IANAL and it's best to know and understand the laws of the state that you're in. But in general you're under no obligation to answer any questions a cop has for you and you're not being rude or difficult by simply saying nothing at all. If a cop actually wants to help you they can do so by promptly giving you a citation and letting you go on about your day, not by trying to pry on your personal opinions or activities.
yes you are under obligation to answer any questions for whatever reason no matter the state
and to further exacerbate the situation states are now doing their own thing more than ever and Biden is failing on the campaign promise for police reform
I briefly skimmed over that page you linked so apologies if I missed something, but I didn't see anything in there that implied you are under any obligation to answer questions from an officer. The officer has the right to detain you and in most cases you must comply with an officer's orders, for example to step out of the vehicle, submit to a search, etc.
However, the 5th amendment of the US Constitution protects citizens from being compelled to offer self-incriminating information. In other words, the officer cannot order you to answer a question.
Sorry, that's arguably some bad advice. The most well known counterpoint is there in your Miranda Rights: you have the right to remain silent. That right exists under the 5th as the other comment mentions.
This applies to a traffic stop for most everything but name, address, and the required documents (insurance, driver's license). As to whether you have to sign a ticket, I can't say.
And of course this video is gold, watch it yearly:
yes you are under obligation to answer any questions for whatever reason no matter the state
You need to have brain damage to believe this is true. Police can detain you for whatever reason they might have, and refusing to answer them might cause them to place you under arrest, but you are not obligated to answer questions while you are under detention or arrest.
What are they gonna do? Use their psychic piggy powers to force me to talk? lmao.
No court in any state in this country would ever convict someone solely for exercising their right to not incriminate themselves. Abusive cops exist, sure, but that doesn't make them right.
I really don't get where you're basing this on, what law compels you to waive your right to be silent? I'll yield that a cop will treat you like shit if you stonewall them but there's no way they can make you incriminate yourself.
So do I, but I could have a tail light out, maybe I’ve still got something hanging from my rearview, maybe a passenger isn’t wearing their seatbelt.
As others in the comments mentioned, police can usually find a number of reasons to make a stop. There’s really no reason to answer anything other than no to that question.
One....Can we do the questions of "So where are you coming from anyway" and "So where are you heading" next? Neither one of those are the cop's business and have absolutely nothing to do with the traffic stop 99.9% of the time. The sole purpose of those questions is to get you to accidentally yourself into admitting to more that they can nail you with.
The other is good luck doing anything about it if the cops decide to ask you anyway. Sure, the cop may not legally be allowed to ask that, but what are you going to do about it if he does? Are you going to be willing to endure the cop dragging the traffic stop out as long as possible, just to annoy you? Are you willing to turn what may have been a warning into a citation because you pissed off the cop? Or worse, are you ready to endure him doing everything he can to nail you with everything but the kitchen sink, and make you go through the courts to fight it?
Making a law that makes it illegal for them to ask these questions does exactly nothing if the citizens are likely to receive further punishment if they refuse to cooperate when the cop asks anyway. The power imbalance is just way, way too lopsided in favor of the cop, and attempting to exercise your rights in these situations may end up causing more harm than good if the cop decides to go on a power trip.
In which case, as long as the cop wasn't lying, or making an excuse, could be easily proven. People might be more likely to trust that they were speeding if cops didn't lie at every interaction.
I was out at a bar the other night with a bunch of fellow dads. I mentioned how I just got my son with the dikfore joke, figuring everyone knew what I was talking about.
One guy is like "I havent heard that one" and it was like time stood still. I was once again a middle school boy about to drop an embarrassment bomb onto someone, from which they would never recover. Everyone else seemed to sense it in the air because they all went silent too.
"You don't know the dikfore?"
We all know what comes next, and he realized what he had walked into the second it came out of his mouth. We all started cracking up, thinking it had been 30 years since the last time we were able to get a peer with that joke.
He still hasn't lived it down. He never will, as long as I'm still breathing.
Now now folks, as long as the lovely police officers are still able to either plant, or pretend to find illegal drugs in the victim’s uh… criminals car so they can arrest them randomly, then everyone will be happy, yes?
This seems like a strict improvement over the old situation, in a way that should be directly felt by lots and lots of people every single day.
I don't get the urge to take a needlessly cynical take on news like this. Yes, the system is still flawed, but yes, it's better than it was before. Take the win and move on to the next reform.
Absolutely this. If anything is going to change, we're going to hear about those changes like this. If the reaction is always "fuck you -ACAB!" the change won't work.
I actually strongly feel that ACAB, but I'd like to live in a society that could have fair and just policing, not one without police.
Any system of government will require some way to handle unlawful/harmful conduct, yeah. It's just a matter of making it not complete shit.
No idea if it would work in practice, but I once heard an idea where policing is a (mandatory?) duty for all citizens, but in regular rotation. Meaning, at any given time, some % of the population is now cops, and once your turn is up you're back to a regular person with no enforcement obligations or privileges. No idea if that would work in practice, but it would give people real consequences for being a shit cop. Nobody could just be a terrible cop in perpetuity.
You have too much faith in humanity. Some would gain empathy for people who have to do that kind of work. Some would think they've earned the right to treat retail workers like shit because they did their time and handled it, so can you. Some would walk away with a better idea of how to fuck with retail workers or avoid detection when shoplifting.
Yes. We need police in a society, as a force to prevent and stop crime. But what we have now across the US as police are shit. We need them to be rebuilt from the ground up as community policing with a focus on protecting people, not just enforcing violations.
ACAB makes sense with the system we have. But I kinda doubt we're going to get many tear down-rebuild efforts. Our best bet is to focus on stuff like this: institutional change in huge areas that change how police think and operate.
Shorter and more accurate, given the US alone has 800k cops and there must be some podunk department of two officers who treats the ten citizens in town well and just has to pull cars out of ditches and calm down drunk spouses or something a few times a year.
Also if all good cops get fired so the rest are bad, there are some cops they’re working to fire as we speak and I want to respect them.
Unfortunately you won't get that. ACAB has lost its original meaning completely. It should be about police reform, but instead it's about shitting all over the institution, regardless of if there are improvements. This post is the perfect example of that. An actual improvement, but it's just people spouting ACAB. The circlejerk is annoying.
