How to legally deal with British police officers? How can I legally deal with British police officers if they suspect the following: I am carrying a weapon I match the profile of someone they're looking for. I understand that if I'm not carrying a weapon, nor have I done anything wrong then I should comply with their requests. However, the insecurity and anxiety of a power stopping you under suspicion doesn't sound right to me. What rights do I have to investigate the reasoning of a police officer under the claim that I've been stopped under discrimination, or unlawful methods?
england-and-wales Initially, one should comply with the officer's instructions as he has the power under statutory Stop &amp; Search powers to detain someone for the purpose of the search (discussed here). Failure to do so may be an offence. If, subsequently, one considers the search and detention was unlawful, the first port of call is to lodge a complaint with the relevant police force who - depending on the circumstances - may escalate the complaint to the Independent Office for Police Conduct IOPC. You can complain directly to the police/other organisation (see ‘Who can I complain about?’ below for a list of the other organisations) or via the IOPC. If you complain via the IOPC, your complaint will be sent direct to the organisation involved. They will assess your complaint and contact you about how it will be handled. The IOPC will not be involved with this initial assessment of your complaint. If the complaint is found to be valid, then any offence committed by not complying with the office would (in all probability) be overturned on appeal. As well as any compensation awarded by the court, the Chief Constable may consider making an ex gratia payment (mentioned here). Note that there is no obligation to do anything if the interaction falls within the Stop &amp; Account provisions.
Generally, no Police cannot enter private property subject to a number of exemptions: they have a search warrant, or when in close pursuit of someone the police believe has committed, or attempted to commit, a serious crime, or to sort out a disturbance, or if they hear cries for help or of distress, or to enforce an arrest warrant, or if invited in freely by the occupant, or under various statutes which give the police powers of entry (not necessarily by force) into a number of different kinds of premises.
This is a deescalation tactic. By giving some ridiculous far out reason, the officer hopes to distract you from any combative or aggressive feelings you have about being stopped. You can do this too, if someone you think is getting progressively angrier might try and hurt you, bringing up something random forces their mind off their anger, even just for a moment. And sometimes, that's enough to avoid a conflict. As for the legality of telling you the reason, no they are not required to tell you the reason, as has been mentioned several times on stack exchange. If an officer says to himself, "I think this guy has crack on him because of X," and it's captured on his body cam, then he's covered. He can prove to the court that he did have reasonable suspicion to detain you, even if he later tells you, "I have a report of zombies in the area and I need to see your ID to determine if you have a death certificate."
In all common law countries, this would be the tort of battery (thus, illegal). The police might lawfully lay hands on the person, under certain conditions. First, the police would have to be legally arresting the person; second, the person would have to be (unlawfully) resisting that arrest. If the person acts in a way that a police officer "has reason to believe to be so mentally ill as to be incapable of taking care of himself", he may arrest the person (Mental Health Act 1987 art. 23). Part III (art. 20 ff) provides the legal background for the second path for arrest, via involuntary commitment. Under the circumstances you describe, a court would have to first order the person taken into custody (leading to an arrest, and possibly being subdued). The police would not be authorized to administer a sedative, so they would have to use physical restraint (handcuffs, hammer-lock and so on). The process is either initiated by a psychiatric professional, or by a relative (art. 20), then the court determines whether the person is to be so detained.
The problem with Solution 2 is that government officials in the United States enjoy qualified immunity with respect to actions that they did while acting under color of law. It's not total immunity, but if they do things by the book, they cannot be prosecuted even if something goes wrong (even when doing things by the book, Police deal in very volatile situations and things can still go wrong because of an X factor to specific for the training manual to cover.). In other cases, it may be because multiple officers are working the scene and Office A lied to Officer B about the situation. Consider Officer A pulls over a suspect and realizes it was someone who was suspected of a crime, but couldn't prove it. He calls for back up and Officer B arrives. Upon arriving on scene, Officer A tells B to search the trunk of the car despite the fact that A had not received consent from the suspect nor has a warrant, nor cause to make a search of a trunk of a vehicle. B makes the search and finds [the bloody knife/the stash of drugs/the smoking gun/the match to a child's shoe that was missing from the kidnapping scene/ insert other incriminating evidence]. Under system (2), since it was Officer B who made the illegal search, B would be liable for it, even though Officer A lied about having legal reason for a search of the trunk space. But what's more... if the evidence is gonna be used anyway, what's to stop the cops doing it again? After all, there is very little recourse for those who are illegally searched to contest this in court (If I'm illegally searched and don't have anything on me, I have to take this to civil court, which is a different animal than Criminal Court and exposes me to broader Discovery... aka gives the cops free reign to search my property for a hell of a lot more illegal things.) or just sit back and count my 4th amendment rights (the section of the constitution protecting against unwarranted search and seizures) as worth less than the paper they're printed on. Oh, and by the way... that second word seizure... that means that they will be taking my property (or myself if they arrest me) and will not be giving it back for some time while they process it... if it's a legal to hold item (like my laptop that I do work on) that's going to make it harder for me to do my job which injures me further in lost business and income. In other cases, it could be they have a warrant for a large item (a stolen big screen tv) and while searching for it, open my sugar bowel and find evidence of a crime unrelated to theft of the television (i.e. opening a baggie of weed). This is actually an illegal search because, unless I am a wizard, a Time Lord, or Mary Poppins, there is no reason why a container smaller than a big screen TV should ever be searched when looking for a Big Screen TV and the cops should logically see this as out of bounds of the search warrant. The nature of this is damaging before the legality of the search can be determined, and because the search may have been out of scope of the warrant that was otherwise justified, the rule of making the evidence of a crime inadmissible was held in order to prevent LEOs from doing this because they could. This rule also started to take formation prior to the Revolutionary War. British Law had ruled against compelled confessions being inadmissible as evidence in 1769, a full six years before the Revolutionary war started (1775) and seven years before the publication of the Declaration of Independence (1776). Now there are some exceptions that can get the evidence brought back in, such as plain view (&quot;The suspect's vehicle is a pick up truck with an open bed, the murder weapon was lying in the bed covered in blood&quot;), inevitable discovery (&quot;We have developed evidence by other means that would have lead us to this evidence legally&quot;) and Exigent Circumstances (&quot;We believed someone inside the property was in grave danger if we did not enter the property immediately and that's when we found a cache of stolen Big Screen TVs!) and Good Faith (the Warrant was authorized for the wrong street address of the target but we found the evidence of an unrelated crime in a place the warrant authorized us to search. Everything but the goofed up address was done by the book.).
Police can get a warrant, if the warrant is supported by &quot;probable cause&quot; to believe that evidence of a crime exists. A separate &quot;probable cause&quot; requirement is that to arrest a person, there must be &quot;probable cause&quot; that they committed a crime. However, the Privacy Protection Act makes it unlawful to search &quot;work product materials possessed by a person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication&quot;, unless there is probable cause that the person committed the crime in question. There are similar laws (&quot;shield laws&quot;) at the state level. Here is a map which gives you an indication what immunities exist in what states.
The police are never permitted to break the law. However, the law that gives them their powers may make other laws not applicable to them in the course of their duties. If a law is not applicable to them; how can they break it?
A police officer can lie, and lying does not render a statement inadmissible. But there is a separate area of law regarding self-incrimination and the right to a lawyer. The basic principle is that a person can always assert their 5th Amendment rights, whether or not they are under arrest. When a person is under arrest and has asserted their right to an attorney, questioning must stop and anything that results from further questions is inadmissible. There is no single factor that distinguishes ordering asking questions from custodial interrogation. For example if you have been dragged by officers to the police station and held in a locked room for hours in the middle of night, one would reasonably believe that you were taken into custody, and interrogation must stop once you request a lawyer. In Oregon v. Mathiason, 429 U.S. 492, police contacted the defendant whom they suspected was involved in a burglary and they invite him to chat at the station. They lie and say they found his fingerprints at the scene (they did not). He then confesses, they read him his rights, and he confesses again. The confession is admissible, because this was not a custodial interrogation. The relevant question is whether "a reasonable person would have felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation and leave".