration for anyone else) is probably irrational unless you are also opposed to altruism.
If you generally despise altruism and are not wired for emotions like "guilt" I believe you may in fact not talk to the police in that scenario.
> is probably irrational unless you are also opposed to altruism.
No, it just means that I value my personal well-being over those of others. Maybe to an extent you dislike, but that's also part of my point - the expectation that other people should place themselves at risk for your well-being could also be interpreted as a selfish or self-entitled attitude.
Kidnappings (and pretty much any crime imaginable) would happen a lot more if everyone listened to the advise of never talking to the police.
People can protect themselves from police oversteps without listening to extreme advise from someone suggesting we pretend we don't live in a society.
I'd think any reasonable advise would consider the probability that talking to police in any particular scenario would lead to bad outcomes vs good outcomes, but maybe that's not catchy enough to be retweeted on social networks.
Two recent episodes of the "Criminal" podcast [0] documented that it's a bad idea for even victims of kidnapping to report to police. In this case, it wasn't because the kidnappers punished the victims for reporting, but because the police themselves harmed the victims.
My impression is that cops are incentivized to close the case much more than they are to find the truth, and the most prominent targets of their investigation will be friends, acquaintances, and family members, so even in the unlikely case of a loved one being kidnapped you should be very careful and probably talk to them only through a lawyer.
The real fool in that story was the Fed brother. How could an FBI agent really believe that running to the local cops was the best thing to do first? That is a complete misunderstanding of every aspect of USA criminal justice system. I don't know how that guy avoids getting drummed out of the bureau after this podcast.
Another common "career progression" is for attorneys to become judges. Now we've established that everyone in the courtroom is "seedy". Still, citizens are often surprised by the awful performance of the USA justice system.
Anyway, the defense attorneys to whom poor people have access (public defenders and other low-cost providers) are seldom former prosecutors, so they could possibly be decent humans. That they face so many obstacles is a good sign of the priorities of the system.
If I'm a witness, I'm happy to tell them about my observations of the crime, but I will shut them down if they start asking about me and my possible involvement, even if I think it's just implied.
I honestly think police shouldn't be allowed to interview children at all (at least those under 13), it should be left to forensic psychologists. Not just interrogations, interviews of witnesses or potential victims too. Children are simply so easy to lead in questions, there's an entire field of study in psychology devoted to figuring out how to ask questions of children without leading them. Here's some examples: if you ask a child a yes-no question that they don't understand, they default to saying yes. If you ask them a multi-choice question ("Would you rather X, Y, or Z?") they default to whichever option was given last.
I had an experience with this (on a much smaller scale. No police were involved).
When I was about 13 or so, I was walking home with a kid from school and he threw a rock at a passing car. He ran off and left me to deal with the driver. I explained that it was this other kid.
I called the kid later to let him know that I ratted him out and apologized, but I didn't want to be on the hook for it.
The driver, my parents, and the parents of the kid who threw the rock all met with us. Talked through the details, and somewhere in there they mentioned that I had called this kid to apologize, and I said that yeah, I had called him.
It wasn't until after everyone left with the agreement that I was guilty and would pay the damage that my dad told me that I had agreed that I called this kid and apologized for lying about him throwing the rock.
I was totally blindsided by that interpretation. I didn't understand that anyone had even suggested that I might have lied in that situation. It never crossed my mind, I thought I was just saying that I called him. There's nuance and implications in adult conversation that never crosses the mind of a kid.
Something similar can happen to adult too. Less likely to a child, but still, adults are not perfect rational players with great social skills. And not all adults are smart.
Plus, this right there sound to me like very wishful thinking on the side of dad who don't want his kid to be guilty. It does not sound like honest evaluation of what was said. He was likely eager to interpret and twist anything just to get that result and succeeded.
I couldn’t agree more. To share a little bit of my experience in this area:
I’m a social robotics researcher and our group has spent several years working in this area, looking at the effectiveness, ethics, and protections (or harms) involved in using different emerging technologies for conducting forensic interviews with children. As a result I’ve become very familiar with the different forensic interviewing techniques used with kids.
One thing I can say is historically some horrible approaches have been common, but there’s tremendous effort today to reform this. However, even with these well designed techniques the research shows forensic interviewers fall back to using problematic methods if they aren’t regularly refreshed on proper techniques. Our research is focused on eliminating the biases and leading interviewers are vulnerable to by using software and even using tightly controlled social robotic interviewers to totally control expressions, body language, etc. during these interviews.
The general progression is ask an open ended question, then if that’s unsuccessful offer multiple choice, then yes-no. Our protocols strictly forbid adding information apart from repeating what a child says in open ended responses for clarification. But even that can be tricky, even through a robot. In summary it’s not an easy thing and it seems most police/social services in the US have relatively few resources dedicated to improving it. Here’s hoping we can improve this soon!
Let's zoom out from the rights of that individual minor, too. If you believe in the role of police in society, you want kids to be able to trust them. You can't teach your kids to trust someone who may lie to them with horrific consequences.
If you're teaching your children to trust police, you're doing them a disservice. They should be taught to respect authority figures that are not their direct family, but never, ever trust their intentions.
Well, I don't really believe in the institution of police as it exists, so if I even had kids, I'd pass along the same paranoia my father taught me... but it just strikes me as a meaningful inconsistency in the image of police that their supporters have.
That ship sailed along. In the interest of putting the police force ahead of the community it is supposed to protect the police have burned lots of goodwill. Even now being called police is considered an insult amongst the youth. It used to be snitch, narc, or opp. Now you’re called “12” when you’re not to be trusted.
Enforcing the law becomes a lot harder when a community lacks trust in you, and kids who don't trust police officers turn into adults who don't trust police officers, and teach their children the same thing.
Bog-standard "if you get lost and separated from your parents" child-advice is to ask for help from exactly such figures as police, with the idea that this would protect them from ostensibly less savory options
https://www.allprodad.com/things-your-child-should-know-when...
> The best people to seek out would be the police, security guards, the fire department, and store management and employees. If these can’t be found, teach them to seek a mom with young children.
http://achildsworldnc.com/teach-kids-case-get-lost/
> Advise children that if they need assistance they should only approach someone such as a security guard, police officer or someone who is clearly a member of the staff.
I mean, I know these are just random internet things -- but I vaguely remember that advice even being in kids' books when I was growing up.
I remember receiving that advice as well, but would be less likely to perpetuate it given the frequency of weaponization of the State against parents. If I knew the community, I might advise the latter.
I think police should be able to lie, but any response to a lie should be presumed a lie by the justice system. So, a lie can be used to get an undercover cop out of trouble, but a lie cannot help an interrogation.
Essentially, an officer of the law deciding to lie should invalidate all evidence gained after the lie.
Two thoughts. First, should undercover investigations be allowed? Should law enforcement officials be allowed to lie about their identity in order to obtain more evidence? It is not a trivial question, although I agree with you that we don't need secret police.
Second, does simply saying that public servants aren't allowed to lie...work? It seems like there are many situations where public officials lie broadly and baldly, and there is no comeuppance, not even when perjurious!
> After hours of interrogation, police told one of the teenagers, Terrill Swift, that if he just confessed to being at the scene he could go home
Isn't it already illegal to interrogate a minor without their parents? In any case, this story sounds similar to the Central Park Five / Exonerated Five.
Unfortunately, police in Chicago have committed lots of illegal acts during interrogations. I'm worried that making more things illegal may not have significant impact if they just deny lying after the fact.
> Isn't it already illegal to interrogate a minor without their parents?
No, it's not illegal, I don't think? Parents don't need to be present or informed. Maybe some states are slightly different and I guess it might depend on the charges.
Some cursory searching I did revealed some state and federal guidelines to the contrary. "good faith requirement to search for the parents", e.g. CA statute requires minors taken into custody to consult with attorney prior to questioning.
I'm pretty sure a lot more doctors, engineers, and lawyers lie in a professional context than there are doctors, engineers, and lawyers in jail. Maybe they go to jail more than police, I have no idea, but surely a majority of the time they get away with lying.
A number of years ago, I fell into a YouTube rabbit hole on this topic. Many people think, "I've not done anything, I'll help this cop because it is the right thing to do." And that is naive. There is a risk present and you increase your personal risk the more you talk. I've shown my kids the scene in Making a Murderer where they lie to the kid and feed him lines to they can convict. They know if there is an emergency to call 911. They have also been told to not talk to cops outside of needing assistance.
The problem is people are generally good and honest and want to be helpful. Many municipalities are not, they're trying to improve their score to justify their salary. Since people are generally good and honest, they naturally assume the government must be as well.
Many police do horrible things with impunity. You can easily go down a YouTube rabbit hole for months with countless examples spanning many jurisdictions. I believe this is the greatest threat to our country, and that isn't hyperbole. If your are interested in such an endeavor for personal education, here's a start:
Depends where you live I guess, I've "stopped" two minor crimes by finding the closest cop car and telling them something sketchy was happening. The first time they thanked me and didn't ask anything, the second time they asked for my address/name/phone nbr but never got back to me. My best friend also had to call the cops for a foreigner who didn't speak the language and had been beaten/robbed, nothing happened to the friend besides being thanked.
I remember doing something rather stupid in grade school, to the extent that the police were brought in to question me about it. The "crime" itself was really nothing more than unauthorized access to the district's private FTP server, but the officers questioning me started saying some really odd stuff: they were trying to get me to admit culpability to things that I didn't understand, some of which I was very skeptical of. As scared as I was, I recalled my mom telling me to ask for a lawyer when I was younger, so I did. This seemed to disgruntle everyone in the room, but it also ended the whole ordeal pretty quickly.
I later learned that these cops had our school's security company on the line, who was flabbergasted by the idea that unsecured FTP could be accessed by wisecracking students. Suffice to say, I'm all for legislation like this.
Research shows that children are especially susceptible to being lied to in interrogations. I imagine limiting the ban to minors was a compromise from negotiating with police and attorney organizations and pro-police lawmakers.
Police claim they need to lie sometimes to effectively fight crime. Also, the presumption is that adults will realize the police are adversarial and won't blindly submit to an authority figure as kids are conditioned to.
That is perhaps what is claimed, but there are plenty of adults who for various reasons, lack capacity to make such judgements as well, or even realise that the Police might not be telling the truth. There could be lots of different reasons for this too - whether something like being raised to trust the police blindly, through to having learning difficulties.
The LEOBR detailed by the Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police as follows:[4]
Law enforcement officers, except when on duty or acting in an official capacity, have the right to engage in political activity or run for elective office.
Law enforcement officers shall, if disciplinary action is expected, be notified of the investigation, the nature of the alleged violation, and be notified of the outcome of the investigation and the recommendations made to superiors by the investigators.
Questioning of a law enforcement officer should be conducted for a reasonable length of time and preferably while the officer is on duty unless exigent circumstances apply.
Questioning of the law enforcement officer should take place at the offices of those conducting the investigation or at the place where the officer reports to work, unless the officer consents to another location.
Law enforcement officers will be questioned by a single investigator, and he or she shall be informed of the name, rank, and command of the officer conducting the investigation.
Law enforcement officers under investigation are entitled to have counsel or any other individual of their choice present at the interrogation.
Law enforcement officers cannot be threatened, harassed, or promised rewards to induce the answering of any question.
Law enforcement officers are entitled to a hearing, with notification in advance of the date, access to transcripts, and other relevant documents and evidence generated by the hearing and to representation by counsel or another non-attorney representative at the hearing.
Law enforcement officers shall have the opportunity to comment in writing on any adverse materials placed in his or her personnel file.
Law enforcement officers cannot be subject to retaliation for the exercise of these or any other rights under Federal, or State.
If you're interested there are plenty of interrogation videos on yt, some by the FBI are particularly interesting. Sometimes they have a pretty good case but getting a confession tremendously speed up the process so they lie to get confessions.
They also can lie to trigger responses and see how the suspect react, guilty people seem to react in way different ways than innocent ones. It's obviously not an exact science, even though it's heavily studied and has some psychology compounds, but it worked and put countless number of guilty people behind the bars
Admitting would imply that they were hiding it previously which they were not. Why would they? The courts have generally said it is ok which is why legislation is required to stop the practice.
> Commonly used interrogation tactics, such as promising leniency or insinuating that incriminating evidence exists, are banned for suspects under 18 years old under the new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1.
Research shows that children are especially susceptible to being lied to in interrogations. I imagine limiting the ban to minors was a compromise from negotiating with police and attorney organizations and pro-police lawmakers.
What's the purpose of your question? It's apparent they went out of their way to limit this to minors - so the reason is they want to have the ability to lie to adults. Probably 'because it helps fight crime' or something.
They're allowed to in investigations: "we have a witness who saw you do it" will sometimes cause actually guilty people to confess, or to start naming accomplices, etc. Or, "we think this was an accident" can elicit "it was, I didn't mean to do it" as a confession.
That's specifically one of the reason for Denmark to recommend that if arrested in the US you contact the Danish embassy and wait for them to send someone to help you.
The idea that the police would lie and claim to have evidence is just completely foreign to us.
Imo, all of the major issues related to the US justice system could be resolved if your employer could only fire you with a conviction, the government had to pay for holding people not guilty, and if your held without trial for x amount of days, you must be released. All of these incentives protect working class people and requires prosecutors to have the literal smoking gun to prosecute.
Conviction rates are already sky high. The problem is not with charging people when evidence is low but with the prosecutors and the written laws that don’t hold police accountable.
I agree with that as well, but even if cops were held accountable, it still leaves the scenario where lower income people lose much needed jobs and have precious time stolen from them with no recourse, just an "oops, guess we couldn't pin anything on ya! Now get lost!" The German/Austrian criminal justice system is vastly superior to the US one more than anything else.
I just realised that the police are able to lie to you during an interrogation. I feel incredibly naïve
(and yes, this probably is related to my white privilege - when I compared my experience of the police growing up with the experiences of my friends it seriously opened my eyes)
I remember well the time I learned as a teen that police could outright lie straight to your face. I and a friend got caught walkin' home after dark and accused of a crime that took place in a nearby neighborhood. During questioning, the officer told me "Your friend already admitted to the whole thing" and some BS about reducing the charges if I "came clean" about my involvement. Thing is; I knew for a fact my friend had admitted no such thing, as we didn't do it, and neither he nor I would ever have admitted to a crime we didn't commit. Not how we was raised…
Lying police officers really defies the most basic and fundamental ABC on how you build a police force that has both trust, and support from the community they’re supposed to protect.
I mean, it’s clearly damaged cops with severe mental issues (most probably PTSD), who have decided that the people they are employed to protect, somehow are their most aggressive enemy..
Like, if the people with a state sanctioned monopoly on violence, decide that beating people isn’t enough, they must also be able to trick people into a prison sentence, you don’t have police you have fascists stormtroopers.
TLDR: A high-school student made a recording of a sexual encounter and word got out. Kid is called to the principal's office where the resource officer (literally a cop that stays on campus) threatened the kid with being put on the sex offender registry among other actions. Kid slips away while staff is waiting for the mom to arrive and jumps off a parking garage, killing himself. School and police deny any wrong doing and "only meant to scare the kid".
That doesn't sound like a lie. Sounds like a very real possible consequence, given the way the laws around that kind of thing are written and enforced.
> Wood also wrote that while the interrogation tactics used by the deans and police were “harsh and aggressive, they were nonetheless ordinary police interrogation tactics.”
The judge who presided over the case was under the impression that the student was being interrogated.
I think it is fine for police to lie in interrogations to get information. If them telling lies leads them to hard evidence of the crime that's great But lying to get a confession doesn't seem fair, if you confess to a crime you should have full knowledge of the case against you just like you would in a trial.
Overreach and needless brutality are par for the course. Bad apples and countless years of zero independent accountability has unfortunately spoiled the bunch.
> If your kids stay out of trouble, they won't be interacting much with them.
Unless they're black, statistically. Then they're being pulled aside or pulled over at night and put into these interactions for just existing. You can't teach your kids to just "stay out" of their skin color, they can't just "stay out" of a system of institutionalized racism.
Looks like the only consequence is "The presumption of inadmissibility" for evidence gained that way. It does not appear to make it a crime or provide any consequence for any individual police officer.
What's the advantage to society of allowing interviewers to lie (to anyone, let alone kids)? Not just insinuate something like "your partner's in the next room, it's only a matter of time until he talks so you should come clean now", but blatantly lie and then be able to rely on the result of that in court?
It kinda feels a little like the common law doctrine of Promissary Estoppel [0] where if someone relies on something you've promised, you can't then hold them responsible for relying on that thing.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/promissory_estoppel