Good. I understand that deception is necessary in cases like undercover investigations, but the practice goes far beyond those scenarios. Not just interrogations, either.
> Brian Chaney says he asked for a supervisor during his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and Police Officer Richard Lindquist told him that another officer present was in charge. The problem: That second officer was not a supervisor or even a member of the Keego Harbor Police Department. Lindquist was never disciplined and his chief says that while a suspect has the right to request a supervisor, what the officer did was OK.
This is speculative and based on a possibly not-representative sample, but what I've noticed from watching bodycam footage is that when the suspect asks for a supervisor, the police give negative/discouraging replies to the suspect while they are also calling a supervisor in the background.
I assume the intention is to comply with the letter of the law while maximizing the chance that the suspect will abandon the request and not force them to wait until the supervisor arrives.
Cops, in general understand the law very well, which makes them even more culpable for their abuses of it.
You see this quite often in the cases where the suspect wants to stop talking and speak to their attorney, and the detectives do the "Oh, yes, we'll let you call them in just one second, but first answer _____"
Ask the police chief; I'd imagine their department policy is that you can request one, given he's stating they do indeed have such a right.
If he wanted to make a "there's no right to a supervisor" argument, he should have. "You have the right, but we'll fake it" is the worst of both worlds.
That's not the problem. If the police don't want to comply with a suspect's request for a supervisor, they can say "no". They shouldn't need to lie to the suspect about who they're talking to and what their roles are; that's an abuse of their position.
Clearly you're not aware of the corruption in the small town government and justice system. If your neighbor is a friend of cop and they don't like you, plenty of cops are willing to put you through harassment and plenty of PDs, local prosecutors and judges who are willing to turn a blind eye towards it.
Essentially, unless you believe every single cop is pure at heart and incapable of making a mistake, you should be wanting a presence of more than just 1 cop.
There isn't one single cop anywhere in America who can go five seconds without saying something false. That's why I don't understand the marginal utility of more cops in the room. The person you want in the room is your attorney.
Ding ding ding ding. Not just that, but you have to affirmatively and unambiguously invoke your 5th Amendment rights. As in, "I wish to invoke my rights under the 5th Amendment of the United States Constitution to remain silent while my lawyer is not present, and I wish to explicitly invoke my 6th Amendment right to counsel." No weasel words, no maybes or I dunnos. Invoke your rights, and if they persist, invoke your rights again, and again, and again. It's the only way to save your ass before the lawyer arrives because the police are simply seeking to catch somebody, not the right person necessarily, and they will literally outsource the lying to the jailhouse snitch to make it happen, amongst other tricks. You can't explain your way out of a situation where the police feels that you are their best shot at getting a perp walk arrange ASAP. Your lawyer can though.
And goddamn the cops will lie to you about how much worse your life is going to get for invoking the 5th. Most people do not have the experience or fortitude to stand up to an authority figure like this, they've been taught just the opposite, and cops know how to abuse the hell out of it.
If it exists, it must be a local thing in Keego. I'm from the same county and I've never been given the advice to ask for a supervisor, only to ask for an attorney.
I'd ultimately disagree with "there's nothing wrong" but I see their point. De jure, the relevant actual "rights" one has are to remain silent and to be represented. It's department policy that allows for a suspect to request a supervisor. It speaks to a corrupt department when they don't discipline the guy for violating said policy but that's not unlawful, just shitty. (Like, why have the policy?)
>I don't think you realize you're arguing against all laws here?
How does the relative concept of "less demand begs less supply" translate into an absolutist eradication argument in your mind?
Ignoring you moving the goalpost from a conversation about law enforcement personnel to a conversation about the legal code. See next.
How does a comment on law enforcement personnel supply (ie: the enforcement part of law enforcement) logically migrate to a comment on the legal code's existence?
I made no such argument. I made a rhetorical point that meant to imply that law enforcement personnel supply (relative ability to enforce the law in any given area), and their techniques, are the outcome of criminality.
Given that LE lying to suspects is not "misbehavior" but a standard investigative technique that falls comfortably within a just legal system.
All evidence has to be disclosed. There are already justifiably harsh laws against falsifying evidence for the purpose of charging suspects.
Suspects have the right to shut up and to an attorney, both of which will fully protect them from being coerced into giving false confessions.
The article is about a case where it was not truthfully disclosed:
>Bradford recalls police making threats and lying to him about DNA evidence they said proved he committed the crime. After hours of interrogation, he confessed, hoping the evidence would acquit him.
"Falsifying evidence" does not apply when it's words spoken during an interrogation. If his confession became fruit of the poisoned tree due to lying to him, it wouldn't have been an issue. At least 10 years of this man's life was lost because non-existent evidence was claimed in an interrogation.
>Given that LE lying to suspects is not "misbehavior" but a standard investigative technique that falls comfortably within a just legal system.
Several other countries don't rely on this "technique". Surely you don't think American cops are so incompetent they can't catch anyone without it.
>Suspects have the right to shut up and to an attorney, both of which will fully protect them from being coerced into giving false confessions.
Except the suspects typically do not know the rules of the game they're being forced to play. The "I want a lawyer, dog" guy knew he had a right to an attorney, he didn't know you need to prompt engineer the police.
>The article is about a case where it was not truthfully disclosed
Meaning that evidence has to be disclosed for trial, after it would serve as part of the predicate for charging the suspect. Though, you knew that.
If the evidence doesn't exist then the charge won't come unless there was a confession. Many such confessions are real. Which is part of why lying about evidence is an investigative technique.
In other words, they won't be politically successful in making a long-standing investigative technique illegal for the sake of suspects. Not when it puts real murderers, and other actually guilty and violent people, behind bars when no other tack was available. Often, these confessions lead to the necessary other evidence. The defense against this tactic is silence and an attorney.
A suspect always has to have an attorney. They should request one ASAP, and keep requesting one while keeping silent. It is ridiculous to assume that cops wouldn't put masses of innocents in jail, should attorney's and the law that protects defendants not exist.
Which means that this particular conversation rests on a silly assumption that a code can protect people in itself, without an attorney. It can't. It won't ever. Make lying illegal: it won't matter in the slightest. What's the concept here: that the law is supposed to protect a suspect in the absence of an attorney, because what? An attorney will arrive later to make sure that the cops follow the letter of the law and to threaten the cops for something that was asked and answered when they weren't present? Good luck with that. It might work a handful of times, and not after. The fact is that suspects need an attorney before they speak, always. Its the only protection.
Evidence does not have to be disclosed as a part of an interrogation. To imply that it might is ridiculous. It can also be lied about as an interrogation technique. The safety against these lies are silence and an attorney (and an innocent conscience as a far distant third).
>Surely you don't think American cops are so incompetent they can't catch anyone without it.
Its amazing that you think that you can be successful in anything with this type of condescending approach. Especially when you are the one that has to convince a large system to change. I can hear your teeth gnashing.
At that point in time someone is at best a subject. Whether they are a criminal or not remains to be seen, you are a couple of steps ahead of the process there.
Is it? Do you have data to back up your data? How often are people convicted with coerced confessions compared to just straight evidence. I did quick search on for data and found this. Should the balance fall on protecting innocent people or prosecuting criminals?
> According to the Innocence Project, almost 30% of convicted people who have been exonerated by DNA testing confess to crimes they didn't commit.
What data of mine is that, which needs backing up?
To gently help you with your attempt to appeal to science , in the vain hope that you aren't tossing word salad.
Again, people have a right to remain silent and a right to an attorney. Two rights that they should ALWAYS exercise.
Coercing confessions is literally how law enforcement gets any confession. If someone confesses, its not up to the cops as to whether or not the confession is true. It is then up to a court. Cops don't convict anyone.
If a suspect messes up and confesses to something that they did not do, then it is up to a jury to exonerate them.
But the suspect is not supposed to forgo their Miranda rights in the first place. Not doing so makes things much better for them.
Literally an attorney is the best and front line legal protection for all peoplle guilty and innocent. The right to one exists.
You want to legally protect people from making self-incriminating false confessions. Cops are not going to be the vehicle for that protection. Again, see the suspect's right to an attorney.
Do you have data for every allowable and disallowable practice in the legal code?
No one is going to concede that procedure, nor anything else in the legal system, requires data to justify itself. Law is a practice.
But if pressed, as many consultants that any municiplaity could afford to hire could go out and cobble together single subject interviews that would stand as "data" or rather what you meant to say: "evidence". All of which would speak highly of the utility of lying (and if the off chance that one or two didn't, those interviews would be excluded as is de facto practice in modern scientific "data collection" whenever politics are involved. The same holds for the inverse interests).
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/michigan-case-offers-pub...
> Brian Chaney says he asked for a supervisor during his arrest in Keego Harbor, Michigan, and Police Officer Richard Lindquist told him that another officer present was in charge. The problem: That second officer was not a supervisor or even a member of the Keego Harbor Police Department. Lindquist was never disciplined and his chief says that while a suspect has the right to request a supervisor, what the officer did was OK.