Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

All right, Steve Palmer here, Lawyer talk off the record, on the air, question and answer style. If you've got a question, by the way, check us out LawyerTalkPodcast.com you can shoot it there. That's what Andy did today. Andy asked, do I have to show police my ID if they randomly ask me in public? Hmm. This is a great question. Now, there's some loaded language in here, so. But we'll get to it. I'll break it down immediately.

Steve Palmer [00:00:22]:

This made me think of. I think I did an episode a long time ago on Rudy Giuliani when he tried to clean up New York. And it goes back to a guy named William Bratton, who was a cop, sort of a police expert, I guess, back in the day. And Bratton came in and they implemented something called the broken window theory of policing, where the idea would be, if there's a broken window, fix it. Because if you don't fix it, then somebody will break the window next to it and everything just sort of degrades. So address the little things and build on that. And one of the things Giuliani did, I believe, and I'm sort of working from memory here, but one of the things I think Giuliani did was sort of a stop, frisk and identify where he was. Police were walking up to random people and stopping and frisking them and identifying them.

Steve Palmer [00:01:05]:

That led to a series of cases out of the U.S. supreme Court. And I think a lot of that was declared unconstitutional. And I'm not going to go through all that. Some states still, in fact, have stop and identify laws. And I googled this. You could do it too, I suppose. But US states of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, maybe a few others.

Steve Palmer [00:01:28]:

It says, let's see, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Kansas City. Only ironically, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio. Here in Ohio, the great state Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Wisconsin authorizing police to lawfully order people whom they reasonably suspect of committing a crime to, to state their name. Now, this is why I said there's some loaded language in Andy's question because Andy said, can they. Can the police randomly do it? And the answer is no. The U.S. supreme Court rather has addressed this and they addressed it in a case called. Let me pull it up for you.

Steve Palmer [00:02:12]:

Hi bil h I I b e l versus the 6th Judicial District Court. This is 2004. For those geeks out there that care, it'd be 542 US 177 in this case. Larry Hybel was stopped by the Nevada by a Nevada deputy who was investigating a reported assault. Deputy repeated requested for Hybel's id. Hybel refused. Say I'm done anything wrong, I'm not giving it to you. He was also ultimately arrested and charged under Nevada's stop and identify statute, which is exactly what we just talked about on the those states have.

Steve Palmer [00:02:45]:

And basically in Ohio you'd be charged with obstruction or failure to comply with a police order or something along those lines. The trick here though is this. There has to be something called reasonable suspicion. The police have to think, they have to have some reason to think that there's criminal activity afoot. For those who have followed my series or various series, I do. One of the things I've talked about is a case called Terry vs Ohio which talks about a limited pat down search. And the idea here is the more Ltd. The Fourth Amendment intrusion or the search, the less the police need to justify it.

Steve Palmer [00:03:15]:

But it never really gets to zero. If they're going to stop, ask you to identify yourself, frisk you or do anything else, they have to have something called reasonable suspicion, meaning they have to know or have a good reason to think that there is some sort of criminal activity afoot. They can't just do it randomly, which is the catch or the word term of art rather that Andy baked into his question. So I think the answer to Andy's question is no. Now if the police do have some sort of reasonable suspicion, if they do have some reason to think, say they watched John Doe on the corner and Jane Doe comes up and it looks to be like they're changing. John Doe pulls something out of his pocket, takes a little bit of money from Jane, sticks it in his pocket and hands her a baggie. Well, I mean, do the police know for sure that's a dope transaction? Probably not, but it's enough reasonable suspicion generally speaking for them or for the police rather to go check it out, investigate and, and have somebody stop and identify themselves that might be reasonable suspicion. There's another situation that came up in the US Supreme Court and this came up, I think in a case called Michigan vs Bryant.

Steve Palmer [00:04:19]:

And this was a situation where say there's a robbery somewhere and there's a bunch of people present and the police come in and they start asking for IDs. The courts have carved out an emergency exception to this. Now I hate these kind of exceptions because whenever you hear the word emergency it's sort of subjective and you can virtually declare everything emergencies. Just go back and check the COVID litigation. But anyway, there is presumably an emergency exception where the police are giving chase to somebody or looking for somebody, or identifying suspects in a crime that had just happened and they might get a pass for a stop and identify type of thing there. Doesn't necessarily apply to all the scenarios, but generally speaking, the answer is no. But police can't come up and just start asking for IDs randomly from people on the street. That would be a lot like the authoritarian ss, Nazi Germany troops.

Steve Palmer [00:05:12]:

We don't like that here in the United States. So protect your constitutional rights. Great question. If you have a question, if you want me to answer it or cover a topic even, then I'll be happy to do it. LawyerTalkPodcast.com, leave a question in the socials, leave it at the question interface on the website, off the record, on the air, till next time.