... while it's neither MN-specific nor carry-specific, thisis well worth reading, particularly for folks who haven't quite grasped the risks of conversing with the authorities.

Note how it's pretty SOP for the badged person to explain how much in your interest it is for you to be chatty.

As I was censored elsewhere for saying, "It should come as no great shock that police officers would tend to favor methods of a police state."

Hey, if you're going to hang out at Mos Eisley, don't be surprised if you get Greedo all over you.

All in all, I think it depends on the police officer. There are folks of character and depth of character who carry badges.

But before POST, it was almost entirely a cultural thing -- a cop was "raised" and pretty much completely trained in his (usually his, rarely her) first department, and learned "how things are done" by whatever the actual local standards were.

Nowadays, of course, initial training is accomplished in the POST programs, and then the departments go shopping among the graduates for the kind of people who are already what they want, and largely get what they want. Which, IMHO, solves almost none of the problems of the old system and introduces new ones.

Can please someone post an executive summary of the 84 page PDF?

Sure: Miranda's dead. It won't protect you; it's been weakened by successive whittlings, and there's more ways around it than you've been told.

I keep hearing the statement," I don't have to read you your rights until I arrest you."

Free speech is protected by the First Amendment.

I think the point of the paper is that it doesn't matter very much whether or not you're read your rights, or when; Miranda is pretty much a dead issue, as 1: police procedure has largely adapted to it, turning it from a protection for citizens into an interrogation tool, and 2: after being whittled at for forty years, it holds less water than a colander.

That's the time to get up and walk away. It certainly sounds like that means you wouldn't be under arrest.

Oh indeed, that's why I used "tend" and "favor", not more absolute words. But what irks me the most is that my post was yoicked after some dude PM'ed the mod. I don't blame the mod, but the unknown guy who went crying like a b!tch to tattle, and didn't have the seeds to openly criticize me. That's just chickensh!t, IMNSHO.

At least with the right tension, a colander will hold water.

Until you incriminate yourself, anyway.

But you incriminate yourself by trying to walk away even if there is nothing incriminating or you incriminate yourself by not walking away . . . which would happen if you thought you needeed to wait around to not incriminate yourself.

We have an understaffed, underbugeted law enforcement edifice which spends 40% of its time trying to enforce unpopular laws that are uniquely difficult to enforce, and 40% of its time intervening in domestic disputes that the legal system was never designed to resolve. We should neither be surprised that shortcuts are taken nor that those members of society with the least intelligence and schooling, the most meager financial resources and the least social support end up being treated unfairly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMjMPlX ... re=related

So anything you do is wrong

I am amazed at the number of people who will talk to me during a criminal investigation.

In the jail, Mirandized, included.

My advice to my own children is this: If you are involved with the police and are NOT being brought home, call me and shut up.