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Encounters With Police - Know Your Rights to Avoid Arrest and Conviction

By Walin & Klarich

Street encounters with police occur with varying degrees of coercion. An encounter with police is best understood by breaking it down into three categories: Where a citizen feels "free to leave" and terminate the encounter at will. Here, there has been no "detention" under the law. This falls outside the scope of Fourth Amendment protections prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures of a person, their home, papers, and effects; Brief "seizures", which triggers Fourth Amendment protections and also allows police more authority if acting with reasonable, specific, and articulable suspicion; Arrests. An arrest must be supported by probable cause. To know and protect your constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment, you must understand the meaning of "probable cause" and being "under arrest," and their relationship to the facts of your case.continue to full post

Full post as published by Southern California Criminal Defense Blog on September 20, 2009 (boomark / email).