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Videotaping or photographing police in public places is usually legal, so long as you don't interfere with their activities. Nonetheless, doing so will often get you arrested...
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In addition to compromising your safety and the safety of others, driving drunk is one of the stupidest things you can do, and one of the easiest ways to create overwhelming legal problems for yourself. DUI laws vary from state to state, and they have become increasingly harsh over the years...
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Unfortunately, police may sometimes search you even if you refuse consent. If they find anything illegal, you'll have to get a lawyer and fight it out in court, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the search will hold up...
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College students suffer from an unfortunate lack of privacy rights in many situations. The university owns the dorm, so school officials can often search rooms at their own discretion. College students still have 4th Amendment rights that apply in other situations...
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Your rights do not disappear if the officer threatens to call in the dogs, so don't let this all-too-common tactic intimidate you into consenting to a search. You have several options...
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Yes. Minors generally have the same rights as adults. For example, minors can refuse searches and decline to answer questions without an attorney present. Nevertheless, minors face unique challenges when attempting to exercise these rights...
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During a legitimate traffic stop, police may order the driver and any passengers out of the vehicle. This rule is intended to protect officers' safety, but it's often used for investigatory purposes...
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As a general rule, searches conducted without a valid search warrant signed by a judge violate the Fourth Amendment, but like most rules of law, there are a number of explicit exceptions. In fact, most searches occur without warrants because police take advantage of these exceptions to the Fourth Amendment...
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Traffic stops typically occur as a result of suspected moving violations committed by the driver of the vehicle. Passengers cannot be held responsible for the driver's conduct and are generally free to leave, unless police become suspicious of them during the course of the stop...
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No. We believe that most police officers are good, hardworking people who are doing a tough job. We need police to safeguard the life, liberty, and property of all people. To do this best, police officers should...
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No. The Supreme Court has never ruled that police must present the warrant when performing a search. The purpose of the warrant is to...
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The sad fact is that most people believe that they are under some kind of obligation to acquiesce when an officer contacts them and asks permission to search them or their belongings. The truth is exactly the opposite...
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Unfortunately, many people get fooled by some version of this commonly used police officer's line: "Everything will be easier if you just cooperate". That's true to some extent -- it will make things much easier for the police officer who's trying to arrest you! -- but when it comes to you consenting to searches and answering incriminating questions, it couldn't be further from the truth...
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Yes. Police can, will, and often do lie; especially if it helps them make arrests. The rules regarding entrapment usually tip in favor of law-enforcement, so police won't hesitate to trick you into incriminating yourself or others...
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No. We teach people that they have rights, and that these rights are secured by the principal documents that guarantee our civil liberties -- the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. An informed individual who invokes his constitutional protections is doing exactly what our nation's founders intended. They created these documents to...
Know My Rights was born of a reaction to three police officers who willfully overstepped their bounds in a failed attempt to create a situation in which they could fabricate some justification to effect an arrest. The officers, while trespassing in a private residence in which they were never given permission nor had any cause to enter, were demanding that an invited guest, present with the consent of the property owners, leave the premises. He refused, and during their exchange of words, the officers were incessantly trying to set traps in which a reasonable person, not understanding the motivations behind the precise manner in which the officers phrased their statements, might say or do something that the officers could exploit as cause to arrest him. However, the education he received in law school allowed this individual to see through the officers' traps, and he knew how to avoid them while properly asserting his legal rights.
Ultimately, the situation resolved itself in his favor, and one of the police officers was terminated for his actions, but he never lost sight of how easily that encounter could have gone the other way. He was thankful that those police officers decided to pick a fight with him that night, rather than one of half-a-dozen other people who were in the house. People who would not have so easily identified and avoided the police officers' traps. People who, more likely than not, would have fallen victim to these officers' abuses.
The police officers' actions were clearly not isolated to this incident, and he was unwilling to stand idly by and merely hope that the next person these officers targeted possessed the same ability to avoid their traps. He questioned why he should be so fortunate as to escape such injustice because of having gone to law school, whereas people who do not have the benefit of a law school education should have their futures jeopardized solely for the personal enjoyment of a few abusive police officers.
And so, Know My Rights was born -- formed to educate people about the basic legal principles and procedures that they, in the course of their daily lives, may at some point be faced with. By empowering more people with the knowledge and means to assert their rights properly, those looking to circumvent your rights will become increasingly unsuccessful in doing so, and will have to face the consequences of their failed attempts. Society needs to change, and education is the best and most effective means to that end.
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The 4th Amendment Podcast
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