Girl buys water, spends night in jail

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by Donger

That's terrible. Sorry that you had to endure it. I hope that you pressed charges, or something?

I did press charges, but he died very soon after that so it never went past the initial investigation. I saw his funeral on tv with the heroic montage of images and wanted to scream to everyone what he really was (my complaint was the third on his record, problem with the system for sure,) but then I saw his wife and kids and dropped the complaint because the department meant to take his death benefit from her. I don't know if the other two complaints were dropped or if he essentially screwed his own family over too.

I look at it as a huge learning experience and I frequently help people know how to handle LEO interactions as legally as possible without giving up our rights. I made mistakes in that encounter. The extreme nature of the ordeal is definitely unusual in my case, but the basic transaction is pretty similar to what other people not accustomed to being suspected of something will face. And quite frankly, I totally failed from the first moment, and they count on that. When he first got out of his car and said "give me your bag," I should have replied that "I do not consent to any search of my person or belongings." Then if he took it anyway and searched it, he would have violated my civil rights. Depending on the circumstance, I would have at least had to bear a cursory resemblance to the description of the suspect being sought to qualify for reasonable suspicion, but courts have ruled that not expressly stating your refusal of consent is equivalent to consent so I effectively consented.

I made other mistakes too, answering things I needn't have, questions designed to get me to give up other rights without knowing it, but I'd already screwed up from the first moment. If I had not made the first mistake, we'd maybe never gotten away from the sidewalk to the hood of the car where it all went bad. We just live in a world now where it isn't enough to be innocent. You have to be innocent and savvy at the same time. Now I am.