How to Flex Your Rights During Police Encounters

You have the right to let police search you. You also have the right to refuse -- the choice is yours. Before consenting to a search, you should consider the possible consequences of waiving your 4th Amendment right to refuse.

First, consider that giving police permission to search you if they have no probable cause to do so is like letting any stranger search your stuff. Searches are done quickly and often carelessly. If anything is broken you won't likely be compensated, because you agreed to the search.

Also, you never know for sure what a careless friend or family member might have left in your car at some point. We frequently hear stories where the driver was unaware of a tiny marijuana blunt left in the ashtray, which leads to an arrest. Sometimes police make arrests because they discover a single marijuana seed.

If police find any illegal items after you consent to a search request, you can be arrested even if you had nothing to do with it.

Clip from the DVD, BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters

Videotaping or photographing police in public places is usually legal, so long as you don’t interfere their ability to do their job. Nonetheless, police generally don't like being watched or documented and will often respond aggressively. 

Citizens are frequently arrested for videotaping police, and the charges are later dropped. Regardless, video is uniquely effective in revealing guilt and exonerating the innocent -- for both police and citizens. See examples of this here, here, here, and here.

If you're videotaping or photographing police, make sure you don’t interfere. If you're arrested, “obstruction” is the most likely charge, and you’ll want to be able to defend against it.

If you acquire video or photographic evidence of police misconduct, create and secure copies of the evidence. Then forward copies to local police monitoring groups such as civilian review boards, and local ACLU, NLG, and NAACP chapters. You should also obtain legal representation for yourself in case the police department retaliates against you.

No. Refusing a search request is not an admission of guilt and does not give the officer the legal right to search or detain you.

Most avoidable police searches don't occur because police have a search warrant or probable cause. They occur because people get tricked or intimidated into consenting to search requests. Police are skilled at using their authority to make you feel obligated to prove your innocence. ("You don't have anything to hide, do you?")

Don't buy it. The 4th Amendment protects your right to refuse search requests. Use it or lose it. If an officer asks to search you, your car, or you home -- you may politely say "Officer, I know you're just doing your job, but I don't consent to searches." Repeat if necessary.

Clip from the DVD, BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters

The criminal justice system is composed of human beings, who are imperfect. As a result, innocent people are frequently victims of an imperfect criminal justice system that is designed to inflict harsh punishment. All too often, perfectly innocent people attempting desperately to convey their innocence create additional opportunities for their words to be used against them.

If you are innocent, it is especially important not to talk to the police until you have a lawyer. Our prisons are full of people who claim they are innocent, and many of those people are actually telling the truth.

To learn more, watch the famous "Never Talk to the Police" lecture by Regent University Law School Professor James Duane. It's followed up by an equally compelling lecture by Officer George Bruch who talks about how he successfully interrogates suspects.

Professor Duane from Regent Law School has a speaking style similar to Regis Philbin on methamphetamine. As a result this compelling 27-minute lecture flies by.