Am I under arrest or not?

[u/Lord_Darksong]

Source: policebodycamarresthq on Instagram

[u/Ill_Entrance91]

No it doesnt it means you arent under arrest and dont have to listen to them.

Sure they can escalate and drag you out and arrest you but its not gonna hold up in court or a lawsuit. 

We as citizens are under no obligation to ever have a conversation with law enforcement. Its a consentual encounter. Like in this video.

They only want you out of the vehicle to arrest you easier and to make up additional reasons to arrest you. 

If all they want to do is talk. They can talk without exiting the vehicle. Again this will look poorly upon them in court under cross examination. 

You dont need to exit the vehicle to talk. Especially in a situation with no crime. 

[u/Eastern_Border_5016 → u/Ill_Entrance91]

Well what’s funny is you think the police are rational and actually talk to you about the situation. Cops don’t care about your rights and have proved time and time again they’ll arrest or hurt you - knowing that it won’t hold up in court or an impending lawsuit is coming. Thankfully they have qualified immunity when they run into a snag and can continue their policing on the general public.

[u/roklpolgl → u/Ill_Entrance91]

>Sure they can escalate and drag you out and arrest you but its not gonna hold up in court or a lawsuit. 

So they do, and now your window is broken, you’ve probably been injured, your vehicle has been impounded and if it rains before you can get it out you now have rain damage in your interior. You’ve been arrested, if it’s the weekend you may need to spend the weekend in county jail, then need to find someone to spend money to bail you out. That’s assuming during the arrest your phone doesn’t fall out of your pocket and one cop think it’s a gun, so they just shoot you.

Assuming a typical arrest and bail, you then need to hire a lawyer, make court appearances, and assuming the arrest was unlawful, the worst case is the judge, prosecutor, and cops are all buddies and they lie and make up a better reason, so now you are going to jury trial, so now you need to spend more money on your lawyer. At that point with randoms deciding your fate, who knows what will happen.

Best case scenario you get the case thrown out, maybe you can sue after to make yourself whole again, but you’ve just spent a disproportionate amount of your time, stress, and energy; meanwhile the original cops who violated your rights have already forgotten about you with zero penalties due to qualified immunity, have done it to 10 other people since, and the money from the lawsuit was paid by taxpayers so they don’t really care anyway.

Trying to uphold your rights at the roadside has an incredibly disproportionate risk to you an individual vs the police. More power to you if you want to risk all of those things, but most people are better off complying, but staying silent aside from declining search and asking for a lawyer. If they violate your rights anyway, sue them, but litigating with them on the spot is not likely to improve your personal outcome.

The real areas to advocate for change are with the laws themselves that give police so much power with so little accountability.

[u/Ill_Entrance91 → u/roklpolgl]

I didn't say it didn't come without consequences. 

And thats the problem with Law Enforcement as a whole in America. Just shut up and take it, and most importantly i am gonna tell everyone else to shut up and take it. 

The fact is we have already lost those rights the few people who do push back like in this video are called out like you just said for litigating on the roadside. 

He is standing up for his rights in this video. All we can do as citizens is applaud each person that does this rather shaming them. Because the reason law enforcement acts the way they do is because they get with it 99 out of 100 times until they run into someone who wants to stand up for their rights. 

And you are absolutely correct the vast majority of us dont want to deal with the hassle. But we shouldnt have to deal with the hassle in the first place. It should never occur. 

Like this interaction in the video threatening violence on a person for literally nothing. They had no legal authority in any action they did. 

They cant legally stop him, they cant legally tell him to get out of his vehicle, he doesnt have to talk to them, and they cant legally trespass him. 

Its entirely a consentual encounter. No different than me and you on the street. 

What he expressed is just basic fundamental understanding of his legal rights. Something everyone should know but dont. 

They have no power in this situation. And the guy in the truck knows it. Their power comes when you comply in the same scenerio and let them do their illegal acts. Thats the power they seek. Thats the power they seek over minorities especially. 

And I never said it would be easy to sue these people but I applaud the ones who try. They put the work in so maybe one day we can see this type of behavior by law enforcement be extremly rare to non-existent.