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Introduction This is written as a result of
dealing with people around the world who get questioned by the police
officials regarding various events. Whether or not these people are
guilty is not the point of this writing. The point is to show how
foolish it is to talk to the law enforcement officials in most
countries where there is still something left of a constitution or
justice system.
Why Do the Police Want to Talk to You?
To convict you and/or someone else. They do not come to talk in order
to exonerate people. The prosecutors in the USA have no legal need to
make any efforts to collect evidence that would exonerate you of any
guilt. This they call exculpatory evidence. They do have a legal
requirement to make the defense aware of any evidence that they did get
possession of that would exonerate the accused, but they do not have to
go out and see if they can collect evidence to show that the accused is
innocent.
They are there to convict the accused and that
is the long and short of it. Do not be confused with the morality of
not convicting the innocent so the law continues to look for the
guilty. I never heard of any law enforcement official promoted for
proving the innocent to be innocent. They do get promoted for
convictions. A conviction is a conviction, is a conviction, period.
Martha Stewart
She went to jail for lying to a Federal Officer. She was not convicted
of what the police went to discuss with her. If you erroneously make an
incorrect statement to a Federal Officer then you are guilty of the
felony of lying to Federal Law Enforcement Officer. It is incumbent on
you to prove in court if charged, that this error was made as an
innocent mistake. This would be after tens of thousands of legal bills
and months if not years of being in the criminal justice system. Now if
you refuse to talk to the law enforcement officers then you have
removed yourself from any chance of being arrested for lying to a
Federal Officer. Right here you have sufficient grounds to never talk
to them. Martha Stewart tried to talk her way out of it.
The
police are not there to see if you are guilty or innocent. They are
there to clear cases or get convictions. All they care about is what
they can convict you of. You need to understand this. If there is no
questioning (you refuse to talk to them) then there is no going
somewhere else with their investigation as a result of you really
things not beneficial to you that they would have otherwise been
unaware of. If Martha Stewart just said No to their questioning she
would not have gone to jail.
Police Tactics
If the police had a case against you with evidence, they really have to
arrest you. To not do so is unusual, irregular and can cause problems
for the police later on. Lets say you repeat the crime while they
delayed arresting you and it gets out that they were stalling. They
would be in trouble and possibly sued by the subsequent victims. To not
arrest you can be construed as corruption, obstruction of justice,
dereliction of duty amongst other things. The point of this is if the
police had evidence of you being guilty of a crime they would not come
and chat about it with you.
They would arrest you, read
you your rights, take you into custody and then they would start
working on you from a position of strength in that you are in custody.
Even if you do get arrested never ever talk to them. Just keep asking
for your lawyer. Admit to nothing, deny nothing, have no conversations
about anything. Just shut up and wait for your lawyer. No police person
is your friend and they are not trying to help you in any way. Many
times the police think they have a case, make an arrest and the
prosecutor kicks it out later. They may have enough probable cause for
an arrest but yet at the same time lack the evidence to prove you
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So they try to arrest you and then
scare you into talking knowing their charges are garbage.
Ok
so if the police are coming to chat with you, discuss documents,
motives, allegations, money matters, etc it is ONLY to gain more
evidence against you. They are not trying to exonerate you. They very
well may be trying to find out if you had any conspirators and then
charge several people collectively with the crime plus conspiracy. They
love multiple defendants so they can get them to pleas bargain against
each other for lesser sentences. This is their main modus operandi. Law
enforcement agencies are conviction driven agencies. No one counts how
many times they cleared an innocent person and this is not what
promotions are based on.
When they developed DNA tests
many people got out of jail because it was proven by DNA testing they
did not do the crime. Many of these people were sitting in jail for
decades. Police will railroad people lots of times simply because they
can. When the police come to talk to you they are trying to get more
evidence or more probable cause for subpoenas, search warrants,
depositions of yourself and/or others etc. This will assist them in
building a case. If they seem to not understand say a financial
transaction they have a record of, do not explain it even if you think
you are innocent of what they suspect and can explain it. You may
unknowingly be guilty of something else you do not even know is a
crime.
Do not talk to them. Do say let me call my lawyer.
Say I do not wish to talk to you at all. Do not be intimidated by their
threats of arrest etc. If they could arrest you they would have already
done so. Understanding the financial transaction is their problem, not
yours. They have nothing or they would have arrested you. Do not assist
them. When the police arrest you they know you are going to be
represented by counsel and their games are over at that point. If they
have evidence they do not care and will arrest you. Your explanation
will not be of interest if they have hard evidence. Tell it to the
judge is what they will say.
What If I Can Convince the Police I am Innocent?
Lets say you do convince the police of this, it could happen, anything
is possible. The police cannot come into court and testify that you
said so and so and they believe you are innocent. This would be
excluded as hear say evidence by the prosecution. Even if you got the
police won over the prosecutor would not allow this into court. Forget
trying to get the police to be your ally.
Financial Crimes
These are the rage now due to failing real estate markets and stock
markets. The charge is usually fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and
money laundering. They seem to be based on loan applications in
general. The person walks away from the real estate and the bank takes
a hit. Then the bank reviews the credit application and sees things it
does not like. Can be what they perceive to be overstated income,
understated operating expenses, overstated assets, and overstated
appraisals whatever. They try to create a criminal case and file
complaints under city, county, state or federal laws. Next you find out
your business associates, friends, neighbors and relatives are being
contacted by law enforcement officers discussing you and your business
dealings. You see bank and financial records get subpoenaed. Eventually
they come and talk to you. Never talk to them. They are talking to you
because they do not have enough to arrest you and are fishing for more.
Ignore them 100%. Do not give them any documents at all. They will
charge you if they get enough evidence. Do assist them by talking to
them or giving them anything. If they are talking to your friends,
relatives and business associates then rest assured there is a good
chance you will be indicted. If you think you may have overstated
something or understate something regarding loan applications then get
ready for a criminal case based on current trends (April 2009). Go
start interviewing criminal lawyers right away. Do not wait to see what
happens, go right now and start getting expert advice.
What Will Happen If You Get Indicted
You will be formally arrested. The authorities will probably not be
polite and not ask you to come in for booking, you might flee. They
will view you the same as an armed robber or thief. You will be booked.
Possibly you will be released on your own recognizance. You may need to
post bond. If it is Federal crime expect your passport to be taken.
Your real estate will have the title clouded by liens. Your banks
accounts will be have liens as well. You will have to report to
something like a probation officer until the trial is over. You will
have to ask for permission to access your money and they will control
how much you can get to spend. They are not going to let you spend your
money on lawyers; they want your money to cover their prosecution
expenses.
You will not be allowed to leave the USA. You
will see that you are guilty until proven innocent. The Federal system
is designed to get you to plead guilty and take a plea with some jail
time. State, City and County prosecutions tend to be easier to deal
with. Local law enforcement agencies and local prosecutors do not have
the budgets that the Federal Government has. They need to watch their
expenses. All prosecutors like to pursue cases where there is a
reasonable chance of recovering money to cover their costs of the
prosecution.
How Federal White Collar Criminal Cases Are Made
This is a trend we have seen in recent years. The investigation times
tend to be in the two-year range from the time the person first learns
of the investigation until criminal charges are filed. Usually it
starts with subpoenas being filed for financial institution records and
computers. Then people will be calling telling how they were
interviewed about you. If there is hard evidence against you, you may
be charged as the only defendant. We see a whole lot of cases where
there are a number of people charged at the same time. Can be up to
dozens. After a few months what you will see is defendants pleading
guilty in a plea bargain.
After they plead they go to a
debriefing hearing with the prosecutors and criminal investigators.
They tell all they know about the case and the other defendants. If
they lie or fail to be open and tell all they know, the plea bargain
gets rescinded. The ones to plead first get the shortest sentences.
Generally they keep the jail time to at least 2 years. Then later on
you see a few more people plead getting slightly longer sentences. Then
the ones left have to deal with several people offering testimony about
their guilt. Yes the witnesses are also co-defendants and plead guilty
for a lesser sentence but this is a nightmare to deal with in court for
your lawyer.
The idea is to lay out enough charges for
the person to die in jail if they get convicted of all charges. This
makes fighting the charges sort of frightening. The alternative is to
take 4 or so years in jail for a guilty plea. You can still have a life
again; only it will be as a convicted felon. After a few months you
find out your criminal attorney who was so positive in the beginning
will be encouraging you to plea. He bilked you good for fees and he
does not want to bother with the hard work of trial preparation and a
trial. If you appeal a conviction the appellate lawyer may see that he
did shabby work and this exposes the criminal lawyer for a civil action
from you for the fees you gave him. This will adversely affect his
malpractice insurance. So he tries to get a reasonable amount of money
from you and not expose himself by encouraging you to plea. Your
situation takes a second place to his. Your lawyer doesn't care about
you as much as he or she should, and the prosecutor doesn't care about
you, your family, your situation or the morality of what they are doing
to do at all. What fun.
Can You Leave the USA After You Are Indicted in Federal Court
No! Your passport will be taken away. How can you leave? You now need a
passport to exit the USA. Sure you could try and sneak out and then
this would be another charge they would charge you with if they caught
you. Bad idea. How good are you at traveling internationally without
documents when there are warrants out for you, Interpol alerts etc. ill
advised. You could sneak out in a go fast boat and risk getting shot at
when you refused to stop. People ask us about this all too often. They
say can you send me a passport by mail? We say of course not. Only fake
passports are sold this way. They would not work on exit since you have
no entry visa in the passport and in the computer system. You would be
questioned, fingerprinted, and then charged with unlawful flight,
violating terms of release and whatever else they threw at you.
If
you get indicted start thinking about a plea right away so you can be
first with a shorter sentence if this is your intention or think about
beating them in court. These are your two choices. The Federal Courts
have an 87% conviction rate counting the plea bargains of course. There
are people who win criminal cases in Federal courts. Today winning or
getting convicted has little to do with whether or not you are guilty.
The law you are charged with breaking could be unconstitutional. The
way evidence was obtained could be unconstitutional. The confessions of
others could have been obtained in violation of law and ethics.
What About Vehicle Stops?
Ok here there needs to be some talking to the Police. They need to see
if you are coherent or drunk. Keep the discussions to a minimum. Do not
give permission to the police to search your vehicle or you for any
reason. If they threaten to bring drug dogs, get a telephonic search
warrant etc; tell them you do not want them to search the vehicle. Do
not get into discussions as to destination, residence, work, etc.
If
the police run on ask them if the stop is over and if you can leave.
When you get stopped roll down the window slightly so talking can he
heard and you can hand them the license and registration. No matter
what no permission to search for any reason. If the police ask you if
there is anything in the car he should know about answer NO. Do not say
more than this just let him talk. Getting him to talk means you have
control over the police person. Why should they need to know about
anything in your personal property? The police may give you a ticket.
Fine. If you hire a traffic ticket lawyer you will have say a 75%
chance of beating the ticket in court and this costs a few hundred
dollars at most. So there is not much of a downside to being
uncooperative to the police.
If the police tell you to
get out of the car, try to do so and lock the car right behind you.
They may force you to open it or force you to give them the keys, but
would be unlikely. Police now will taser you for any infraction of not
doing what they say to do. They may tolerate some brief questions from
you but will soon threaten the taser. You can say I am not giving you
permission to open my car. Make sure you speak for the dashboard camera
and microphone many police cars now have. See I said it for the camera
is a nice thing to say to the officer. In a police state you have to
tolerate the police bullying you in the name of the war on drugs,
terror or crime. So keep your mouth shut, comply with requests like sit
here, stand here, and be quiet. Sign the ticket since they will arrest
you if you do not. And it will soon be over.
Keep asking
him if the traffic stop is over every time he stops doing anything or
talking to you. A traffic stop legally is like an arrest. You are
lawfully detained and cannot leave until the traffic stop is over. Make
a point of very obviously looking at his badge, nameplate and car
number. Burn this into your memory. Address him by name or badge
number. Basically the goal is to get out of there as fast as possible
with or without a ticket. Tickets are generally easy to beat in a
trial. Generally 50% of the time the officer will not show up. So right
there if he does not show up in court you win and there is a 50% chance
of this. When he does appear your lawyer if any good will win 50% of
the time. So you have a 75% chance of winning. You have an excellent
chance of beating the ticket.
If it is a driving under
influence there are expert witnesses that can help a good traffic
lawyer beat these offenses with very good odds as well. These expert
witnesses are often pharmacologists with Doctorate Degrees and can
really destroy the alcohol tests the police administered in a court.
They are not cheap but they are effective. So do not get into hoping
for leniency by allowing searches or by participating in extensive
lines of questioning. Getting out of any sort of traffic violation is
far less complicated and less threatening than getting out of a serious
criminal case.
What About At The Airport
If you live in or travel to a police state there are no rights. Answer
questions about what you have, where you have been, purpose of trip
etc. Keep the answers brief and direct. Stand there and stare blankly
awaiting the next question. The idea is to wait until the official gets
bored and gives up. Do not lie. Do not possess anything that is
illegal. What can they do to you? Make you open luggage. Big deal.
Again when you have a police state this is what you get.
How Simple Airport and Border Interrogations Work
Do not think that by understanding some simple interrogation techniques
you are an expert. You are not practiced, never rehearsed; never saw
yourself on video etc. This is just a little insight into their
tactics. In these types of settings the government officials are trying
to move a large amount of travelers through as rapidly as possible.
They have little time to spend on random interrogations. When you go to
a booth and present your passport they will do a swipe of the passport.
They will then look at a computer monitor. They are probably looking to
see if you are on a manifest of some arriving flights if an airport.
They may be looking at your picture. They may be looking at very little
information at all, depends on the computer system and the country.
They
will usually ask you something to get you talking. They want to see if
you are nervous and hear your accent. These people are generally not
well trained. If they get a signal of something being out of the
ordinary they turn it over to a more experienced person. These people
are at least 75% clerks even if they have badges and guns. Their guns
may be unloaded or they might not be allowed to carry the gun with a
round in the chamber. They may have to leave their guns at the
workplace in the evening along with their badges. They are low-level
law enforcement officers, mostly performing clerical duties. They do
not want you to know this.
The more serious law enforcement
types at an airport may decide to talk to you. Never ever approach any
law enforcement person at any airport to ask them anything. Try to
refrain from this. Asking them anything triggers the pushing of a 'lets
do more scrutiny on these people' button. Remember this. Best advice is
to ask no one any questions. You are on camera and people are watching
you and if they see anything they will have you questioned. So be a
dumb traveler shuffling his feet in the line acting bored, a little
irritated only and resigned to waiting to get through the line.
The
interrogation technique often employed in airports, ports or land
border crossings is simple. Not every country is exactly like this but
you will be surprised at how similar it is when you know what to look
for. You are asked a few simple questions that can easily be verified
like by looking at your ticket and passport so you would be unlikely to
lie or be deceptive about such answers especially since they are not
incriminating questions to answer. Things like where did you come from,
what airline, what flight, how long were you gone, who are you
traveling with, etc. This is to get a reading on you. They are watching
your face for signs like squinting, raising eyebrows, snarling,
listening to your voice for fluctuations, studying your speed of
speech, time to answer, where you look when answering and your body
language like rubbing hands, shuffling feet etc.
After
the investigator gets a feel for how you will answer a question
truthfully he sends in a heavy question like how much money do you
have on you, do you have any drugs or illegal medicines on you, etc.
Then he watches to see if when you answer everything is the same or if
he hit a nerve and you answer the heavy question differently than the
easy simple questions. Of course an intelligence agent or professional
criminal would practice these techniques on video from several angles
to get polished at it. An intelligence agent would also have experience
in questioning people, which helps a lot. This is not anything to do
with serious interrogation techniques that take a long time to learn
and deploy. There is no getting the confidence, fear, trust etc. of the
subject since time is so short. You can easily research this on the
Internet and there are books that deal with this subject. It is always
going to be learning common sense techniques, never a silver bullet.
Telephone Calls from Police
Hang up immediately. How do you know who they are? There is no reason
to provide any information at all to a phone caller. If the police are
going to arrest you or question you regarding something serious they
will not call before coming. They need the element of surprise on their
side.
Suspicious Police and Impersonators
There are all sorts of counterfeit police credentials floating
around. No law enforcement agency is exempt. Do you know what different
law enforcement agency credentials look like? Try finding examples on
the Internet. You cant. How do you know they are real? Do you know if
badges from a certain department all have numbers on them even for the
high-ranking officials or not? How many law enforcement agencies does
your country have, do you know all their names and what their badges
and ID cards look like?
Tell the person who says he is an
official you want to call the law enforcement agency from the phone
number listed in the phone book to see if they really are who they say
they are. A lot of experienced law enforcement agents will tell you
what page in the phone book to go to in order to find their agency
phone number. If possible do this from behind a closed door. If they
come to your house and show you credentials look at them through the
peephole and get their name and phone the agency to see if they have
someone with that name in the department and if he is supposed to be at
your house now. The law enforcement officers always will radio in that
they are going to your address before getting out of the car for their
own protection. If the dispatcher does not hear from them after a while
they will know the last place they went on foot and start looking for
them at that location.
People can go to jail for a long
time for impersonating a police officer so if you phone in an
impersonator they are going to freak out. Best if you are behind a
closed door. They will not have a lot of time to get away and will
probably not want to start bashing doors down, favoring escape instead.
You can also call the police if you suspect a person is impersonating a
police officer. Tell the police he has a badge that looks like he
bought it in a toy store and is making you very scared. They will come
fast. Police hate police impersonators perhaps more than child
molesters. You can try calling a law enforcement agency different than
the one they are presenting badge or credentials for.
Never
believe anyone who just shows a badge. They all should have impressive
looking ID cards with photos. You can tell the suspicious officer you
called the police or not. If you think the police are real like you
verified them by calling their department then say you do not want to
talk to them. Never open doors. If they had a warrant for search or
arrest they would probably be pointing guns at you and pounding down
the door. The street scene would be full of marked vehicles with lights
and radios.
Forget all this babbling about we can get a
warrant open the door. Ignore it. People impersonating police officers
in various countries have been known to use these false credentials to
commit rapes, robberies, kidnappings and murders. Take people
impersonating police very seriously and get help from law enforcement
immediately. Never let them tell you that you will be in trouble for
verifying that they are authentic officers of the law. No real law
enforcement officer would ever prevent you from verifying their
identity. If they surround your house and say they are conducting a
raid come out now with your hands up look outside to see what is going
on. If you see a lot of marked police cars with the lights on and
radios cackling it is probably a legitimate raid. If you see only
unmarked cars I would say that you should not cooperate until you call
the police to verify their authenticity. If they pushed it I would just
shine them on and use a cell phone to call the local police and report
it as a home invasion by a gang with guns threatening you if you do not
open the door. If you get a phone call saying it is a real police raid,
disregard it. This can be the bad guys. Do not open the door until you
get verification. They will be trying to roust you to open before you
make the call. Best to just make the call without telling them you are
doing so.
Buy time by like talking in a language foreign
to the region. Say in the local lingo you do not speak the language.
This will confuse them briefly. In some regions of the world this is
the way kidnappers and robbers work. It is also the way dishonest
police work. Be careful. Retreat to a safe area and get the police
there and fast. After you have called the police if they are acting
like they are going to break in tell them you are armed and will shoot
and the real police are on the way.
Real police will
consider waiting for their friends to show up. The best choice for
impersonators under these circumstances is to retreat at this point.
The chances of a good crime scene for them are really over and they
know this and will opt to be free to rob again another day. Police
impersonators are a serious threat. Sometimes it can be a retired law
enforcement officer working as a private detective trying to get
information only. They may be using their retired credentials or false
credentials relying on their ability to control an interview
professionally. This sort is not very dangerous but treat the threat as
dangerous anyway.
Lie Detectors In a word
these do not work. Voice stress analyzers also do not work. They have
never been proved to work. They are only an interrogation tool designed
to intimidate people into confessing during an interrogation. The
course of training for a lie detector operator is about 12 weeks. You
could learn how to operate the machine in hours. It is a course in
interrogation.
Never take a lie detector test for any
reason, period. Results can be rigged. Governments use them because the
deception gets confessions and admissions. It is also a fear tactic to
keep the employees in line. These stupid tactics ruin peoples lives.
There is a web site that explains the stupidity of these various lie
detectors, studies that have debunked them repeatedly with consistency
as well as the various easy to learn methods of defeating them.
http://antipolygraph.org/
Governments
have taken to using drugs for interrogations with and without lie
detectors many years ago. Never agree to be drug interrogated. These
drugs get people to lapse into comas and worse. If you cannot drive
under drugs how the heck can you answer questions accurately? Again
more intimidation and scare tactics.
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