Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

Steve Palmer here back with another Lawyer Talk Q and A series where we are taking legal questions. Now, look, let me say something here. This is the great disclaimer. I am not giving anybody legal advice. I mean, obviously, if you want legal advice, you can reach me at my law firm, Palmer Legal Defense, and you can give us a call, and we'll be happy to have a confidential and privileged conversation about your legal problem. Can't say I can solve it for you. I can't say I can always help you, but almost always can at least ship you in or push you in the right direction, make a referral, or, whatever. If this is not the place to get legal advice, but it is a fun place to discuss some of these legal topics that everybody's curious about, and that's what this question is all about.

Steve Palmer [00:00:36]:

This came as a comment. Hey, mister lawyer I guess that is me. I'm mister lawyer. Can I ask if it's legal and acceptable to ask for photo ID from an an Elio, law enforcement officer, at the beginning of a traffic stop? It I gotta admit, it took me a second because what I thought you were asking is whether a cop could ask us or the citizen pulled over for an identification, but I think this is reversed. And this probably has to do there's a YouTube guy out there, I think, that that does this and, ask cops all the time to for their badge number identification and says, good boy or whatever it would be. Maybe that's what this is about. I don't know. But the the the question we'll just take it sort of specifically.

Steve Palmer [00:01:15]:

Can I ask if it's legal and acceptable to ask for a photo ID from a law enforcement officer? Well, yeah. I mean, I think it is both legal and acceptable to ask. The real question is, what if the police officer says no? What do you do then? And so we did a little bit of a dive, and there's some states that require police officers to provide information like their badge number and identification. A lot of states don't. So it sort of all depends. And this got us thinking about a bigger question, which is how does one know that and believe me, I have every it's like the electrical code. I had a buddy who was electrician. He used to say, the electrical code is written in blood, meaning everything in there, while it seems a little bit absurd and ridiculous, is there for a reason because somebody has been hurt by it or there's been an incident as a result of it.

Steve Palmer [00:01:59]:

And to use that analogy here, I have had lots of these scenarios in my almost 30 years of of practice in criminal defense and other areas. And one of them is, I had I've had several people who thought it was cool to go around and pull over citizens, and act like they were police officers. Some did that did it quite deceptively and and almost in stalking behavior. Others, for whatever reason, there there's people out there that do it. They put on fake uniforms, and they do it. So how do you know? I guess you don't always know, and and this is a scary thought. And, you if you think you're pulled over, I guess, by a law enforcement officer who is acting sort of weird or is not normal, then I think it's not only you should ask, hey. What's your badge number? What's your identification? I think if you ask in in a right way, I think most police officers will tell you, if you ask in in you know, if if the if it's belligerent from the outset, in other words, if you're sort of standoffish from the outset, you're gonna get standoffish behavior from the or behavior in return from the police officers.

Steve Palmer [00:03:00]:

Officers. So there's a lot of a lot of stuff going on here. And then personalities come into play where certain police officers may be just power tripping, and, that's that's just how they are, and and they're not gonna be real friendly with you. Others are gonna be totally cool. Others are gonna be sympathetic to the person who's nervous and and not comfortable because of the the setting of a police stop. And some would say they don't care. It's all business. So I I think most of the time, our instincts here are are what should guide you.

Steve Palmer [00:03:30]:

If if you are in that spot, call 911. Do whatever you have to do. It's gonna upset the police officer for sure if they are a legitimate cop, but, you know, do what you have to do to be safe. But understand, a lot of the police and civilian interaction is guided by how each side handles themselves on the side of the road. So when you're pulled over and you're immediately standoffish, then you're probably gonna get some standoffish behavior from the police. Not not always, but there's a lot of great cops who know how to disarm. I don't mean that literally, but sort of calm a situation down. But every now and then, you get somebody having a bad day.

Steve Palmer [00:04:10]:

And that's why I always tell people, look. The police have the badge. The police have the gun. The police have the flashing lights. The police have the cruiser. The police are in charge of that setting. I can't help you right there. I can help you later.

Steve Palmer [00:04:24]:

So if you think that if you're gonna get defiant with the police, you're gonna give them a reason to put the handcuffs on you. Give them the reason, to jerk you out of the car. Give them a reason to ruin your night or day. And the police can order you out of a car after a routine traffic stop. There's there's Supreme Court precedent on it. They can ask you questions. You don't have to answer. And it's a whole different rabbit hole that I'm gonna go into maybe separately about our, as civilians, our duties to respond to police with identifying information.

Steve Palmer [00:04:55]:

That's the old stop and frisk or stop frisk stop identifying frisk, type laws, and we'll get into that. But after a traffic stop, the police absolutely can ask you to identify yourself. Some states even mandate that you carry a license with you or some form of identification with you. So anyway, I hope this answer your question. It's probably a deeper dive than you wanted. If you have questions or anyone else has questions or follow ups to this one, leave it in the comments. Check us out at lawyertalkpodcast.com. You can send a question via email there, and I will get to it.

Steve Palmer [00:05:23]:

The questions are flooding in. Be patient with us, please. I'm doing my best to get the content out there as fast as I can. We appreciate you. Listen, this is Lawyer Talk off the air, on the record, off the air, answering your questions, at least until now.