Weekend Homework
It just might save you!
While I’m cobbling together this article I’m working on, watch the most important video on the internet — why you should NEVER talk to the police. Yes, even if you’re totally innocent! (If you can’t watch the whole thing, the police officer takes over around 27 minutes in and almost immediately agrees with Professor Duane. That’s a decent cutoff, though the whole video is great.)
If you’re intrigued, he’s got a book about the subject.
This video is so good. All too true, no matter what country you live in.
Does this make sense, trying to cut to the bone of what police actually are as an institution? (No, I'm not for defunding police, I've experienced what it's like in a collapsing nation where the police is just a gang with better gear. Anyone wanting to defund the police, next time you're assaulted or robbed go ask you local crack dealer for help, see if that's better than the coppers.)
The police's function is to make arrests and get material for prosecution.
The prosecutor's job is to get a conviction.
The judge's job is to see to that it all follows procedure and to testify to this.
The defender's job is to get you off as lightly as possible.
Actual guilt and so on is of course a factor somewhere, but not in how the procedures, well, process, if you see what I mean?
Personal tangent:
I remember one professor who talked about a similar point, though this was in relation to political/religious and secret police as opposed to normal "maintain civic order police". He had been looking at various secret police forces around the world, starting with the arcani/areani of roman Britain and working forward from there.
And as he told us, his bewildered students, what he had concluded was that all secret police, and by corollary all police, will work in the same way. Thy will be set up to monitor clandestine thrats to the state. By doing so they build a power base and a parallell structure within the state. Eventually, they will have effectively become the state. Exactly how a specific iteration my look like varies with time and culture, but the job remains the same no matter if it's Cheka, Gestapo or FBI.
And every governement who discovers that they have very little control over their secret police? Will start another one to compete with, check up on and be rival to the older one. Again and again.
We had a friend who was a public defender. His words on how to deal with police: Don't say anything, don't sign anything." Sadly, our friend was killed in an accident many years ago, but his legacy of wise words lives on!