What To Do If Seattle Cops Try To Talk To You

Every day people are arrested by the cops for minor drug charges, minor offenses, and because they have outstanding warrants. Most of these people aren’t bad people, they just make bad decisions. And many of these people (trust me on this, I’m a Seattle DUI attorney) could have avoided the problem if they would have only known the proper way to interact with the cops. If you’re here and interested, today is your lucky day, because I’m going to tell you how to deal with the cops.

To help you understand what to do I’m going to give you a typical example of how people get in trouble. It usually starts with someone that is walking around minding their own business. Nothing about them demonstrates criminal activity is going on. But, there is a cop around, and he decides to wander up and start a conversation with you. He asks where you’re going, what you’re doing, and for your I.D.

You answer the cop’s questions and turn over your identification, even though you know you have an outstanding warrant or something else that is going to raise the cop’s suspicions. And you have a small amount of drugs on you, which you are worried about the cop finding. So you do everything he asks, the cop ends up arresting you on the warrant, and he finds the drugs anyway.

In this case the courts have ruled that the cop has not seized you. This is referred to as a “social contact” because in the court’s eyes the encounter is completely voluntary and the cop has not acted in any way to make you think you couldn’t just end the conversation and walk away (except for the fact that he’s a cop!). Seattle criminal attorneys don’t like this rule because it’s one that doesn’t work out in the real world.

So what do you do in this situation? Do you tell the cop you don’t want to talk to him, walk away, and let him think you are guilty of something? The short answer is yes, that is exactly what you do.

If there is no reason to stop you, when you walk away they have to let you go. If they choose to hold you and talk to you more, against your will, they have illegally seized you. This is exactly the type of situation a criminal lawyer loves to see.

Walking away from a cop is not easy. It takes some real grit to do it, particularly because it is highly probable that you will end up being arrested by the cop. The good thing about it, though is that if you don’t walk away, you’re probably going to get arrested anyway, so why not take a chance? When the cops come up, just keep on walking.

Learn more about what a Seattle criminal attorney can do for you. Stop by our site where you can find out all about Seattle criminal lawyers.

Published by: Ace McGavin on February 8th, 2010 | Filed under Lawyer



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