5th Amendment Rights

[Top Cat]

Quote by Dan;
Note to TC, maybe we found what I'm fanatical about huh

I just knew you were my kind of person ;)

[ponch]

Excellent. This should be mandatory for all HS students.

Originally Posted by Blowndodge "Darksider"

This is a long video but it is so worth watching

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...85833865&hl=en

[blowndodge]

Glad you watched it Ponch. I wasn't sh*ttiing ya was I??

Cadd, did you watch it? Trust me. Just watch the damn thing and you will be a total believer in what this ESQ says... You know after you've watched it you've heard the truth. I'm a "doubting thomas" by nature as most have figured out here!! I watched this and my jaw just dropped!!!! "Enlightenment" is an understatement!!

[lw]

"I had the RIGHT to remain silent. . . just not the ABILITY."

Ron White.

Originally Posted by Blowndodge "Darksider"

Glad you watched it Ponch. I wasn't sh*ttiing ya was I??

Cadd, did you watch it? Trust me. Just watch the damn thing and you will be a total believer in what this ESQ says... You know after you've watched it you've heard the truth. I'm a "doubting thomas" by nature as most have figured out here!! I watched this and my jaw just dropped!!!! "Enlightenment" is an understatement!!

Oh, I watched both parts this AM. And I agree that this is absolutely the best policy. If ever I am arrested I will simply keep repeating that I can't talk to them without a lawyer.

Where I am fuzzy is where you haven't been arrested, but perhaps may have witnessed something. I know people have been arrested and convicted just because they seemed to know too much about a crime.

[dantama]

I think that if you witness something, get a lawyer, or some other clever way to anonymously pass the information on to the police.

It is a bit of a tight rope walk wanting to be a good citizen, and do the right thing, and not get yourself in to any trouble unessasarily.

In my case, talking to the police about a crime and such was no problem for me, I just didn't talk to them when I was getting a ticket and such for things that I really did do. But getting arrested when I called them to report a crime, and I thought that they were the good guys, and I was doing the right thing reporting it, then getting arrested changed my perception.

You can get away clean a thousand times, but that one time that they lie and arrest you outweighs all the times that good came of it.

BTW, I've got two brothers that also have been arrested for crimes that they didn't do. We aren't a family of bad asses with an attitude or anything. One brother is as intellectual as Bill Gates, voted most likely to succeed, nerd etc. His was so traumatic that he almost moved out of the country afterwards.

The other brother was as mild as can be too.

All three of us felt profoundly different about the country that we live in after those arrests. There is no way to explain how it feels to have that much force come against you unjustly.

New York Wisdom says: "Don't get involved!" In other words, shut up and forget about it, because innocent people who have witnessed crimes have been arrested and convicted simply because they "seemed to know too much" about what happened.

Sometimes we know things without knowing why we know them. Sometimes our brains fill in obvious missing pieces. I surely do not want to be a victim of the "How did you *KNOW* there was a shooting? We never said anyone was shot!" kind of mentality when I'm just trying to be a "good citizen".

With this against us, what hope is there for justice, if the average Joe is as worried about being a victim of police as much as crime? There have been too many cultures where police power was never really about justice. I hate to think that Western Civilization has never transcended that point, but clearly it has not.

I was once involved as a witness-turned-suspect in a case I won't talk about on the open forum. You guys can ask me in Mesquite if you're interested; but there was an interesting episode right after we moved to a new neighborhood some years ago.

We did hot have individual mailboxes but had "communal" mail boxes just like a New York apartment building, only outdoors on a pole on the street. Everyone has a key to unlock their box, plus there are large lock-boxes for packages, where the mailman leaves the key in your small box. Sometime I think all mailmen are on drugs, because of the number of times I've gotten other people's mail; but that's another issue.

Anyhow, I'd ordered some small car parts on eBay and evidently the mailman left the package at the right box for our house number, but on the wrong street. Also, evidently the available package boxes were filled, because it was left on top of the mail box. Anyhow, the police came to my door, asking me "Are you Mr. so-and-so" and asking me about my involvement with a suspicious package found on a mailbox.

This was right after that tabloid newspaper incident with the anthrax germs, so the cops were pretty jumpy about any suspicious mail. In the end it turned out fine, and I got my package undamaged; probably because it wasn't all that suspicious and because I'm such a harmless seeming character in real life.

But they had (unknown to me) called out for a dog to come sniff the package, and the dog gave off some strange vibes. Maybe the mailman that delivered it had been previously touching some contraband or something. Anyhow there were a few moments where I was clearly being considered a suspect, and I thought maybe they would start pointing guns at me and call out the hazmat team or the bomb disposal squad to blow up my genuine 1947 Plymouth tail light lenses.

At that point, what if I had simply uttered some red-flag buzz word to the police? The ending might have been much different, yet in the end all I did was buy some bits of expensive colored glass online. I get the feeling that throughout history men have been hanged for less.

[Dave]

Great advice!

Here some more:

[dantama]

Originally Posted by Dave

Great advice!

Here some more:

Gotta agree with him :)


You can quietly give your license and registration, and do it politely.....or you can do like this lady

One minute a bad ass tough chick, the next a whimpering child.

She could've just handed over her license and registration to begin with, and politely declined to give more information. But everybody has to do it their own way.

[jussmatt]

That was a good one Dan. I love it when they're so big and bad at first!!! LOL!

[cactusjack]

Absolutely, under no circumstances should you "volunteer" any information to the cops. Be respectful, be courteous, be honest, but don't run your mouth.

A couple of my sons have had run-ins with the local constabulary, and the police in the Phoenix area don't screw around. I just found out the other day that last week a cop brought my youngest home. He was at a neighborhood park and the knucklehead was burning something in one of the barbeque grills. It was after midnight, so he was in violation of the city curfew for minors. What the boy genius didn't know was that there has been a recent rash of some arsonist(s) setting playground equipment on fire in Chandler. Now he isn't a suspect, but someone saw the flames in the park and called the police.

I've always told my kids that nothing good happens after midnight. One of my kids had to find out the hard way, and it cost him about $6,000 and 2 years of probation. He wasn't innocent, he was just plain stupid at the time.

[ponch]

Originally Posted by JussMatt

That was a good one Dan. I love it when they're so big and bad at first!!! LOL!

[dantama]

$6,000? Yikes!