Can the police tell you not to have house guests or you will be arrested? My friend is being harassed by our local pd. They come to her house excessively and have even told her if she has house guests they will arrest her. Can they really do that?
They come to her house excessively and have even told her if she has house guests they will arrest her. Can they really do that? Absent special circumstances such as those discussed below, however, having house guests is not a crime, and some laws that purport to prohibit this are unconstitutional. But, there are a variety of proper and improper reasons that this could be happening, as well as some that are in a legal gray area. Clearly, the police are doing this for some reason, proper or improper, because it is a sustained pattern of conduct that seems to be singling out one person. But, without more of a factual context it is hard to tell what that reason is so that it is possible to determine whether or not their threat has a legal basis. Like most legal questions, the answer cannot be provided in a vacuum and a full factual context is necessary to know if the police conduct is illegal or not. Valid Reasons Part of A Pattern Of Evidence Showing A Suspected Vice Offense One possible subtext is that the police believe that the premises is a de facto house of prostitution, or that she is dealing drugs out of the house, even though they don't yet have the evidence to arrest her on those suspicions. The police could be implying in their threat to arrest her that the presence of &quot;house guests&quot; would give them probable cause to arrest her on suspicion of a vice offense such as prostitution or drug dealing. Municipal Ordinance Violations Many valid reasons involve municipal ordinances, almost all of which can be punished by arrest and incarceration just like a misdemeanor criminal offense, even when the ordinance does not describe conduct that would usually be considered to be criminal in nature. For example, municipal codes usually authorize law enforcement to arrest someone for a zoning violation, even though it would be very unusual to arrest someone for violating a zoning law. There are often municipal ordinances which limit how many house guests you can have at any one time in a single family house or apartment, such as fire codes and laws designed to prevent loitering and gang activity, and there are often rules that prohibit certain kinds of activities like loud and disorderly parties (especially where alcohol is served or available). But, these ordinances almost never prohibit all house guests. The police could think that she is operating a short term leasing operation (i.e. Air B-n-B) or hotel, in a place where this use of the property is banned by municipal ordinance, and it appears that her &quot;house guests&quot; fit this description. Many municipal ordinances impose curfews on minors, and someone could be arrested for having a party at which minor house guests are present after curfew under some of those municipal ordinances. Some municipal ordinances (or even sometimes state laws), which are not always constitutional or valid under federal housing laws, prohibit unrelated people from cohabiting, either because the cohabitation amounts to de facto polygamy, or because zoning laws prohibit more than a certain number of unrelated people from living at a residence. Valid Reasons Particular To Certain Individuals If someone is on probation or parole or house arrest or out on bail pending criminal charges, the conditions of that criminal sentence or bail condition could also limit the ability of someone to have house guests. For example, if someone had previously been convicted of disorderly conduct and noise violations and contributing to the delinquency of minors, with a wild party, a probation condition for that person might prohibit them from having house guests during the duration of the probation sentence. Similarly, many probation, parole and bail conditions, prohibit the person released in the community from associating with known felons or gang members. Civil or criminal protection orders can also prohibit particular people (e.g. ex-spouses) from being at a particular location. Many states impose restrictions on where sex offenders can reside that could be implicated in this case. A few states also have a criminal sanction of &quot;exile&quot; on the books that prohibits certain people from being in certain jurisdictions following their conviction. Gray Area Reasons It is also entirely possible that the police are asserting rights to do things that they don't actually have the right to do. And, in most jurisdictions in the U.S., it is not categorically unconstitutional for law enforcement officers to lie to members of the public about their authority or other matters, in order to achieve a law enforcement purpose, even if they would be violating the law if they followed through on their lies about what they are permitted to do. Improper Reasons There could also be clearly improper reasons for this conduct. For example: perhaps a police officer wants men to say away from his ex-spouse or daughter, even though he has no right to do so and his colleagues are backing him up, or perhaps the police think that her house guests are disreputable and are taking matters into their own hands without legal authority to keep &quot;bad people&quot; out of territory in their &quot;beat&quot;, or perhaps they suspect but can't prove that she deals drugs or conducts some other sort of illegal activity at her residence, or perhaps she is one of the few black residents of the neighborhood (or her house guests are black) and the police want to harass her to cause her to leave the neighborhood, and they don't think that she will be able to punish them for their misconduct effectively though legal channels before getting fed up and moving away. For example, if they make an arrest and can articulate some kind of alleged probable cause even if it doesn't hold up in court, they may be able to dramatically inconvenience this women with impunity, particularly if the local trial court judges that would consider the arrest decide to side with the police even when misconduct would be clear to a neutral observer.
Following you around with the intent of harassing you is stalking. I don't know whether there's going to be a law actually requiring social distancing in Florida. In other states, I've seen laws set up to make it a crime to violate an order of the Director of Public Health or something like that. I don't know whether Florida actually has an order requiring social distancing by the general public.
You are free to ask them to stop. If they do, great. If they don’t, you legal options depend on if they are legally able to make such noise at that time or not. I am not familiar with UK law but typical laws give wide powers to the owners of infrastructure to construct/repair it. Again, typically, permits may be required but exceptions exist for urgent work. If they have such a permit (or don’t need one) your legal options are nil. If they don’t you can go to court seeking an injunction to stop them until they do.
The role of the 101 call handlers is to assist with enquiries and to progress reports of non-emergency incidents - not deceive. They are not (usually) police officers do not (routinely) have access to PNC. Even if they did, they are under no obligation to divulge potentially operationally-sensitive and/or personal information over the phone; especially as the caller's identity cannot be verified. In response to comments and the OP edit on 09/03/2022... The police will not confirm if you are wanted on warrant over the phone. You must attend your local police station and bring some form of identification with you such as a passport, driving licence or birth certificate. Source1 You can find your local police force here 1A random example taken from one of the 43 territorial police forces in england-and-wales
The legal question here is whether police have an enforceable power to enjoin a person from visiting a particular person or from entering a particular jurisdiction (especially the one where they have police powers). The obligation to obey police orders generally ends at matters regarding arrest, traffic orders, or crowd control. Freedom of travel is a fundamental constitutional right, along with freedom of association. That does not mean that you can go absolutely anywhere you want and do anything you want with whoever you want, but it does mean that any restriction have to be encoded in law, and such laws have to pass strict scrutiny. Any enforceable legal restrictions would have to emanate from the courts.
To start off, you appear to be confusing assault and battery. Assault does not require physical contact in order for it to occur. Verbal assault is still a crime, but in your situation it doesn't appear that any verbal assault has occurred - he is not actively threatening you with harm, and you are not in fear of being harmed. Yelling can sometimes qualify as verbal assault, but any form of verbal assault is very hard to prove because it leaves no evidence. Unless someone other than the two parties involved comes forward, it likely won't go anywhere. Assuming this has been going on for some time, what you appear to be experiencing is harassment which usually qualifies as a civil matter, and police will not take any action other than asking one of you to leave in order to resolve the issue. Most often, they will ask you (as the person being harassed) to leave, but that can also be in your benefit. If you can prove the other person's harassment caused you to have to leave in order to be comfortable again, then you can claim damages and can sue that other person for the harassment - basically suing for damages of not being able to live in and enjoy your residence which you pay for, as well as any additional costs you encountered by having to find an alternate place to live because of their actions. Again, this is difficult to prove without someone else who has witnessed the continued harassment stepping forward (e.g. your guest who might have only witnessed it once is probably not an incredibly strong witness, because harassment is often defined as having persisted over time, and they cannot testify to more than what they saw in one night). The case would likely just devolve to a matter of "he-said" between the two of you - he will likely claim you just didn't like him and are making things up to get money out of him. You'd need to make sure you have other evidence that supports your side of the story. As far as claiming self-defense, my completely non-legal and mostly combination of "I wish this were common sense" and "I hate when people try to justify unneeded violence" advice is never rely on the self-defense plea. Unless you are in fear of your life, your best course of action if he threatens violence or actually hits you is to leave and let the police handle it. If you have physical marks on you and he has none on him, the case becomes much more clear-cut. If you fight back, and you both have marks, then it again becomes a case of "he-said" and it's hard to prove who initiated the confrontation without cooperating witnesses, and you'd likely both end up being arrested when the police showed up if they can't determine who the instigator was. Just because you know something was in self-defense doesn't necessarily mean the police, a judge, or a jury will believe you. Ultimately, if you're uncomfortable with the place you're living, you should start planning to move elsewhere immediately (which you appear to be doing). If you can both a) avoid financial damages to yourself by preventing yourself being put into a situation that requires you to move quickly without much planning and b) prevent the continued harassment - then you should. Don't let the pot just keep boiling over until it explodes all over the kitchen. You have the power to make this stop too, and you shouldn't rely on other people making the situation go away for you (e.g. your landlord is bound by a contract, and evicting a tenant based on your word can open them to a lot of legal troubles - they have to be very careful with how they handle such a situation). Yes, it sucks that it's not your fault you have to go through the extra effort or move away to resolve the situation, but getting yourself out of the situation should be your number one priority, and doing it yourself is often the easiest solution.
No, there is no recourse. An yes, the potential "costs", both personal, financial, social, can be high and are not compensable under an investigatory hold scenario; however, it doesn't usually happen like that. There is no investigatory hold that long without arrest. If the police want to talk to you but don't have enough to arrest you, you can leave any time. If you call your lawyer, he/she will come to the police station and tell the cops to release or arrest you. If the police really want you to stay, likely there is probable cause and they can keep you anyway. The police can arrest you and keep you, without a warrant so long as there is "probable cause" to believe that a crime has been committed (by you). Once arrested without a warrant, this is what is usually referred to as an investigatory hold, where the law says you must be arraigned within 72 hours (some states it must be 48 hours, 1 day less than supreme court says is reasonable). During this time they can investigate their case against you and decide what, if any, charges they will bring. There is no recourse for this, (in the event they bring no charges) unless you can establish that you were held for no reason (including not being falsely identified) and that it was only to intentionally deprive you of your right to liberty. This is nearly impossible to prove, unless you really did nothing and the cop was just messing with you (for instance in a personal vendetta) and you can show that.
There will be a local rule regarding what police have to do with a person in custody. Here are the rules for Seattle. The main relevant rule is that they must take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of the detainee. They must use seat belts, unless the vehicle does not have seat belts in the detainee area. Additionally, they are not to respond to routine calls while transporting a detainee, but they may may respond to a threat to life safety. Typically, high speed response indicates a threat and not a noisy dog complaint. There is no obligation to refrain from responding, nor is there a requirement to release detainees. I don't think there is a clear and bright line: it comes down to what an officer would (in light of department instructions) judge to be reasonable. The officer may be wrong and the department may be wrong in what is legally "reasonable", and this could come out as a result of lawsuits and Dept. of Justice investigations. You can file a complaint with the Civil Rights division of the DoJ, see here.