Just because the police aren’t allowed to search you under certain circumstances and maybe you know that now, it’s important that you don’t do anything that’s going to get you into further trouble. What this means is if you believe the police don’t have the right to search you and they do so anyway, you can’t physically interact with them in a way that’s going to be violent towards them. You shouldn’t try to run away or take off if they’re trying to detain you.

Never Give Up Your Rights, But Do It Properly

What you should be doing is simply never giving up your rights, making sure that if they ask you for consent to search something that you’re saying, “No.” If they’re asking you to answer questions, you say, “No, I want a lawyer. I’m not answering any of your questions.” So, you do it in a nice, polite manner. You don’t want to get violent. You don’t want to run away. You don’t want to do anything that’s going to get you into further trouble.

Because what can happen sometimes is when someone knows their rights and believes the police are violating them, and they get into it with the police. They start what they call resisting arrest in the case of they’re being arrested, or you start pushing away or running away or doing something just makes the situation worse.

So, in these circumstances, obviously,  never give up your rights, never agree or consent. The best you can do under these circumstances is to document what you can document. Make sure you’re very clear with your lawyer in the event that you are arrested and something goes wrong and you go to court and you are arrested. It’s really important that you just communicate that with your lawyer, and let your lawyer do his job.

If They Arrest You, We Will Take Care of It

Really, when the police aren’t allowed to do something and they do it anyway, we can fight that — It happens more than you think. We fight that out in court, and that’s where the fight should happen. The fight should not happen there in the street. All you should do, like I said, is simply assert yourself, meaning assert your rights by saying, “No, I do not consent to that.” Be vocal about it, but never get physically combative or confrontational.

If they’re going to arrest you, they’re going to arrest you. Let them take you, and then we can deal with any of the police illegalities for illegal searches or anything like that when we get to court. And that’s one of the first things we look for when we’re reviewing police reports and things like that. Any good criminal defense attorney is going to be looking for that type of thing. Did the police search you illegally? Did the police obtain a statement when they shouldn’t have done so? They didn’t give you Miranda or otherwise violate your rights.

So, if you have any questions about what you should do in the event that you believe your rights have been violated by the police, please feel free to give me a call, shoot me an email, or leave me a comment here. I’d be happy to speak with you about it.