Arrest-Proof Yourself (31 page)

The only defense is to drop to the ground in a fetal ball position. This will protect you from resisting and battery charges if witnesses and cameras are present, and it will protect your body even if they aren’t. This is an illegal inciter, but it is difficult to prove. Try to get your head under the cruiser. You can take quite a few shots to the ribs, but if the cops crack your coconut, you’re done.

THROW-DOWN GUNS AND DOPE.
Crooked cops can plant guns and dope on you to make a felony bust or to justify having beaten or shot you. This is a high-risk crime for the cops. If a partner squeals, or if the crime-scene guys see something odd about the setup and call for an internal affairs investigation, the cop faces indictment, dismissal from the force, and a long stretch in the penitentiary. If you survive, you can sue the city. Some courts may set aside sovereign immunity and pain-and-suffering damage caps in cases so heinous. You may end up with a pot of money, but you will do some time in jail and the hospital before you get it.

When you are being provoked with inciters, practice Uncle Dale’s Golden Rule #3:

GIVE COPS YOUR NAME AND BASIC INFO, THEN SHUT THE HECK UP!

Of course, some grunts, screams, and a bit of whimpering may be unavoidable. Those flashlights and batons really hurt. If you have to cry, just let those tears flow. I cry, too, when I go to the hospital and the morgue and see what dirty cops have done to my clients.

12

PEEKABOO! PEEKABOO! DON’T LET BIG BAD COPS SEE YOU

I
n this chapter I’m going to discuss how police officers target suspects for questioning and arrest. The more you know about what cops look for, the more you can avoid looking like cop bait. There are three factors.

1. VISIBILITY.
Cops first have to
see
you to stop and arrest you. Remember, cops are visual predators who drive around in cars and score points by making arrests. This is the basis for Uncle Dale’s Golden Rule #1:

» IF COPS CAN
^’
T SEE YOU, THEY CAN
^’
T ARREST YOU.

People always ask, “Is it really that simple?” Yep, it is.

2. THE CROOK PROFILE.
When you look like a crook, strut like a crook, and act like a crook, the police, naturally, will want to know whether you
are
a crook.

3. INCONGRUITY.
Incongruity is a fancy word that means that you look out of place, like you don’t belong somewhere. Remember, cops are not only visual predators, they’re curious predators. When you look out of place on the street, cops will stop you merely out of curiosity.

SEARCH WARRANTS AND PLAIN VIEW

Clueless people smoke and carry dope on the street, where cops can see them, stop them, and search them. Savvy people do their drugs in their homes or fenced backyards, and the cops drive by without stopping
because they can’t see them
. Not only do the cops not
see
them, they can’t
get at
them. Police generally cannot search a house without a warrant. On TV, cops get warrants with a phone call. In real life, it’s never so simple, especially for patrol officers. To get a warrant, a patrol cop first has to go to his superiors, and they have to go to department attorneys who then have to present a written request to a judge. This is a lot of aggravation, and no patrol cop is going to get a warrant unless big-time crime is going on. During my years with the Miami Police Department, I only sought a warrant one time.

Most people have exaggerated ideas about their privacy rights and the need for police to get warrants. I’m not going to go into the legal theory and precedent of search warrants because, in practice, it’s simple. If you’re doing something
in plain view
that makes police suspect a crime, they generally can search without a warrant. If you’re inside and
not
in plain view, a warrant is required. The short version is this: if the cops can see you, they can search you.

Most people are under the mistaken impression that police cannot search them on the street or in a car. Generally, with a few restrictions, they can. As a practical matter, assume that cops can search you any time they can
see
you. Want to be all right? Stay out of sight.

IDS ON THE STREET

Years ago cops could arrest people for walking around without an ID. Fortunately, courts have ruled that statutes and ordinances requiring citizens to carry an ID when they are not driving are unconstitutional.

Nonetheless, I recommend that you carry an ID at all times. The reason is simple. If you’re stopped by police, they will ask for an ID. If you have one, police are less likely to ask follow-up questions. The more questions police ask, the more likely you are to lie, make a mistake, act out, and get arrested. In fact, in another chapter I’m going to recommend that you carry “street creds”—a special form of detailed ID, for police use only, which will address cops’ curiosity about who you are and reduce the number of questions they ask you.

Streets are where cops work and where cops rule. The more time you spend on the cops’ turf, the more likely you are to be stopped and questioned. The more you’re stopped, the more field interrogation (FI) reports about you are entered into criminal justice computers. This occurs even if you’re doing nothing and don’t get arrested. The more FI reports cops have about you, the more thoroughly you’ll be interviewed. The cops are thinking, not illogically, that if other cops are stopping you all the time, you must be up to
something
, right?

To stay free, you have to do the following.

1. Stay out of sight of police.

2. Avoid being stopped and questioned.

3. Avoid having information about you entered into the system—even if the questioning does not result in an arrest.

PROFILING

This word makes people nuts, but it’s really just a formalized process for doing what everyone does all the time naturally, which is to give meaning to perceptions by comparing what we perceive to what we know from experience. Minority activists maintain that police profiling is racial. They’re usually wrong. It’s
behavioral
. Cops know certain behaviors are more likely to result in a valid arrest than others. They talk to bad guys all day, every day. They know what bad guys look like, walk like, talk like, and act like. When they see someone who fits their crook profile, they stop the person and say, “Hey, you. C’mere.” Cops are trained to make assumptions about what they see. Have a look at the diagram, taken from police training materials, on the next page. It shows silhouettes of a man talking on the telephone. You can easily guess what the man is doing, based on his posture. In other words, you match the
perception
of the man on the telephone to a
profile
that you have about the way people behave.

LOOK LIKE A CROOK? HOW DUMB CAN YOU GET?

For cops, the crook profile works most of the time. For example, I’ve arrested numerous guys who were carrying large boxes of stolen goods on the street. Think about this. In contemporary America, legal goods are delivered by truck and brought to the door on a handcart. If you’re walking around with a big box and not pushing it on a handcart, cops will want to stop you and peek inside. Why? You fit the crook profile.

Burglars, for example, sometimes put socks over their hands to avoid leaving fingerprints. Amazingly, they then walk down the street still wearing the socks! Every cop will immediately stop sock-handed strollers. This means if you’re a puppeteer who performs with sock puppets, you might want to roll those bad boys up and hide them when outdoors. Similarly, toting stereos and TVs on the street, and carrying anything in a pillowcase, gets immediate police scrutiny. In Miami I stopped this guy who was wearing a thick wool peacoat in 90-degree heat. Inside the coat was—drum roll—five pounds of reefer. The guy never could figure out how I knew he had the dope. Moral? In the tropics, it is always best to wear short sleeves while committing crimes.

Here’s an example from police training materials I have used myself. These silhouettes of a man talking on a pay phone are generally interpreted as follows: Left figure is a businessman. Middle figure is a guy talking to his wife. Right figure is a man making a suspicious call. Almost without thinking, you make a surmise by comparing the observed behavior to a preconception. In other words, you profile.

Anytime you’re visible on the streets and do something that appears furtive or criminal, the cops are going to check you out. When the police cruiser rolls into view and you suddenly pop something into your mouth (as in drugs), pull your hat down to conceal your face, or suddenly change direction, you’re going to see the blue lights flash. If you have bulges in your clothing that look like concealed weapons, ditto. When you make a metallic clanking that sounds like a weapon—watch out! Here are some other behaviors that fit the crook profile and will get you stopped:

carrying pry bars and hammers without a toolbox or work clothes

running on the street and not wearing running clothes and shoes

being under 16 and on the streets during school hours