How to Speak to a Cop
When speaking to police, you can reduce the possibility for a police interrogation, which in turn
decreases the likelihood of you saying something that results in arrest. Former Miami police
officer and FBI agent Dale Carson emphasizes this fact in his 2013 book, “Arrest-Proof
Yourself.” When stopped by police, Carson recommends you say, ‘Officer, have I done
something wrong?’ Carson says that with the proper tone, this response is polite and slightly
submissive. After using this phrase, stay quiet and say nothing more. You shouldn’t volunteer
information and should only respond to their questions. When responding to questions, answer
truthfully and briefly. You are legally required to give your name when asked by law
enforcement. If you haven’t committed a crime, Carson recommends you tell cops your basic
information like name, address, names of relatives, and where you’re going. Not doing so
seems suspicious. Cops will try to engage you in further conversation and may stand close or
call you names to make you nervous and more likely to share additional information. Do not
answer these questions. If cops ask about a crime that happened recently, answer truthfully and
briefly. If you don’t know an answer to something, just say ‘I do not know,’ without offering more
information.
What if police are laying it on heavy and suggesting you might have done something wrong?
Carson strongly recommends the following answer: “Officer, I’d like to answer your questions,
but my attorneys told me that in a situation like this, I should not say anything unless they are
present.” It is a respectful refusal, asserts your Sixth Amendment right to an attorney in dealing
with cops and criminal courts, and shows police you have connections with an attorney. The
statement is better than screaming ‘I want a lawyer,’ because the former response shows that
you already have one. If you’re caught in an arrestable offense, say absolutely nothing. Carson
says nothing you can say will help your case, and your words could be used to convict you of a
crime.
When, however, should you use the phrase, “I want a lawyer”? If police ignore your refusal to
answer questions and get in your face and keep screaming at you or act like your friend to try to
get you to cooperate. In this case, “You need to say, with no adverbs, in only four words, ‘I want
a lawyer.’ And then you need to say it again, and again, until the police finally give up and
realize they are dealing with someone who knows how our legal system really works,” Regent
University Law School professor James Duane writes. He is the author of the 2016 book, “You
Have the Right to Remain Innocent: What Police Officers Tell Their Children about the Fifth
Amendment.”
“If you are asked any question by a police officer or a government agent and you realize that it
is not in your best interest to answer, you should not mention the Fifth Amendment privilege or
tell the police that you wish to exercise your right to avoid incriminating yourself. In this day and
age, there is too great a danger that the police and the prosecutor might later persuade the
judge to use that statement against you as evidence of your guilt. And if they do, to make
matters much worse, you have no guarantee that the FBI agent in your case will not slightly
misremember your exact words,” Duane cautioned. He says, “Even if you take care to say, ‘I
wish to invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination,’ you have no
guarantee that the agent will not testify months later at your trial that ‘he said he would not talk
because the truth would incriminate him.’ Even if the officer only gets a few words wrong, it only
takes a slight rewording of the privilege to make it sound like a confession.” In 2013, the United
States Supreme Court ruled in the case of Salinas v. Texas that the silence of a criminal
suspect, who was not arrested and free to leave, is relevant evidence that is admissible against
the individual at trial and may be used to help persuade the jury that the person is guilty. Now,
we have to use magic words to use the Fifth Amendment right against testifying against
ourselves.
Duane explains that as of now, the fact that the defendant asserted their Sixth Amendment right
to a lawyer cannot be used as evidence against them in a trial. Even if that information were to
somehow become evidence, “[I]t will sound less suspicious if you merely told the officer that you
wanted a lawyer present before you agreed to be interviewed. That makes it sound, after all, like
you were willing to answer their questions. (But don't worry about what will happen after the
police obtain a lawyer to represent you, because they probably will not even bother wasting their
time. They know that the lawyer will tell you not to answer their questions).” This is how cops
respond when they are under investigation. They never cooperate or talk with investigators or
prosecutors unless it is a fully negotiated deal with their attorney to reduce or dismiss criminal
charges.
Law enforcement officers even tell their own kids and relatives to never answer questions from
the police, as Duane has discovered. “In the past five years, I have spoken dozens of times to
thousands of individuals around the United States about the right to remain silent. Most of my
audience members have been students in college or law school. Everywhere I go, I just about
always make a point to ask how many people in attendance have a parent who is a police
officer or a prosecutor—and of those attendees, what their parents have advised them about the
Fifth Amendment. In almost every group, there is at least one student who tells me that his
father is a state trooper, or that her mother is a prosecutor. Every time this happens, without
exception, the student in question has told me basically the same thing: ‘Years ago, my parents
explained to me that if I were ever approached by a law enforcement officer, I was to call them
immediately, and they made sure that I would never agree to talk to the police.’” Duane writes.
Duane is disgusted by the double standard of law enforcement “cooperation.” He reflects, “We
routinely see people in power, such as police officers and government officials, pleading the
Fifth. These are officials who have made a career out of talking people into waiving their right to
remain silent, but when the questions are suddenly directed at them, they will not waive their
own. Nobody of sound mind can dispute that there is something fundamentally wrong, and
intrinsically corrupt, about a legal system that encourages police officers and prosecutors to do
everything in their power to persuade you and your children (no matter how young or old) to ‘do
the right thing’ and talk—when they tell their own children the exact opposite.”
Duane and Carson give similar advice on how citizens should speak to police. I caught up with
Dale Carson at his law office in Jacksonville, Fla. in July 2021, where I learned that his advice
on police stops has not changed since he published his book in 2013. Now 70, Carson said in
an interview, “I think where we are today is that if we don’t assert our sovereignty we are going
to be in increasing trouble with the government.” He regrets his days as an aggressive drug
warrior cop on the mean streets of Miami. “Part of the reason I wrote the book was as an
apology to all of those poor bastards that I put in jail for something, although I am not a big fan
of people using drugs... You’ve branded someone with a felony possession charge or even
back then a misdemeanor possession charge. You have adversely impacted their entire
existence just by virtue of your branding them as a criminal. I think that’s absolutely absurd,”
Carson said.
I asked Carson about the advice offered by Craig and Marc Wasserman, the California pot
smoking lawyer brothers who advise cannabis consumers to tell police, “I am not discussing my
day,” when questioned by cops. Carson cautioned taking a respectful tone in all interactions
with police. “Remember the police officer has to assess, resolve if you will, his expectation that
you are a danger to people or property in the area. Traffic citations are issued by officers solely
for the purpose of allowing their movement from street officer to detective. They get credit for
arrests, and acting hostile and confrontational is more likely to result in someone getting
arrested.” He says police stops are an “excuse to stop somebody and conduct an attitude
check.” A good attitude goes a long way in preventing a simple stop from turning into a major
arrest. A good attitude will not always mollify situations with police, however, especially for
people of color. Black people, regardless of their attitude, are disproportionately victims of police
violence.
Car Stops
As I mentioned in a previous part of this series, the majority of people cops stop are drivers. Car
stops are different from getting stopped on foot. “When you are in a car, police have a right to
regulate you,” Carson told Lions of Liberty podcast host Mark Clair in 2013. “When you are
driving, the police officer has the right to watch you and when they observe you making a traffic
violation, which most all of us do, and I don’t know any red-blooded American seeing a police
officer in the rear-view mirror doesn’t get nervous. We all get scared. The key to this is you pull
over, you roll down your window partly, not necessarily all the way, and you provide the officer
with the information. You are polite and you are respectful. Then you just be quiet. Officers will
try word tricks such as, ‘You don’t have any guns or drugs in your car, do you?’ Instead of
saying yes or no, say, ‘I have been cooperative for the past 10 minutes. I was late when you
stopped me, I am later now, and I am going to my mother’s house... or wherever you are going.
Officer, I really would like to go there. I really do not mean to be offensive, but can I go
please?’” When you answer questions about what is or is not in your vehicle, “You just open
yourself up to surrender Fourth Amendment protection, which prohibits the officer from looking
in your car unless he has a search warrant or in the case of a vehicle ...if he has probable
cause to believe you have been involved in a criminal event.”
In the aforementioned podcast, Carson is asked about numerous online videos from police
accountability activists showing the driver repeatedly shouting at the officer, “Am I being
detained?” Carson emphasized that this may not be a smart strategy: “You can’t be impolite.
Think about it. The officer is stopping you and you say, ‘Am I detained?’ That’s not what you
say. Give the officer a moment to do what she is going to do and after that moment if they
pursue trying to search your car or something you say, ‘May I leave? Am I free?’ The same
thing is accomplished. It is less antagonistic. Because I will assure you that years ago that if
someone had said that to me, they would have been in jail. Let there be no question about that.
Today it is a little different because we have electronics. It is easy to have a secret recording
device in a car. If the officer misbehaves, well you probably get out of the problem later, down
the road after you’ve been arrested, after your fingerprints have been taken after you’re in NCIC
[National Crime Information Center] you may get the whole thing thrown out. But you are still
going to be in the electronic plantation. When they [employers] check your ID, they will find out
you were arrested for resisting with violence a police officer in the lawful performance of her
duty. Any employer who sees those words is going to go ‘next.’”
So, what do the police have a right to do? They have the right to ask drivers for a copy of their
license, registration, and insurance. They have the right to order you to leave the car. Numerous
attorneys urge you to comply with this request, by getting out of the car and locking the doors
behind you. Pat-down searches for the officer’s safety are also completely legal.
In the next part, I will offer a way to show credibility and form community relationships.