Identify themselves by first and last name, department and badge number.
State the reason they made contact before demanding ID.
Stop demanding ID and running it to check for warrants.
The line between detention and arrest needs to be clear and unambiguous. If the citizen asks them if they are detained, answer with a Yes or No. No games.
Tell the truth.
Not threaten to get compliance.
Disorderly conduct and “breach of peace” need to go.
“We got a call…” is bs. If they don’t observe criminal activity, the call is irrelevant.
They are not “conducting investigations”. They are not detectives.
The case appears to be an attempt to claim the drugs were the “fruit of a poisonous tree” seizure. My training, long ago and in accordance with SCOTUS rulings, required 2 things, in order to be a legal search. 1. Is the officer legally there, (this is both plain view doctrine and when an officer is conducting a search). 2. Is what the officer sees illegal. If both answers are yes, then the evidence can be seized and used in court. If the officer can’t prove the first step, they can still seize the illegal items, but they can’t be used in court.
If you want to talk about probable cause for an arrest, that is a different area, as all arrests don’t involve searches leading to seizures of evidence…
I couldn’t possibly agree with you more. Some of what I’ve seen on videos is horrendous. This needs to stop at the top. The leadership needs to stop defending these cops on ego trips.
Body cams and dash cams are a good start. Hard to argue about probable cause when the incident is on film. I could live with a lack of film being prejudicial to a finding of probable cause.
Body cams and dash cams are a good start. Hard to argue about probable cause when the incident is on film. I could live with a lack of film being prejudicial a finding of probable cause.
I agree. However I believe that local police in some cases need to make it more clear what their procedure is for making a body cam case and how and when they will release the video.
But how is that going to happen without some sort of federal oversight. There are so many local jurisdictions with differences in state laws. And the unions are always going to be on the cops side.
It seems that every time there is a black mark on how a cop handles a situation, very little attention is given to it.
Public records laws. If it goes to trial, the film is a public record. If it doesn’t result in charges, it goes to a review board and becomes a public record after review. The review isn’t to make it a public record, it is to determine if police misconduct (wrongful arrest) has occurred.
The metrics of what constitutes effective policing have to change.
As long as the metrics are based in anyway, upon number of engagements, a lot of the stuff probably isn’t going to stop.
Because if they continue to be based on engagements, cops have to increase the number of engagements. And in my mind, that’s a big factor in the existence of all these pretexts.
The one thing I do agree with 100% is the “we got a call”. Just because you get a call, if you in fact got a call, doesn’t mean you treat someone like a criminal based on what some clown said. It’s complete HS!
Isn’t the officers name already on his uniform? Along with his badge number?
I’ve had contact with police probably more than 90% of the public, and in every case they always said why before asking for ID.
Why does disorderly conduct need to go? Too ambiguous?
Hence the need to document that pretext from the beginning. With modern video capabilities a patrol car, marker, or unmarked, should be a rolling monitor of the public space. Including basically a cockpit recorder of the officers actions, including the moments when they initially observe those they have an interaction with, and the officers conversation about what they see…
