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Those are both irrelevant to the issue at hand: wrongful arrest. Wrongful arrest occurs when either the incorrect person is detained or when a person is detained without merit.

In order for police to detain people they need to place them under arrest, which includes Maranda warnings, or have a signed warrant.



It shields them from civil liability for wrongful arrest, as the courts will apparently go "there's no established law that you can't arrest someone for no good reason on Thursday at 9:53pm on Third Street".

We have friendly prosecutors who "could indict a ham sandwich" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich#Cultural_impact) mysteriously failing to get an indictment to handle the criminal side of it.


An indictment is not an arrest. An indictment comes from a district attorney while an arrest comes from police. The two don't even have to be associated with each other as a person can be indicted before they are arrested, or vise versa.

An indictment is a motion to proceed to trial, and often doesn't even require the availability or presence of the person. An arrest is a detention of a person to police custody.


The point: there aren't gonna be criminal consequences for a bad cop who made a wrongful arrest if it never goes to trial.

QI shields them from civil suits, so they're quite well protected on both fronts.


Even more to the point is that there is a readily identifiable problem. It is better to put energy towards fixing the problem than apply a really shit work around with horrible second and third order sequences only for the point of doing what you couldn't do the correct way.


> In order for police to detain people they need to place them under arrest

That is not true. Police can detain you for some period of time without placing you under arrest. You can be detained for “reasonable suspicion” that you were involved in a crime. There are naturally a lot of arguments about what qualifies as reasonable suspicion.

This is why every “know your rights” organization instructs people to ask, “am I being detained? am I free to leave?” when trying to determine their status or end a police encounter. The link below is just one example.

https://www.halt.org/am-i-being-detained-6-questions-you-sho...


> That is not true. Police can detain you for some period of time without placing you under arrest.

That is a 4th amendment violation. You are free to leave police presence at any time up until they place you under arrest. If you are detained without arrest the remedy is to ask to be arrested. At that point police must arrest you or release you, because any evidence or detention after that point is invalid and invalidate such in the future for the related matter.

Of course an even better answer is to just ask for an attorney, but either way the result is the same.


There are a number of reasons they can detain you without arresting you. For example, you can be detained because you refused to let the police search your car for drugs and they make you wait while they get a warrant. Similar situations can happen in residences, and a traffic ticket is detaining without arrest.

Asking for arrest will not help your case, nor will asking for a lawyer.

You can be hauled to jail without charges as well, since most places have a grace period before they file the charges.


> For example, you can be detained because you refused to let the police search your car for drugs and they make you wait while they get a warrant.

That is not a lawful detainment. Out convenience for both parties police can ask a suspect to wait until a warrant arrives so that the police don't have to arrest them. In other words you can offer to leave, but they are going to arrest you anyways otherwise the detainment is completely voluntary.


No, it's not.

A traffic stop is a temporary detention without an arrest. You are not free to leave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop


The most important word in that entire Wikipedia article is brief. The stop requires probably cause and must not exceed the minimum time necessary to inform dispatch, issue a citation, and perform a basic warrant search on their computer. Signing a citation provides a written promise to appear in court so that police do not have to arrest you and is not an admission of guilt. Refusal to sign is grounds for arrest. Either way police cannot reasonably communicate to you from another moving vehicle, which is the primary basis of such a stop, not a detainment pending other inquiries.


Police absolutely do not have to read your Miranda rights in order to arrest you -- they only need to read your rights if they plan to question you with regards to a criminal investigation and they would like to use your statements as evidence in a court of law.




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