Must you stop walking if a police officer wants to talk to you? I know a person has a right to silence and not to answer an officers questions. But can the officer keep trying to talk to you to prevent you from carrying on your way? Yesterday a police car pulled up beside me and told me to stop. They kept asking vague questions like if I live in the area, where I'm coming from, where I'm going. For some reason they seemed to be coming up with random questions and finally I said I had to be on my way. Hypothetically could a police detain you for leaving when they're speaking to you?
Edit: I didn't notice a that this question was tagged for Canada; this answer is based on U.S. law. "Must you stop walking" and "can the police detain you for leaving" are different questions. Must you stop? I'd expect a lot of variation from state to state, but there are definitely situations in which you must stop. In Ohio, for instance, an officer who "reasonably suspects" that that you have committed, are committing, will commit, or have witnessed the commission of violent felony, is permitted to stop you and ask for your name, address and date of birth, and it is a crime to refuse to provide that information. R.C. 2921.29. But at the moment the officer asks you to stop, you're in a tricky position. If you haven't done anything wrong, you'd be inclined to think that the officer has no basis to stop you and that you're justified in walking away. But if someone just called the police and said someone fitting your description just robbed a store two blocks away, the officer has reasonable suspicion that you committed a violent felony, but you have no way of knowing that. This sort of thing happens pretty much all the time. In the absence of that reasonable suspicion, though, Ohio courts have repeatedly held that it is not obstruction for you to just walk away (or even run!) from the officer. Can the police detain you for walking away? Obviously, if you're in a situation where it is a crime to not answer questions, the police can detain you because they just watched you break the law. But what about when you're within your rights not to answer? The police can still detain you with a Terry stop when they have a reasonable and articulable suspicion that you are committing a crime, or that you just did, or that you're about to. And they can continue that Terry stop until that suspicion is confirmed or dispelled, or until they can't reasonably expect to get anymore information by detaining you. Based on the facts you described, it seems unlikely that they could legally detain you based on your termination of the conversation. Still, I imagine that there could be circumstances where they might stop someone, ask questions, and then reasonably suspect that the person was engaged in a crime based on his decision to walk away, especially if the person hasn't explicitly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to silence.
In the U.S. there is no law that requires you to ever say a word to a law enforcement officer, and lawyers generally encourage you to minimize what you communicate to them anyway. I can't think of any situation where a request for information could not be demanded in writing. As a practical matter, in some situations you will probably be subject to some extra scrutiny and inconvenience: E.g., in a stop-and-identify situation, you could hand the officer a note saying, "Please make any requests for information from me in writing." The officer may infer that you have some disability, but if he does not (or discovers you don't) he may get irritated enough to subject you to harassment for "contempt of cop". Of course, if you can understand him, you are still required to obey an officer's lawful orders no matter how they are communicated. But "speak" is not a lawful order.
This depends entirely on STATE law, and you need to list the state(s) you are interested in in the question. Thus, the usual legal statement "it depends." POLICE ARE NOT ATTORNEYS Don't accept legal advice from the police at face value. Police frequently don't actually know the minutiae of the law, and/or often misunderstand it. Their job is not to provide legal advice nor legal judgement, their job is to enforce the law based on certain priorities. Thus the area of enforcement is usually narrowed to specific categories so they can be experts in that area. (I.e vice cops, bunko squad, homicide division, etc.) But police are not lawyers, so don't expect them to understand the law. They did not attend 3 years of law school after attaining a college degree, which lawyers DO. Police get as little as 3 months training (in some states like Arkansas they can be put on duty without ANY training for up to a year (!) before attending the academy). THAT SAID, REGARDING CALL RECORDINGS: There are single and two party states. In single party states, any single person who is part of a call or communication can record it. In "two party" states, everyone that is part of the call must be informed. There are numerous exceptions and stipulations however. GREAT EXPECTATIONS First off, is there an "expectation of privacy." Again this varies by state and case law. Generally, if there is no expectation of privacy, then there is a clear exception to record. For instance, if you are in a busy restaurant, and people around you can hear or eavesdrop, you have no expectation of privacy. Courts have also ruled that if you are in the presence of a police officer performing official duties, there is also no expectation of privacy (not for either of you). IS IT LIVE OR IS IT MEMOREX Are you being recorded? If you are in a two/all party state, and you have an expectation of privacy (a phone call made in your home) then one of the following must occur: If the police are recording you without your knowledge, they must have a court order permitting them to do so as part of an investigation. Otherwise you must be notified with a statement at the beginning of the call that the call is being recorded. (Typically your option is to hang up or continue. Continuing the call implies your consent.) In some states the notification can be in the form of a "duck" or a beep every 15 seconds (time period varies, this is also different per state). OPINION NOT ADVICE BELOW I would think that being notified that a call is being recorded ends any expectation of privacy for any involved party. Assuming the state law and related case law supports recording when there is no expectation of privacy, this circumstance would seem to permit recording legally. Doubly so if your were talking to police in official capacity (did you notice a beep every xx seconds?) CAUTION: Because this varies so much by state, and because even the various Federal District Courts are not in unanimous agreement on the minutiae, there may be other factors to consider.
Your description of the facts is vague enough that we can't offer an informed judgment, but to remedy this, I will paraphrase your account of the facts (you can decide whether this is what you were trying to say). I was sitting outside of the Sprint store today waiting for my step daughter to come out. While waiting, two police officers walked up to my car and asked me to turn off my vehicle and come inside. When I voluntarily went inside, the store staff said that they called the police because they had had some sort of problems with people applying for service and absconding with the phone to resell on the black market, and they thought that was part of some such criminal plan. Because of that, they refused to give her a phone or service contract. But then they also told us to never come back, threatening arrest for trespassing. I have never been in that store before. Were my rights violated? No, neither by the police nor by the manager. The police, or the store manager, can legally request you to come in for a conversation: what matters most is whether you were forced to come in against your will. By your report, you were not, so your rights were not violated. The police are irrelevant to the remainder of the question. What remains is whether your rights were violated because the manager told you to go away and never come back under pain of prosecution. The store is private property, meaning that the owner has wide latitude to grant or deny permission to enter. If they hate pink hair and your hair is pink, they can legally "ban" you. If they suspect you of involvement in a criminal activity, that can most certainly legally ban you. That does not mean that it was a righteous or justified decision on their part, or a good business choice, but it is their legal right. So, no, your rights were not violated.
There is pretty much never a right to retaliate against harm to oneself, even blatantly unlawful harm. There is a right to defend oneself and others. One can use force to stop someone from inflicting unlawful or unjustified harm, or to prevent someone from inflicting such harm when the harm is imminent. One is not permitted to use more force than is "reasonably required" under the actual circumstances. This is true in pretty much every jurisdiction that i know of. The details on how much force will be considered "reasonable" will vary. In some jurisdictions there is, under some circumstances, a s"duty to retreat". This generally means that if a person attacked can avoid the harm by fleeing with reasonable safety, that person must do so rather than using force in self-defense. In some jurisdictions this "duty to retreat" applies id the victim is attacked in public, but not in the victim's own home. The right to self defense does not apply when the "attacker" is an agent of the state acting lawfully. For example, a prison guard taking a condemned prisoner to a death sentence cannot be attacked on the grounds that the prisoner is engaging in self defense. In theory a police officer engaging an excessive force, particularly unjustified deadly force, may be resisted in self-defense. But courts are quite reluctant to find such resistance justified in practice. There generally must be very clear evidence of egregious misconduct for the court to rule for the non-police person in such a case. Note that "self" defense can equally be defense of another person. Pretty much all the same rules apply. Self defense applies no matter who the attacker is, but that force is reasonable may vary depending on the attacker. Only such force as is reasonably required to stop or prevent the harm may be used with a justification of self-defense.
Police are authorized by statutes to carry out the functions of law enforcement. I.e., they are granted by law the authority to: Investigate alleged or apparent crimes Detain and arrest individuals when there exists "probable cause" to believe they have committed a crime. There are a plethora of details encompassed by these general descriptions. For related inquiries see also: How can you tell if you have to follow a police officer&#39;s instructions? search-and-seizure In the specific example you cite you are in a public place, albeit on private property. If the property owner asked the police to leave they would have to meet a higher statutory threshold to legally remain and pursue their investigation. In practice, however, they may do whatever they want. Publicized incidents suggest that the best chance you have of ensuring your rights are protected in a police confrontation are to: Have the incident recorded in audio and video in as detailed a fashion as possible, and seen by as many witnesses as possible. Avoid actions that could escalate the incident or serve as a pretext for escalation by the police. Try to get higher-ranking police on the scene. E.g., if you can safely access your phone you may want to both start video recording and call 911 to ask the dispatcher to send the officer's superior to the scene, while making it clear to the dispatcher that you intend to comply with all lawful requests but that you feel threatened or unsafe.
Etiquette is not &quot;above&quot; the law in the sense that an etiquette rule excuses a violation of law. However, at least in the US, the police are not required to investigate every alleged violation of law, nor is a prosecutor required to proceed against every lawbreaker, and the decision to proceed may be influenced by a perceived etiquette violation. It should also be mentioned that while a third person has no right to prevent you form talking to anyone who is willing to talk to you (unless the 3rd person is the parent of guardian of an underage person you wish to address), it is not in any way illegal to instruct you not to do so, even if the instructions are incorrect as a matter of law. Assaulting you is, of course, a different matter.
Of course not. If the owner/tenant needed to be home I could rent a house in my name, and then never occupy it (my associates live there) the cops could never enter. Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927 (1995) - Cops executing a warrant need to knock. If no one answers they must wait a reasonable time for an occupant to let them in. It's the knock and announce rule. By implication it might lend authority to what is an obvious answer.