Remember Walter L. Scott? Reportedly pulled over for a broken taillight, Scott--unarmed--ran away from the police officer, who pursued and shot him from behind, first with a Taser, then with a gun. Scott was struck five times, "three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear with at least one bullet entering his heart."
Levar Jones was stopped for a seatbelt offense, just as he was getting out of his car to enter a convenience store. Directed to show his license, Jones leaned into his car to get his wallet, only to be shot four times by the "fearful" officer. Jones was also unarmed.
Keep in mind, from the moment those lights start flashing and that siren goes off, we're all in the same boat. However, it's what happens after you've been pulled over that's critical.
Survival is key.
Americans need to know their rights when it comes to interactions with the police, bearing in mind that many law enforcement officials are largely ignorant of the law themselves. However, there is a price for asserting one's rights. That price grows more costly with every passing day.
A good resource is The Rutherford Institute's "Constitutional Q&A: Rules of Engagement for Interacting with Police."
In a nutshell, the following are your basic rights when it comes to interactions with the police:
Technically, you have the right to remain silent (beyond the basic requirement to identify yourself and show your registration). You have the right to refuse to have your vehicle searched. You have the right to film your interaction with police. You have the right to ask to leave. You also have the right to resist an unlawful order such as a police officer directing you to extinguish your cigarette, put away your phone or stop recording them.
You have the right under the First Amendment to ask questions and express yourself. You have the right under the Fourth Amendment to not have your person or your property searched by police or any government agent unless they have a search warrant authorizing them to do so. You have the right under the Fifth Amendment to remain silent, to not incriminate yourself and to request an attorney. Depending on which state you live in and whether your encounter with police is consensual as opposed to your being temporarily detained or arrested, you may have the right to refuse to identify yourself. Not all states require citizens to show their ID to an officer (although drivers in all states must do so).
While technology is always going to be a double-edged sword, with the gadgets that are the most useful to us in our daily lives--GPS devices, cell phones, the internet--being the very tools used by the government to track us, monitor our activities, and generally spy on us, cell phones are particularly useful for recording encounters with the police and have proven to be increasingly powerful reminders to police that they are not all powerful.
Knowing your rights is only part of the battle, unfortunately.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the hard part comes in when you have to exercise those rights in order to hold government officials accountable to respecting those rights.
Source: .ly/3fJlPR9
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