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| Re: Railfan & Railroad editor handcuffed at Broad Channel, suing (1015067) | |||
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Re: Railfan & Railroad editor handcuffed at Broad Channel, suing |
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Posted by Nilet on Sun Dec 19 00:52:09 2010, in response to Re: Railfan & Railroad editor handcuffed at Broad Channel, suing, posted by LuchAAA on Thu Dec 16 17:22:15 2010.  Why not show your ID when the cop asks for it?If you show ID, the cop will take it; at that point, he can detain you indefinitely while still staying in a legal gray area simply because most people would be reluctant to leave without their ID, and any cop who tries to enforce nonexistent bans on photography will probably abuse that loophole for all it's worth. Furthermore, if you show ID, the cop can put you on some list (ranging from submitting your name to a federally-maintained "terror watch" list, like the "no-fly" list, to putting your name on the list of all people who were ever stopped which was maintained by the NYPD until a court ordered them not to. If this happens multiple times, you could end up in a lot of trouble; while no number of false charges can ever add up to a single legitimate charge, most people don't understand this. The so-called "where there's smoke, there's fire" thinking will come into play, and people will assume that if you were stopped multiple times, you must be doing something wrong, even if each individual case was resolved undeniably in your favour. My "reputation" on SubChat is an example of this; even though I was undeniably in the right and the cop was undeniably in the wrong in every individual case, some people have decided to assume that the number of individual cases, taken collectively, prove that I must be doing something wrong somehow. On the other hand, if you don't identify yourself, you will probably be a lot better off. You can walk away at any time without leaving anything valuable behind. The cop can't give you a summons or put you on a list because he doesn't know who you are! If you firmly refuse to show ID, his only choices are to let you go or to arrest you outright and take you down to the station— and while many cops believe (rightfully, I'm afraid) that they can get away with detaining someone on a platform without cause, or even issuing a bullshit summons, they typically realise that a full arrest-and-booking made on no basis whatsoever will almost certainly lead to an expensive lawsuit and possibly even some form of consequences for themselves personally. |
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