LEO do routinely believe that people they investigate must be guilty. They don't investigate at random, but rather are prompted by some evidence of criminal behavior. That certainly doesn't mean that you must be guilty if they investigate you, but it sets them up to believe you are.
The system is set up with compartments so nobody sees the full consequences of anything and this sort of misbehavior is encouraged. If you send somebody to jail, they disappear from your life the moment the verdict is reached and you have no reason to dwell on the harm you've caused them. (And if you do, you probably think it's a good thing, because you think they're a criminal!) And you probably get a commendation for putting a bad guy away.
Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally deliver it back to the owner, as happened to a neighbor of mine a few months ago. That doesn't make the news. Although that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a concern for the majority of us. Even a small risk of being falsely imprisoned is important, and there's no harm in taking the "SHUT UP" route with a good cop.
Finally, I would be wary of assuming that malicious intent is no higher than among the general population. Bad people tend to seek power over others, and what better way to wield such power than to do so legally as a member of the police? No doubt, the legitimate "protect and serve" folks still greatly outnumber the bad guys, but I would bet they're more concentrated.
It's dangerous to bandy around statements like "most cops are good cops" for which you don't have evidence. Instead, you might say "Some cops are good cops".
How is it "dangerous"? I'm expressing my personal opinion on a relatively obscure site on the internet. It is one of the least dangerous activities I can imagine.
timv: the OP is warning people to avoid talking to cops. "Most cops are good" is a very common sentiment that is even inculcated in kids growing up attending public schools. This widespread common belief contributes to people speaking naively to police and thereby getting themselves in trouble. That is what I meant by dangerous. I didn't explain this in my reply to mikeash because it seemed to me that mikeash was being obtuse given the context of the OP.
The good cop:bad cop ratio is utterly orthogonal to whether or not it's a terrible idea to talk to them without a lawyer present. They still have to do their jobs, and if you say something in the course of speaking with them that furthers their investigation, directly or indirectly, they're kinda obligated to pursue it.
Even if they're the nicest person you've ever met.
The word "dangerous" is not exclusively used to indicate the likelihood of physical injury. It is also widely used to describe the likelihood of any undesirable consequences. The undesirable consequence in this case is a weakening of the argument being presented.
How does it weaken the argument? No one has put forth the idea that it is ok to talk to good cops. Don't talk to cops good, bad, or indifferent in nature.
The very blog post which prompted this discussion explains the danger of assuming even impartial investigative intentions of cops, let alone "good" ones.
See, he's not holding himself to your standard of evidence. That would require mass mindreading, plus the ability to irrevocably demonstrate the authenticity of such.
Rather, he's backing up that statement with evidence in the reader's head, counting on most readers to reflect back on their life experience and see if his statement fits. He has faith that it will. In my case, it does: I agree. I'll even upvote him.
If we are going to get real reform, we need the police to also buy in. Alienating them doesn't help.
The drive to consider oneself a "good person" is fundamental to human nature (yes, psychopathy is a pathology). The issue is that "good" is socially defined. LEOs operate in a very odd social space.
How do we get LEOs to want to align more with a more civil social space? This is the nut we need to crack.
"Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally deliver it back to the owner, as happened to a neighbor of mine a few months ago. That doesn't make the news."
1. Name the town? (Make the news?)
2. I'm not going compare good/bad cops. (It's impossible to
argue, unless the Federal government just finished an investigation. A investigation that didn't get much attention?)
3. I live in a low crime county, but I am seeing cops doing
things they didn't do 15 years ago. My town is Marin County.
4. I'll start with Revenue collection. Yes--it's not about safety in my county anymore--it's about Tickets. The amount
of tickets written is staggering. Many people honestly don't
know what law they broke. It's gotten ridiculous.
5. "The broken window theory"! Yes--every town in my
county is putting that theory to the test. They are stopping
people, frisking them, and digitally taking their picture. They are harassing people. It's beyond disturbing to watch
a group of officers swoop down on a female for sitting on a curb. Watch them frisk her.(they used a enthusiastic female cop for the frisk)
Empty her purse. Take her picture. And then let her go??
(I won't bring up the metaphors.)
6. As to good/bad cops, I don't care; I don't trust any of them anymore. Yes, I can say that because I live in a low crime community, but I don't think it needs to be this way?
7. As to self preservation, just a name and address, but I'm
polite. I do have front and rear cameras that turn on when
I put the key in the ignition. When walking, riding, or running I always have a smart phone with video app queued up.
8. I am a middle aged white guy, and I feel like this?
9. I feel sick just writing about this. I might understand
the mentality if crime was going up, but every decade it has
decreased in proportion to population. It's about Revenue, and Gentrification, and yes--I recall a cop retrieving a lost
cell phone. It made the paper. The kid said he found the phone. The cop accused the kid of lying. I don't know the outcome, but it did happen once--it's in the marinij.com somewhere. What's ironic is it only seemed to happen once? I wonder why? It's like getting a cop to come to the swap meet to retrieve your stolen bike--good luck! No revenue in the end? As to gentrification, it's even more ironic because local cops can't even afford to live in this county?
4. The revenue generation aspect of traffic enforcement is deeply worrying. However, I don't think you have to be a bad cop to participate in that. The problem is the system, where the laws are written in a way that ignores how people actually behave, and thus virtually everyone breaks them. There's no need to entrap or falsely accuse people for the purposes of revenue generation, because there's more than enough true violations out there.
How are people in your area unable to know what law they broke? It's always been clear for everyone I know: exceeding the posted speed limit, parking where prohibited, etc. The issue is simply that driving the posted limit is nearly impossible in many cases (everybody else is going faster and it's dangerous if you don't too), parking signs have poor visibility and are difficult to understand, etc.
"Bad cops" is an easy answer to the woes of modern-day policing, but I just don't think it's the root of the problem.
When you become a cop (and I use that word loosely to mean anyone who is empowered by the broad law enforcement system) everyone else becomes a potential criminal.
LEO do routinely believe that people they investigate must be guilty. They don't investigate at random, but rather are prompted by some evidence of criminal behavior. That certainly doesn't mean that you must be guilty if they investigate you, but it sets them up to believe you are.
The system is set up with compartments so nobody sees the full consequences of anything and this sort of misbehavior is encouraged. If you send somebody to jail, they disappear from your life the moment the verdict is reached and you have no reason to dwell on the harm you've caused them. (And if you do, you probably think it's a good thing, because you think they're a criminal!) And you probably get a commendation for putting a bad guy away.
Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally deliver it back to the owner, as happened to a neighbor of mine a few months ago. That doesn't make the news. Although that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a concern for the majority of us. Even a small risk of being falsely imprisoned is important, and there's no harm in taking the "SHUT UP" route with a good cop.
Finally, I would be wary of assuming that malicious intent is no higher than among the general population. Bad people tend to seek power over others, and what better way to wield such power than to do so legally as a member of the police? No doubt, the legitimate "protect and serve" folks still greatly outnumber the bad guys, but I would bet they're more concentrated.