How can casinos take &quot;extrajudicial&quot; measures against card counters? "Cardcounting" is technically legal, but frowned upon by casinos, because it violates the "unwritten law" that casinos are supposed to come out ahead. When card counters are caught, casinos can expel them under threat of being charged with trespassing. But apparently casinos sometimes do more than that, like refusing to cash out their chips, or taking card counters to back rooms for questioning. (Detention and questioning are powers supposedly reserved for law enforcement. The casinos are only supposed to detain people until the police arrive.) How do casinos manage to conduct such "extrajudicial" proceedings? Do the police and courts turn a blind eye to them because the casinos are important to the local economy?
Extrajudicial implies there is some weight of law behind the casino behaviors you describe. I don't think there is. For example, refusing to cash out chips could just be a management intimidation tactic to try to coerce the customer into agreeing to be "questioned." Which the customer would be under no legal obligation to do. Card counting can't be proven if the counter is not using a device of any kind. The casino can refuse to serve the customer and expel the customer but they can't unilaterally keep the customer's money by not cashing the customer's chips without a judgment. I am not an attorney. This answer is not legal advice.
There are many different kinds of laws, and many different ways of violating them. The main two are (1) criminal law, which generally addresses violations that injure the government's interests; and (2) civil law, which largely addresses violations that injure private parties' interests. Some conduct can violate both sets of laws: If you steal something from a store, the government can put you in jail for theft, and the store can sue you for the value of the item you stole. If you punch someone in the face, the government can can put you in jail for assault, and the person you punched can sue you to pay for their hospital bills. If you grope a woman in a dressing room, the government can put you in jail for sexual assault, and the woman can sue you for battery. Donald Trump falls into that last category. Jean Carroll has sued him for battery, but the government cannot prosecute Trump for the crime because enough time has passed that the criminal statute of limitations has expired. Moreover, a civil trial cannot subject someone to jail time because such a deprivation of liberty requires greater procedural safeguards -- jury unanimity, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, etc. -- that do not always apply to civil trials like this. Trump's status as ex-president has no bearing on the penalties the court may legally impose on him.
united-states It is not required for a person to formally assert a fifth- or a first-amendment right when questioned by the police. One can simply be silent, refuse to answer any questions, without giving any reasons. But probably more effective and just as legal is to say &quot;I won't answer any questions until I have talked with a lawyer. I want a lawyer, now.&quot; That is perhaps less likely than using the words &quot;plead the fifth&quot; to be assumed to be a confession of guilt, although some people and some police may take almost anything as a confession of guilt. By the way some of the points you distilled from the video (which I have not watched yet) are correct, some are half-truths, and some are quite incorrect. For example: The 5th amendment was not designed as a shelter for the guilty (despite it often being used as such). It was designed to help prevent you from unknowingly incriminating yourself. As a matter of history, this is quite incorrect. It arose historically out of a reaction to government procedures deemed oppressive. See https://law.stackexchange.com/a/63690/17500 for more detail. But helping people avoid unintentionally incriminating themselves is one of its major current functions. You can't talk your way out of getting arrested. Sometimes you can, but it is never safe to count on it. You can't know in advance if it will work, and more often than not it doesn't. Everything you tell the police can be used against you but not to help you. Not quite. If your statement is recorded, as is likely nowadays, the whole statement must be given to your lawyer and entered into evidence if you are eventually charged. (See Brady vs Maryland) Things said in your own favor may be discounted as self-serving, but the judge and jury will still hear them. But they can be very risky.
Any country is free to decide what actions are considered to be crimes, and what crimes are prosecuted depending on whether you perform the action in the country, outside the country, and depending on whether you are a citizen, a resident, both, or neither. They can also decide what are accepted defences in court and which are not. Any other country is free to decide under which circumstances they will ever extradite someone to that first country. Now you have to check the laws of the individual countries.
Utah has a lot of public parks, so to point in the right direction, I will assume that this is a public park in Salt Lake City, it's just a plain old grassy field, and it's not during a special event. A person is suspected of some crime like selling drugs, not arrested, but told by a police officer to go away and never come back. This is way beyond the power of the police. After due legal process, a proven (not just suspected) public menace could be ordered by the court to stay away from the park. A police officer can, of course, order a person to leave a park when they violate a park rule, in fact rule number 1 is "It is unlawful for any person to do or to allow or permit any of the acts prohibited by this chapter in any park in Salt Lake City", so the police cannot legally turn a blind eye to rule violations. Violation of park rules is an infraction which can earn you a ticket of up to $299. However, the officer can tell you to go away, rather than giving you a ticket or arresting you. But an police order cannot issue a unilateral restraining order. Apart from city laws, there are general state laws regarding trespass and destruction of property. The state criminal trespass law says that A person is guilty of criminal trespass if...knowing the person's... entry or presence is unlawful, the person enters or remains on to which notice against entering is given by...personal communication to the person by the owner or someone with apparent authority to act for the owner In this case, the owner is the city, and the officer has apparent authority to act for that owner. In the case of private property, the owner or his agent has very broad authority to give notice requiring you to leave (e.g. if you don't like their politics or their shirt); but in the case of public property, the government has more narrowly circumscribed authority to kick you out.
All laws (federal, state and local) apply to everybody, unless you have diplomatic immunity. That is, unless e.g. the federal government decides as a matter of policy to ignore certain federal laws. California does not have a law generally prohibiting the use of marijuana, though public consumption is illegal, minor consumption is illegal, and possession over 28.5 grams is illegal. So that is one less law to be concerned with violating. The federal law still exists, and has not been repealed for anyone. However, the federal government by policy is not pursuing marijuana cases in legal contexts in those states that have legalized marijuana. The complication for foreign students is that there are also immigration laws whereby you may be deported for a drug offense (that link is full of technical details on immigration and drug laws, worth reading). The immigration laws basically make it easy to penalize a foreigner (for example you might be deemed "inadmissible" so you cannot be re-admitted to the US if you leave; it just depends on what their grounds are for action). For example, "a noncitizen is inadmissible as of the moment that immigration authorities gain substantial and probative 'reason to believe' the noncitizen has ever participated in drug trafficking," which does not mean a conviction. It is reported that in California, DHS officers have treated minor infractions as "convictions," which means to be safe you have to avoid even infractions. It appears (and hire an immigration attorney if you want to test this) that trouble only arises if there is reason to believe you are trafficking, if you are a drug addict or abuser, if you are "convicted" (not necessarily "tried and found guilty," it also includes certain legal maneuverings), or if you admit to drug use (even in the case of home use under doctor's orders, i.e. a California-legal context). This incidentally includes non-use but working for the marijuana industry. It is possible that you could get stopped on the street by a random immigration search, and if you are in possession, then... it is not guaranteed that possession of a small amount of marijuana, when caught by federal authorities, cannot lead to immigration problems.
If the police order you to sit in an interrogation room and you are not permitted to leave, by definition, you have been arrested. Detaining someone against their will for longer than necessary to answer a few questions on the spot (which is a lesser imposition on your freedom called a &quot;Terry stop&quot;) is what it means to be arrested. Legally, the police are only allowed to arrest you if they have probable cause to believe that you have committed a crime. I believe that you are confusing arrested (being detained by law enforcement against your will for more than a Terry stop), with being booked, or being charged with a crime. Generally speaking people are arrested first, and then booked next, and then charged with a crime after that, although this isn't always the order in which this happens. In much the same way, if the police observe someone committing a crime, they will first handcuff them which places them under arrest, and then book them sometime not too long later when they arrive at the police station, and then formally charge them sometime after that after a conversation with the prosecuting attorney to see if the prosecuting attorney is willing to pursue the case. Booking generally involves bringing someone to a police station, getting identifying information, taking a mug shot, taking finger prints, and depending upon what the police want to do, searching your person and inventorying your possessions prior to putting you in a jail cell in jail garb. Usually, however, the grand jury or the prosecuting attorney (it varies by jurisdiction) does have subpoena power to compel you to provide information under oath prior to trial as a witness, following the service of a subpoena upon you a reasonable time in advance as set forth in the relevant court rules, unless you invoke your 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and are not granted immunity from prosecution based upon your testimony in exchange, or you invoke some other legal privilege against having to testify. They can, of course, simply ask you to come to an interrogation room and answer questions, and merely imply that it is mandatory without actually saying that you must and without clarifying the situation. In that case, which is extremely common, their legal right to interrogate you flows from your own consent. If you answer their questions, your answers could provide the police with probable cause to arrest you that they didn't have when they started asking questions. Indeed, often, when police interrogate you before booking you, they are doing so because they need your statements to establish the probable cause needed to legally arrest you. This is why criminal defense attorneys counsel people to immediate ask for a lawyer and refuse to answer any questions other than those needed to establish your identity. You can also ask if you are under arrest and if you are free to leave (which are mutually exclusive). If they say you are not under arrest, you are free to leave, unless you are appearing pursuant to a subpoena.
The clause you highlighted has an &quot;or&quot; in front of it: &quot;..., or in such pretended character...&quot;. It's only one alternative. Demanding or obtaining money, etc, is sufficient to violate the statute but not necessary. Looking at the previous clause, it is still a violation if the pretender merely &quot;acts as such&quot;, which I suppose is what people allege this person is doing. She can be guilty without having demanded or obtained anything, so the question about whether it's a &quot;thing of value&quot; is moot. As to the &quot;nonexistent agency&quot; issue: a useful source for information about how federal criminal laws are interpreted and enforced is the Justice Department's Criminal Resource Manual. (The link may be a past version; they seem to have reorganized their documents and I can't find a version not marked as &quot;archived&quot;, but I think the information is still valuable.) 18 USC 912 is discussed in sections 1469-1477 of that version. Section 1474 examines the meaning of the &quot;acts as such&quot; element, and includes this note: It is not necessary that the act be one which the pretended officer would have authority to perform if he were in fact the officer he represents himself to be. Lamar v. United States, 240 U.S. 60 (1916); United States v. Hamilton, 276 F.2d at 98. Nor is it necessary that there be in fact such an officer as the defendant pretends to be. Caruso v. United States, 414 F.2d 225, 227 (5th Cir. 1969). Caruso in particular was a case in which the defendant, as part of a scam, claimed to be the Administrator of a Veterans Hospital. He was convicted, and appealed on the basis that the government had not proved that the office of administrator existed. (Just as in this case, the government certainly could not prove that the Freedom to Breathe Agency existed, since it does not.) The Fifth Circuit found that his point had &quot;no merit&quot; and, citing Brafford v. United States (6 Cir. 1919, 259 F. 511, 513), that it was &quot;immaterial whether or not there was any government officer or employee with the precise title [the defendant] assumed&quot;. I realize that claiming to be a nonexistent officer is not exactly the same thing as claiming to represent a nonexistent agency, but I would expect that courts would treat it the same.