seanbonner: Cops Enforcing Fake Laws

August 23, 2004

Cops Enforcing Fake Laws

Last night I read about AKMA getting harassed for using a public wifi hotspot by a police officer who either didn't understand the laws, or was just making them up on the spot. Unfortunately this isn't an isolated situation, sure the wifi involvement might be new, but police officers wanting to control other people is old news. It's happened to me, it's happened to friends of mine. And let me tell you, Cops like nothing more than being told they are wrong by some citizen. This got me thinking, what rights does a person have in a situation like this? Ernie (the attorney) talked about this situation this morning but mostly just what I said, that it happens a lot. He doesn't have comments on his site, so maybe this trackback ping will nudge him to post more about it from a legal standpoint - Ernie, what can a person do in such a situation? What could AKMA have said or done to get the officer to leave him alone?

Posted by sean on August 23, 2004 09:12 AM | View blog reactions
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Comments

Well, to answer your question, it's sort of like this. As George Bernard Shaw once said "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable man persists in having the world adapt itself to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

In this case, the bottleneck is the ignorance of the police officer. AKMA is a reasonable person so he adapted himself to the situation. The cop left him alone, but only because AKMA was reasonable (i.e. conformed to the cop's misimpression, and was polite about it). But AKMA has a weblog and look at what's happened in the aftermath: we're all talking about it. The cop is still an unreasonable person, and hopefully the people who encounter him will learn from AKMA.

Posted by: Ernie on August 23, 2004 02:27 PM

That story is ridiculous. There's actually a decent website for learning your rights and dealing with police. It outlines the types of questioning based on their level of suspicion and tells you how to respond clearly so that your rights are protected.
http://www.lawcollective.org

For instance, cops can search the inside of your car, but not the trunk, and will say something like "would you pop the trunk for me?" in order to obtain consent. The average person interprets it as an order, but it's really a question. You need to say "Sorry, I do not consent" and it is entirely within your rights.

They're also legally able to lie and tell you about nonexistent evidence in order to obtain a confession. I've seen this on Law and Order, and was impressed by how clearly that site explains the process.

Posted by: katieweb on August 23, 2004 08:11 PM

Here's a link I just found after librarian.net linked to me and my hits SKYROCKETED to up near 100. You heard me. ONE HUNDRED. IN ONE DAY. ahem. (ok, so that's a big deal for my little blog.) Anyway, link:

http://www.librarian.net/

Posted by: shane on August 24, 2004 12:54 AM