Is there any federal law in the US that protects its citizens from police harassment? Or is it up to the states Can police officers legally stop and ask you for your id (not driving, but cycling cross country) or question you about your travels (where are you going, why.. etc) if they cannot articulate any resonable suspicion ? If the above mentioned practice is illegal, and they make up funny excuses like "what if you fall into the ditch and die.. we need to know who to send the body to", would that be considered =mocking the law= ? Is it up to the states to decide what constitutes harassment? Or is there a federal law that protects regular mortals from cops? Thank you
You're looking for the Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. This prohibits the police from harassing you and stopping you without cause. It is not self-enforcing, though, so you can sue for a violation under 42 USC 1983: Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. This is the normal means of enforcing your rights under the Fourth Amendment, as well as the First, Second, and so on.
The problem is that the law enforcement authorities could easily contend that the simple fact of a police car on the road projects the power and authority of law enforcement, and if a car was built and driven by someone who is not an officer, that would constitute impersonation because people would assume only a police officer would be driving a police car. The police could cite the driver for impersonation; the merits of the case could be decided in court, but it's speculation on what conclusion would be made. There's always the fact that Oregon law could be quickly amended to outlaw personal or custom vehicles which simply appear to be law enforcement vehicles, if the legislature saw the need in response to police requests or requests from the public. Current Oregon law can already interpreted to include those who impersonate the police in a vehicle. There are several recent news articles: One from ktvl.com: Anyone caught impersonating an officer is facing a Class C felony charge, with potentially up to three years in prison. And another: Police impersonator pulls over Oregon driver, turns himself in - oregonlive.com: ...turned himself in to police on Friday evening, OSP said in a release. He was cited and released for criminal impersonation of a public servant and disorderly conduct.
There is a lot of confusion over the difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. They are not the same thing. Reasonable suspicion is any justifiable belief that a crime has been or is about to be committed. Probable cause requires an officer to have actual, tangible evidence that you have committed a crime. Only after probable cause has been established can an officer arrest you (with limited ability to search your immediate person and effects). Reasonable suspicion only requires some articulatable justification that you did something wrong. The police can detain you on reasonable suspicion, and they do not have to tell you why. This is called a Terry stop (after Terry v. Ohio where the Supreme Court ruled this was legal). However, they can only detain you long enough to ascertain whether or not they have probable cause to arrest you. If after conducting a preliminary investigation they can't find probable cause to make an arrest, they have to let you go. In that video, we have a guy walking around in Texas with a shotgun and some shells. We never see what this guy looks like or how he's carrying himself, but he appears to be a troll. The cops received a call, so they investigated. They had all the reasonable suspicion they needed to detain him. Texas is an open carry state (a person can walk around openly with a gun), and it is not a stop-and-identify state (the police cannot demand that you ID yourself). Therefore the man did not break any laws. But neither did the police officers. They were doing their job by asking questions, and after failing to find any evidence, they let him go. If he had run before the officers had cleared him to leave, they could have chased him down and arrested him. That is, after all, what a detention is. You don't get to run away because you don't recognize a cop's authority to stop you. And fleeing a law enforcement officer is a crime. But you do have the right not to answer any questions, including (in some states) what your name is.
The 5th amendment protects you from self-incrimination. If by possessing a firearm you are in violation of the law you cannot be compelled by law to reveal this information. If the police discover you have a gun in violation of the law you can be arrested and prosecuted for that offense. They cannot additionally prosecute you for not telling them about a gun. I thought there was a supreme court case about this specific situation, but the closest I can find for now is Haynes v. United States. The 7-1 majority held that people prohibited from possessing firearms cannot be compelled to register their firearms that they are possessing illegally. They are stopped by the police and asked this question. They answer truthfully. Then they can be arrested and prosecuted for the illegal possession of the gun. How does this square with the right not to self-incriminate? Or is asking the question considered to be a search? Police can generally ask whatever they want. If you choose to waive your 5th amendment rights, that's your mistake. Can the state prosecute this person for carrying the illegal weapon? The state can generally prosecute crimes it knows about. So yes, in this case they can. Suppose that next to the weapon a stash of illegal drugs is discovered, which was only found due to the action taken to secure the weapon. Can the state prosecute for that? The state can generally prosecute additional crimes it uncovers during investigations or other lawful actions. So yes, this can be prosecuted.
A police officer (or any other random person) would not be guilty of a crime or subject to civil liability for standing by and watching a suicide occur when it could be prevented, unless the person attempting to commit suicide was in his custody and he failed to take reasonable care to prevent a suicide in which case the officer could be subject to civil liability. It would not be a violation of the law, however, for a police officer (or in most cases, even a private citizen) to intervene to attempt to stop an attempted suicide. Likewise, prisons and prison guards can have civil liability for failing to prevent the suicide of someone in their custody. Of course, a police officer might still receive a negative employment evaluation from his supervisor for such conduct, or might even be fired for it depending on the rules of a particular department, as it would reflect poorly on the police department and show bad judgment on the officers part. In general, an affirmative duty enforceable by a lawsuit to take reasonable efforts to prevent someone from committing suicide applies in circumstances where the person attempting to commit suicide is in someone else's care and custody and has their liberty constrained. So, there could be liability on the part of a hospital or treating medical personnel (I've actually brought such a case that was dismissed due to malpractice in missing a deadline by local co-counsel who was then disciplined for ethical violations by the State of Illinois for his conduct.) In the absence of such a relationship, a legal duty to take affirmative action to prevent a suicide generally does not arise. Certain medical facilities and providers are required to make anonymized incident reports for the purpose of creating national public health statistics on a periodic basis. In certain extreme circumstances, there are duties to report someone who is a threat to others which may also include a risk of suicide, to authorities, but those are quite narrowly interpreted, and actual legal consequences from failing to warn are very rare. There may be other reporting requirements in educational institutions and for mental health professionals, but I am not personally aware of them and I do not believe that they are national in scope. Usually, for criminal liability, there would have to be actual affirmative acts to aid or to attempt to cause a suicide.
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.
The answer provided by Dale M is half right, but there are a few things that I think are wrong. Firstly, the actual reality of the situation doesn't matter. What matters is that you act in a reasonable manner, performing assessments of the situation as a reasonable person would do. If you misread the situation, and end up killing a police officer that was acting in a lawful manner, it doesn't necessarily mean you were acting unlawfully yourself. Because police officers are generally exposed to situations where they would be forced to use their firearm, that obviously would impact how a reasonable person would see the situation, but the test for reasonableness would not go out the window. In addition, even if you were found to not be acting in a reasonable manner, there is certainly a question if you would be found guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter rather than murder. It's possible the self-defence claim would be upheld as an imperfect defence.
It's not an interrogation Nothing makes Mr. Hansen a police investigator. He is a private person talking with another private person. His testimony or the recording of the interview might or might not be admissible in trial, that's for the court to decide. But Miranda warnings are only needed when you are under arrest or when you are in a custodial interrogation. Hansen, agent of the police? There's arguments that Hansen might or might not have acted as an agent of the police, and in one case he was deputized. However, that does not change that for Miranda you need an arrest or custodial interrogation (e.g. where one is not free to leave). As far as I am aware, none of the people interviewed was in such a situation and technically free to go at any time - making Miranda not required.