7 Bullshit Police Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies)
#3.
Tracing a Call Takes a Long Time
As Seen On:
Every show in existence which featured a phone tap.
Typical Scenario:
"Keep him on the phone!"
Clint Eastwood IS a Secret Service agent sworn to protect the President. John Malkovich IS a crazed assassin who has called Eastwood to taunt him. Technicians scramble around the room to set up a trace to pinpoint the bad guy's location. Through a series of hand gestures they implore Clint to keep the him on the line. After all, it takes a full minute to do a trace!
Dammit! He hung up three seconds before we could triangulate his position! He knows our weaknesses!
Why it's Bullshit:
Have you ever tried prank calling 911? If so then go fuck yourself, but you probably also got a visit from a local patrolman telling you to cut that shit out. This is thanks to the Enhanced 911 system, which automatically pairs every incoming call with a physical address, in case a child or a dog dials for help or you're too busy getting stabbed to death to actually speak into the phone.
"Help! Someone invent a telephone!"
You might be saying, "But criminals use cell phones, you idiots!" Well prepare to get paranoid, because today the FBI can track down and remotely turn on any cell phone, and even use it as a microphone to spy on people. They could be listening in as we speak.
The government knows what you talk about with your boyfriend and they think it's totally hot.
#2.
Criminals Must Be Read Their Miranda Rights or They Will Go Free
As Seen On:
Every show that has involved a person being arrested.
Typical Scenario:
After months of grueling investigation and forensic work, the police finally get enough evidence to put the drug kingpin behind bars. The scene is the same every time: They bend his ass over the hood of the car and say, "You have the right to remain silent." That phrase is like the cops' end zone dance. They got you.
Touchdown, dirtbag.
And oh, by the way, if they ever forget to say the magic words at the time of arrest, that means you get to walk, right?
Why it's Bullshit:
Actually the odds are, some of you reading this have been arrested. And the odds are the cops didn't read you your rights, at any point. You may also notice the cops on Steven Seagal: Lawman, are never heard doing it, though you probably assumed that was because Officer Seagal enforces the law his way.
Pictured: Justice.
Not so. The "reading your rights" thing (aka the Miranda Warning) is NOT done to everybody who gets arrested. It's instead a warning for people who are about to be interrogated. That doesn't include you if you were arrested for, say, driving drunk and then peeing on the hood of the police car. They pretty much know what they need to know.
OK, but if they do question you and forget to read you the Miranda Warning, you get to walk, right? When they say guys got off on "a technicality," that's what they're talking about, isn't it?
Actually, no. All that means is the prosecution will not be able to use anything you said in court, which usually is just a bunch of drunken swearing anyway.
#1.
Everyone Gets One Free Phone Call
As Seen On:
Law and Order, Hackers, The Matrix, every cop show ever
Typical Scenario:
Early in The Matrix, Agent Smith brings in Neo to interrogate him, throwing in his face all of the evidence they have of his various hackings. Neo, unfazed, demands to have "his phone call." Singular. Not, "I want to use the phone" or "I want a lawyer," but "I want my phone call."
You see this in movie after movie, where the character gets hauled in and has to decide who to contact with their one call. Presumably if the person they're calling isn't home, they're just stuck in the prison system until somebody notices they're missing.
Why it's Bullshit:
The "one phone call" rule is purely a Hollywood invention. Now that goes both ways; some jails have pay phones and you can call whoever you want as long as the person on the other end is willing to pay for it, but they don't have to let you use the phone at all.
Phone calls in prisons, jails or other detainment facilities are a privilege, which can be taken away whenever the cops feel like you weren't behaving yourself (that's why the privileges exist, so they have something to take away if you're being a dick and something to promise you to keep you in line).
Y'know, if the regular beatings weren't enough.
Now, you do have the right to an attorney, and if there's something you have to contact the outside world for (such as, somebody to deliver medicine to your poor sick mother) he'd be the one to talk to if the cops aren't letting you use the phone.
If you arrive at the jail with a cell phone, they are going to take that away for obvious reasons: So you can't use it to detonate a bomb implanted in one of your henchmen.
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Most of this is plain common sense except for the miranda rights section. The police must inform you of your rights at some point shortly after being apprehended. The police are also allowed to do this through a written form. Yet, if the police forget this and have concrete evidence against you, you will still be convicted.
ReplyThe part which still confuses me in reading rights is along the lines of "....but anything you do say may be used against you in a court of law".
ReplyI understand that is along the lines of what is stated in the US.
Is that the same as in England & Wales ?
In Scotland, the warning is along the lines of "....but anything you do say may be used in evidence". It does not actually say "against you'
My husband is a cop and #2 & #3 are things he always complains about in shows/movies. That and how the actors can never hold a gun properly or search a building correctly.
ReplyNo wonder I'm always getting calls from the same people in prison
ReplyWhat happens when you run out of thumb downs?
Replythe joker used wnated his 'one' phone call remember and used a policemans mobile
ReplyIs anyone else bugged about those anti-gay ads?
Replyanother thing that should have been mentioned is the whole "breathalizer" scenario. movies/tv/whatever make people think that they HAVE to consent to it when they don't.
Reply Hide All See All 4 Repliesyou consented to a breathalizer (any time a cop deems there is reasonable suspicion to do so) when you received your drivers license.
You are allowed to refuse a breathalyzer test in the field. However, you are then issues a citation ($300 in NY), arrested, and your vehicle is impounded. When you get to the station, you are then given a breathalyzer there that you cannot refuse as part of your booking. It's your call.
You can actually ask the cops to take you to the nearest hospital for a blood test. I heard this from a lawyer recently, and thought it was an interesting fact.
Refusing is considered to be admitting guilt, so you are automatically charged regardless. And while I'm sure you can ask them to take you to get a blood test done, they don't have to and I can assure you they won't. So stop being a dumbass and 1. Don't drive drunk. 2. Cooperate with the cops. Being an a*****e just makes things worse for you.
"Not so. The "reading your rights" thing (aka the Miranda Warning) is NOT done to everybody who gets arrested. It's instead a warning for people who are about to be interrogated. That doesn't include you if you were arrested for, say, driving drunk and then peeing on the hood of the police car. They pretty much know what they need to know."
ReplyThere's one more caveat in that. The Miranda is used for CUSTODIAL interrogation. If you're free to leave at any time, but are still being questioned (which is all interrogated means), you do not get the Miranda. If you're in custody (arrested/not free to leave), but not being questioned, you don't get the Miranda.
Well, you don't HAVE to get Mirandised. I've seen cops do it for phone interviews (still shaking my head over that).
custodial interrogation is tricky stuff. most people don't know what it entails. they also think that they can blurt out whatever the f**k they want while in the presence of a police officer if they haven't been read miranda, apparently forgetting that they can use "spontaneous utterances" against them in court because they're volunteering information. oh, criminal law is hysterical.
A lot of it is so the police can watch the assholes that think they can beat the system without accidently catching too many innocent people instead.
What it fails to help is laws regarding Minors.
As someone who's been in hospital this year after a guy tried to kill me, because the guy was 'Technically a minor' (Bloody highschool) all he had to do was make "A sincere sounding apology"
Doesn't matter that if some people hadn't pulled him off me, pounding my face into the pavement like an irate gorilla, I would not have made this comment. He said he was sorry.
In the UK if you refuse to answer questions at all the police can arrest you for that, that said if you simply say you dont know and its plausable that thats the case then they cant.
Replythe police can only arrest you if you are under reasonable suspicion and refuse to co operate. You can always ask what the reasonable suspicion is. i wouldnt bother tho, when do the IPCC ever find the police guilty of anything
If you dont want to end up in prison-USE COMMON SENSE
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesNone of these are things that only people in prison have to deal with. You don't even need to be arrested to invoke your 5th amendment rights - a cop can come by and want to question you about a burglary across the street, and you can choose to invoke your 5th amendment rights instead of talking to him.
Why? Because even if you are totally innocent, you could say something like "yeah, Tom had it coming, he never locks his door and he's a total douche!" and they could most certainly use that against you. People think, "I have nothing to hide, I'm innocent, so I'll talk to the cops all I want and I'll be fine!" Not true.
Prison and jail are also two very different places.
Yeah, using common sense ALWAYS makes sure you aren't wrongfully arrested or detained.
Also, they can convince you that you raped and eaten a child that never existed.
Also a thing on that Enhanced 911 system is it enacts if you simply dial "91". During an argument I once made the threat by simply dialing the first two digits, then I hung up and the cops came a knockin'.
Replyhmm, sounds possibly like bullshit to me. Or do the cops visit everyone who calls Oklahoma too?
When Jerry Orbach barges in demanding information, you by God give it to him.
ReplyIf Jerry Orbach barges in demanding information, I am running to my zombie apocalypse shelter.
Can I throw in one? It seems kind of important: "Dumb criminals always get caught, but the most sophisticated and well-planned-out crimes are the ones most likely to succeed." This is false, and the opposite is true.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesSee, generally, criminals really suck at being criminals unless they were born into a crime syndicate and have been doing murder their whole lives. But most of us aren't even involved in that, since they couldn't care less about us. I'm talking about murders of everyday people by someone who may or may not be a psychopath or has some motive for doing it. Someone finds a body in a random area, and no one saw anything. The police are sent in to investigate. It usually takes less than a few days, if not the same day, to arrest the right guy, who's been planning it for months, maybe years.
People who plan crimes for the first time assume they know what they're doing. They have this vague idea of how forensics works, and if they take the right precautions, they think they'll get away with it. They'll do the usual stuff of being sure there aren't any prints or DNA evidence to find. They might kill them in one area and dump the body in another. They might try to form an alibi for themselves. They might even use special weapons and bullets to make identifying the gun used very difficult. Premeditated murders by inexperienced murderers tend to go like that.
But every single thing they're thinking about forensics is wrong to such an astronomical degree that they'll be identified and caught within a couple of days of just analyzing the crime scene. The reason is extremely simple: You don't even realize how much evidence you're leaving behind when you try to cover up and then exit the scene. Forensic workers are in their line of work because they're good at it, and in a murder case, they're especially good at it, since they've worked with people like you a hundred times already who had the same ideas. Although it's practically impossible, let's assume you actually get away with not leaving DNA evidence at the scene, a feat which would delay their investigation maybe 10 minutes. But this type of criminal seems to forget one kind-of-important thing: There's an extremely good chance that your motive is not a secret to the police or even the public, and even if it isn't, they'll link one to you in the first day, meaning you're going to be a suspect. If they have your ex-girlfriend, are a business partner, are even an acquaintance in any form, you're up for questioning so they can see what stories match up. Good luck getting out of that one, because unless you're the most street-hardened criminal in the country, their questioning is going to break you down after six hours or so. Your story also has to match up with everyone else's, and if yours alone is the faulty one, you're pretty much fucked. They expect you to slip up at some point, and they'll be watching you the whole time. The rest is just a matter of going through the motions until you're arrested and convicted, since you'd have the MMO all lined up by that point: method, motive, and opportunity. Premeditated crimes almost always are discovered and the perpetrator caught because the person carrying them out has no idea what they're doing.
Dumb criminals are actually the most likely to get away with murder, by a long shot. These are the criminals that don't try to get cute, and hence just do it and leave. These types of criminals are a nightmare for the police, who may never catch them. Someone who ambushes someone else in a parking lot out of f*****g nowhere and stabs them to death, then immediately leaves without anyone seeing him, has a very good chance of never being caught, because the police will have almost nothing to go by. No one saw him, no DNA evidence was left, and the only intent was to kill and leave. No one knows what he looks like, what his motive was, or even if it was just a random stabbing or a premeditated act. They have no idea, and they have no resources to go by except questioning people, which doesn't often do much good, since the real murderer, assuming he's questioned, will just say he was somewhere else. Unless he can be proven wrong somehow, the investigation reaches a stalemate there. "Blitz" murders are the police's worst nightmare when it comes to homicide investigations, not premeditated ones, which tend to be extremely easy to solve. It's a good day when they get a "bizarre" crime, since that practically always means there's enough evidence to convict a person of anything they want.
And that's my lesson for today. Hope you learned something.
Damn! Thats a long comment!
I learned that you watch way too many crime dramas
NO you CAN'T "throw one in"! Ah crap you did it anyway.
*I learned what tl;dr means by reading that comment
Right so #5 is very wrong. During the investigatory period, a person may not "plead the 5th" if they haven't been accused of anything. Now, police also can't force you to talk via the threat of obstruction of justice either. They can however make you say whatever it is that you do know if they reasonably believe that you have information that will assist the investigation.
Reply Hide All See All 9 RepliesI know this because...well because I'm a MFing lawyer.
How can they make you say what you do know?
With rubber hoses?
Why do I have trouble believing you are a lawyer, and instead picture you a tubby, sweatier than most high schooler who hasn't learned he doesn't meed to try and be cool oj the internet yet
In my experience as an Internet professional, Lawyers don't say/type "I'm a MFing Lawyer"
Also, if you're any decent lawyer you'd know that you are refering to "Compelling a whitness" or in court dealing with a "Hostile Whitness" (Which happens after the investigation period), it requires some court orders and actual evidence that a person knows something.
Ironically I know this because I am a Lawyer, no seriously, I googled that shit!
then learn how to spell "witness"
You do realize, don't you, that contrary to popular belief the police are not permitted to be violent with witnesses? That doesn't mean they aren't on occasion but it usually means trouble for them when they are. If they're convinced you know something (reasonably convinced) they can ask you to accompany them to their precinct for further questioning but you are under no obligation to go unless you are under arrest.
But they can't actually *force* you to do anything unless they suspect you've committed perjury or committed a crime yourself. Technically it may not be "pleading the 5th" to refuse to talk to the cops if you haven't done anything but it does fall into the same category - you haven't been accused but you are refusing to say anything that might cause you to fall under suspicion in *any* criminal matter.
You must not be a very good f*****g lawyer. You do not have to say anything to Police other than verifying your identity. Anything else and you should ask for your attorney to be present. Period.
remind me never to hire you. you're an idiot. did you take the bar exam in iraq?
Funny, both a law professor and a law student who was a police officer said exactly the opposite of what you just said, Lawyer. Search Youtube for "Never talk to the police". You have a right not to talk to them at all times, and you have the right to have an attourney present at all times that the police are talking to you. Use your judgement based on the situation as to whether you should or not.
People don't realize that most of the reasons that cops get away with a lot of random bull s**t is because people don't know the law better. They get intimidated and don't ask for a lawyer, because they don't want the cops to think they're guilty. They talk and incriminate themselves in the most stupid ways because they think that they might have left some evidence behind, when in fact there isn't any evidence.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesI've only learned a lot about the legal system and cops because my father is one. He's a dick too. And he'll pull that intimidation stuff if he thinks he can get away with it. So your best bet if you get in trouble, act confident in your answers, don't lie, and for god sakes, if you did do it, get a lawyer and don't say a damn word.
Truer words have never been spoken.
If you are arrested for anything, remember only one thing: Shut your mouth till you get a lawyer.
Cops can and will be dinks to trip you up. It might not be illegal but it is indecent and immoral and definitely is not serving or protecting. There is just too much money (your stuff) to be made.
99% of people cops deal with a scumbags. The same assholes commit all the robberies all the time. 99% of the time you know EXACTLY who robbed the house in the area because its ALWAYS the same people. Get these morons talking and they will spill everything, because they are barly educated trash.
@Syn I'ma call bullshit on your "99%" since I'm not a scumbag, and I've actually dealt with cops more than a handful of times. Once, i was in my yard smoking, and cops asked "Do you know if your neighbor is home?" Another time, my car got hit, and, guess what? I had to deal with cops. There've been other times too, but it'd be a pretty boring coment if all I talked about was my boring brushes with cops.... point is, although I may be a scumbag... talking to boring, innocent people who were either in the right place, or who have had something bad happen is probably a lot bigger part of a cops job than dealing with "scumbags"
It's always in your best interest to get a lawyer, as frustrating as that is for police. At the same time, of course police are going to try to trip you up, that's their job. They can't tell the difference between somebody who is lying and somebody who really is innocent. Their job is to get as much evidence as possible to give to a prosecutor. The unfortunate fact that confessions are seen by juries as more damning evidence than they really are isn't the police's fault, that's the job of the courts, and particularly the defense attorney.
Calling police immoral for trying to interrogate you properly is like saying that they are immoral for dusting for fingerprints. After all, plenty of innocent people leave finger prints around all the time. It's up to the courts to decide whether fingerprints or a confession are evidence of guilt.
Cops do get too much credit, as do soldiers... it takes all of us... right down to the very smallest consumer to keep this planet going. not saying we are all equal, just saying that everyone has or her is place.
ReplyThe US sees its troops very differently to the rest of the world. The same way the Germans saw their troops diffently during WW2. (This is the part where you all get offended and prove me right)
I am going to prove you right Syn. One of the reasons that Patton was in disgrace was for slapping a soldier. The Germans were unable to believe that he would actually be in disgrace so when D-Day came around the Germans were distracted by a fake army being assembled by Patton. The Germans would never have pulled a General because he did something like slap a soldier.
whoever wrote this go to hell 3 of these are wrong figure out which one you f*****g retard.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYea there's a retard here... Pretty sure it's not the person who wrote the article.. Jus' sayin'..
I'm thinking dooodeeeedooooo (did I spell that right?) might be a lawyer.
Says the retard who wrote that retarded comment. Go back to 4chan noobtard
With the phone call one, since I assume that the author was referencing In the Line of Fire with the Eastwood/Malkovich line, I'm pretty sure that in that movie, they do acknowledge that the police (ESPECIALLY the FBI) can track down someone who's called them with relative ease. However, Malkovich was a. jamming the signal and/or b. using a location like a phone booth where he can get away before the cops get there.
ReplyActually I think that myth is a holdover from the old days, before implementation of Signalling System #7 protocols. Before SS7, it did take minutes to trace the origination of a phone call, the recepient had to keep the caller on the line while experts did the analog equivalent of pinging switches to trace the number that was being used to make the call (they were "tracing" the signal path, hence the term trace). It could take five minutes or even more if the call was international, to trace a phone call.
After SS7, which allowed for, among other things, higher modem speeds, caller ID, and instant tracing of phone calls.
and now in the digital age its pretty much instant.
Fairly certain you guys have never actually SEEN Law & Order, since they don't pull this horseshit ever in that show.
ReplyFairly certain you have never actually *seen* Law & Order, since they nearly always pull that horseshit in that show