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.