Is calling emergency service for someone ever mandatory? Is it ever mandatory to call the police or other emergency service for people? For example, say a friend has suicidal thoughts. Could you ever be breaking the law by not calling the police in such a situation?
A person may be a &quot;mandatory reporter&quot;, which means that in some jurisdiction, if you have a certain relationship to a person suspected to be &quot;problematic&quot;, in a particular manner, you may be required by law to report those facts to a particular authority. There are a lot of &quot;ifs&quot; in these requirements. For instance, in Washington, RCW 74.34.020 defines a set of &quot;mandated reporters&quot;, for abuse of vulnerable adults. The trigger conditions are &quot;abandonment, abuse, financial exploitation, or neglect&quot;, and a mandatory reporter reports to the Department of Social and Health Services. I'm not a mandatory reporter, but school personnel and health care workers (inter alios) are. This document summarizes the various legal requirements by state. In Oregon, a hospital is required to report an attempted suicide, and you report to the Oregon Public Health Division. An exhaustive search of all such laws would be impractical, but based on the laws that I reviewed, there are some general features of mandatory reports. First, the person required to report has to have a special duty of care, for example they are law enforcement, a health care professional, etc. and these laws do not impose a requirement on everybody. Second, the individuals that they are supposed to report about are &quot;vulnerable&quot;, however that is defined by law – usually, the implication is that they are not in a mental state that they can take full care of themselves. Third, the report is made to some supervisory social services agency, which is then responsible for taking further action (to prevent the harm). However, health care workers in California are required to report suspected domestic violence to the police. It is unlikely that any jurisdiction in the US requires reporting suicide to the police, since suicide is not a crime in the US, and the police are not a social service agency, they are a law enforcement agency (no law is being broken).
First, no, given the wording of the question: &quot;by demanding identity first&quot;. US courts have never held that citizens must immediately comply with non-emergency orders free of back-talk. Let's assume that the refusal is conditional: &quot;I won't comply until you show me your ID&quot;. In most (?) jurisdictions, there is no obligation imposed on police to show ID, though I am excluding home searches. There is a policy requirement in Seattle (§7) that Employees may use a Department-issued business card that contains their name and serial number to satisfy the request for the information. Employees will also show their department identification card and badge (sworn) when specifically requested to do so. Exception: Employees are not required to immediately identify themselves if: An investigation is jeopardized A police function is hindered There is a safety consideration Massachusetts has a law saying that &quot;Such identification card shall be carried on the officer's person and shall be exhibited upon lawful request for purposes of identification&quot;. In the domain of search and seizure law, the court reasoned in Doornbos v. Chicago, regarding a seizure by plainclothes police that Absent reasonable grounds to think that identification would present an unusual danger, it is generally not a reasonable tactic for plainclothes officers to fail to identify themselves when conducting a stop. The tactic provokes panic and hostility from confused civilians who have no way of knowing that the stranger who seeks to detain them is an officer... it is usually unreasonable for a plainclothes officer to fail to identify himself when conducting a stop or frisk As you can see, this identification requirement is tied to constitutional search and seizure limits for which there is voluminous case law regarding what is &quot;reasonable&quot;. The scenario that you propose is fairly far from the kind of case identified in Doornbos: is the order from a uniformed officer in a police vehicle? That seems to be what you're describing. Now we must inquire as to the legality of the order. Picking on Washington state law, RCW 46.61.015 requires that No person shall willfully fail or refuse to comply with any lawful order or direction of any duly authorized flagger or any police officer or firefighter invested by law with authority to direct, control, or regulate traffic. RCW 46.61.021 requires a person driving to stop for a LEO, and to identify himself: failure to comply is a misdemeanor. There is no statutory provision that a person can refuse to obey these (or similar sections in the motor vehicle title) until the officer provides ID. A police officer (in Washington: and I suspect any other state) does not have unrestricted authority to give people orders, there are specific statutory circumstances giving police the power to order people to do things. Obstructing a police officer is a crime, but obstructing an officer is where one &quot;willfully hinders, delays, or obstructs any law enforcement officer in the discharge of his or her official powers or duties&quot;, and not &quot;doesn't cooperate&quot;. There is a provision, RCW 9a.76.030 where A person is guilty of refusing to summon aid for a peace officer if, upon request by a person he or she knows to be a peace officer, he or she unreasonably refuses or fails to summon aid for such peace officer and the &quot;knows to be a peace officer&quot; clause implies either that the officer is uniformed, or has provided identification. Finally, we have &quot;failure to disperse&quot; when a person congregates with a group of three or more other persons and there are acts of conduct within that group which create a substantial risk of causing injury to any person, or substantial harm to property; and (b) He or she refuses or fails to disperse when ordered to do so by a peace officer or other public servant engaged in enforcing or executing the law. These laws are attuned to emergency needs, thus outside the penumbra of your scenario. In short, the primary question must be, when can police lawfully give you an order that you must obey, which narrows the matter down to traffic-related matters. The seizure must be reasonable: it is reasonable to require a person to stop for a uniformed officer. Reasonability does not entail that all officers must produce ID when effecting a seizure, but this may be the case with plain-clothes officers. Even when in Seattle with a departmental policy requiring officers to identify themselves, an officer's failure to identify does not render the seizure illegal.
This is a no win situation. People who try to stop in a safe public place fearing that the cop may be an imposter risk prosecution for resisting arrest. But, no one will offer you any remedy if the cop was an imposter who was victimizing you. One recommended course of action if you doubt a cop is real is to call 911 as you pull over to confirm that the cop trying to pull you over is real.
There is, in most countries at least, no law requiring a business to treat a customer fairly. In general, a business may refuse to serve a would-be customer for any reason or none, provided that the reason is not membership in a protected class (racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual bias, mostly). Exactly which classes are protected depends on the local law (in the US, there can be such laws at all of federal, state, and municipal levels). If a customer is asked to leave and does not do so, s/he could be charged with defiant trespass (or local equivalent). More likely, security, or the police, could simply escort the customer out of the business, using as much force as is reasonably needed for that purpose. Unless there are grounds for action not mentioned, I see no basis for a successful suit by the customer.
What is the correct way to handle this situation? Strictly speaking, each driver exceeding the speed limit is in violation of the traffic sign even if everybody else also infringes it. Thus it is completely valid for the police to pull &amp; fine anyone from among those drivers. Statutes like the one you mention are intended for scenarios where a driver departs significantly --and for no apparent [lawful] reason-- from the speed limit, such as driving at 20 mph in a 55 mph zone. Typically a driver would not get pulled over in the scenario you mention (driving at 62 mph where everybody else drives at 65 mph). The exception would be some police department(s) requiring its cops to meet a quota of fines per week, but that would be quite a questionable practice having nothing to do with the legislative intent. Speed limits are supposed to represent normal and reasonable movement of traffic. If informed consensus is that a particular speed limit is inconsistent with that principle (for instance, where limit is artificially low and raising it would not compromise safety), then a request could be submitted to the Oregon Department of Transportation.
No, it's not legal. This is the tort of assault, not to be confused with criminal assault. A tort of assault does not require actual contact, whereas some jurisdictions define criminal assault elements as those of battery; in others, it is an intended battery without the contact. The elements of common law assault are: A positive, voluntary act You can't do this accidentally or negligently That intentionally causes reasonable apprehension in the plaintiff The person must reasonably apprehend contact. However, this is a subjective standard. If the plaintiff does not apprehend contact, then this element is not satisfied. Additionally, while words alone are rarely enough to satisfy this element, words in a certain tone, or with certain actions, may be. Also, verbal threats are not required for this element. Of immediate You can't assault someone by threatening them with something that'll happen in the future, if it's distant enough. Whether this is distant enough is decided on a case-by-case basis. Unlawful contact The contact needs to be unlawful and harmful. In the situation you describe, a civil action in assault would have all requirements fulfilled. You might also succeed in pressing criminal charges, depending on the jurisdiction concerned. Police officers generally have the power to maintain the peace, and an assault is most definitely a breach of the peace. Again, depending on the jurisdiction, they may have the power to detain them, or to ask them to move along, for example.
I'll preface this by saying I live in Australia where the lowest jurisdiction that can make an act a criminal offence is the state; local governments simply do not have that power here, Question 1: If I understand this right you have a law that you do not enforce that carries moderate sanctions and you are asking that a law that you do not enforce with greater sanctions will be a greater deterrent? Well ... no (see here). If you want to stop the behavior you have to enforce the sanctions that you have in a fair and impartial way. I would suggest that you make it very clear that starting in early September the laws will be enforced - that gives people fair warning. Then, each weekend in September you bring in enough police (State Troopers?) to enforce the law. Its not going to take many $250 fines to make people stop. Question 2: No comment. Question 3: No comment. Question 4: Sounds like a good way of getting the city sued for negligence; just because people are breaking the law does not make it legal to hurt them. If you are serious then fencing the entire area may be worthwhile but the area would still need to be policed.
So for your first question, yelling "Stop Thief" loudly at the thief is perfectly legal (Like Yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater, it's legal if the theater is infact, on fire... the quote implied that it was a prankster who drew amusement from the reaction of the people who took him seriously). This may alert store employees, who have a specific kind of Citizens Arrest Power known as "Shopkeeper's Privilege" and is a reduced liability compared to Citizens Arrest. This is also pretty basic self defense agains people who are not engaged in any physical action against you but are starting to scare you. Suddenly shouting draws attention to you and discourages them from their behavior "I SAID DON'T TOUCH ME" being suddenly shouted in a Wal Mart is going to get notices from the immediate crowd drawn to you, and by poximate location, the person who is making you uneasy. For your second question, maybe, it depends... since the cop is clearly chasing the guy, you meet the qualification to use non-deadly force in stopping the criminal (i.e. you are witnessing a person committing a crime, in this case, resisting arrest or persuit) and it would certainly be reasonably non-deadly force if you were to trip, grab, or push the fleeing suspect. Citizens Arrest doesn't specify a minimum time to qualify, so if the officer is seconds behind, and you detain the criminal in this action until the gap is closed, it still counts.