Thank goodness for Flex Your Rights, an organization dedicated to teaching people, particularly young people, about their constitutional rights and the proper way to assert them. They’ve released their newest video, 10 Rules for Dealing with Police, narrated by Baltimore criminal defense lawyer Billy Murphy, Jr. and produced by Steven Silverman and Scott Morgan.
As the point of this exercise is less to make money off the sales of DVDs than to inform and protect, the video is available through the Cato Institute, with the proviso that you have to endure a 5 minutes introduction by Tim Lynch before getting to the good stuff.
In many respects, it’s a very solid film and the rules are, for the most part, good. My hesitancy is that it’s simultaneously a depressing commentary on the state of affairs on our streets, particularly if you happen to be black or Hispanic, and ignores to some extent on very hard, cold reality. You can do everything right, perfectly right, and there is no assurance that you won’t be beaten to death before the encounter ends.
Here’s the beef. Asserting rights, even done well, “respectfully”, and in accordance with the rules as provided, is itself a provocative act. The film fails to explain that some police officers demand obedience. As we watch the movie, we know that it’s being recorded so that others can see what’s happening. On the real street, there will be no one making a movie of the interaction. What happens for real, and how it’s later described by a police officer, may well be entirely different.
You asked for a lawyer? The cop says you didn’t. You never consented to the search? The cop says you did. You never touched the officer. Of course you did, or he wouldn’t have beaten and tased you.
This isn’t a flaw in the film, in that its purpose is to instruct people on how to navigate an interaction with police, assert their constitutional rights, and, assuming that the police respond properly, survive. It’s the unknown variable that gives rise to the problem, that police respond properly.
Films like this empower people to assert their rights. That’s its purpose, and it’s a great goal. Far more often than not, defendants fail to properly assert their rights and allow the police to trample them. They give them away for free all the time. It makes criminal defense lawyers nuts when we hear about the defendant who consented to a search or couldn’t stop his lips from moving. You were afraid? You didn’t know what to do? Bummer, but it’s no excuse.
The only thing I would add to this film is a warning: No matter what you do, no matter how well you do it, there is no assurance that the exercise of constitutional rights in a manner consistent with this film will not result in your arrest and conviction, your suffering all manner of harm, including death.
This isn’t a commentary on 10 Rules for Dealing with Police, but about police and our society. Even best practices won’t save everyone.
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Perhaps a training program for citizens to deal with irate police persons in a calm and controlled manner would be a good supplement to this video. Your advice is right on spot, SHG, and sometimes absolute calm and a friendly demeanor is the best antidote to a potentially irate cop. As you clearly note, the deck is stacked in his/her favor.
Even better, Mark, is Chris Rock’s how not to get your ass kicked by the police, on You Tube.
I used to have that video on the sidebar, but it’s definitely worth a reprise.
The first Flex Your Right rule is remain calm and cool. It’s a good rule. No, a great rule. Not because it’s right, but because, as Billy Murphy says, anything else may make the officer feel threatened, and an officer who feels threatened is an officer who will respond violently to protect himself. Remember, the first rule of police work is get home safely. That means if it’s a choice between the officer taking a chance on someone turning violent and his beating, tasing, shooting, you can bet that he’ll turn violent first.
Even so, calm and cool is no guarantee. There is no guarantee. That’s the problem.
Sir, this is good stuff. If one doesn’t have common sense and/or wasn’t taught to respect the ‘authorati’ hopefully they’ll learn from the video.
Regarding racial profiling; I had long(er) hair in the 70s – 80s and the police constantly rolled up and threw us in the back of the squad car. Was that considered profiling or just getting the riff raff off the streets? (BTW, for some reason we never got charged despite being taken to jail, strip-searched and released.) It made us want to hate them for the un-necessary harassment while appreciating not getting our heads bashed in.
Thank God we never flexed our rights, for we’d have surely gotten our asses shot off, handcuffed and thrown in the bayou. Back then in Harris County, Texas they called that committing suicide. Thanks.
Maybe these departments should do what the F.B,I, is doing sending new agents to classes at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for a program on law enforcement and values. Its a interesting approach, the story is posted at the F,B,I. web site under news releases.
Yup, to all of that. It’ll be interesting to see if the commonnness of cameras in public places — including those that don’t look like cameras — starts to change things.
One thing that people who haven’t been through it before is how incredibly intimidating “routine” police encounters can be. Even people who flatter themselves as a bit salty can find themselves talking ‘way too much. (And, yes, I’m pointing a finger, but it’s at a mirror as much as anything else.)
Cops will lie 99% of the time. That’s a given. But 99% of the US population doesn’t understand that they have rights to refuse to talk to police, that if they want a lawyer, they get to have one regardless whether they are guilty or innocent, and that the police aren’t almighty Gods. They wish they were, and in many places they act like they are. But, if we, the People start using our rights, the cops are going to settle back into their garbage bins.