Know Your Rights!

Today on this exciting, authoritative, and typo-ridden website, it is Know your Rights day, in which I will explain what police officers can and cannot do to you. It’s amazing how little people know about what the cops can do. For example, I used to think that police officers were actually a species of crocodile that learned how to talk and now worked for the government! As it turns out, sadly they are not.

Another little known fact is that I am not a lawyer. It’s true. I am probably the least qualified person in the world to talk about legal matters. As such, I will be basing my information off of as little actual legal study as possible, instead choosing to shape my discussion around personal run-ins with the law, common knowledge, and mostly things I’ve learned from watching Law and Order.

Police need a reason to shoot you, usually.

A lot of people think that cops are just dudes who run around doing whatever they want. Not true. Cops are dudes who run around doing whatever they can get away with, just like you and me. here’s a basic rundown of things that the police can and cannot do.

The Police can:

• Drive faster than you. Not necessarily because they are better drivers, but because they are allowed to charge you money or throw you in jail if you try to beat them in a race. Police are poor sportsmen.
• Wear shortsleeve shirts and neckties, and commit other fashion crimes with impunity.
• Say cool stuff like, “I don’t give a damn what the commissioner says, I know what needs to be done on these streets!”
• Glare at you disapprovingly, totally harsh your buzz and make you flush your stash.
• Hope that someone gets their message in a bottle.
• Hit you with state-approved sticks.

If the police do any of these things to you, that sucks, but you can’t really do anything about it because you’re probably a dick who had it coming.

The Police cannot:

• Call your grandmother and tell her what kind of trouble you’ve been getting yourself into. Unless they happen to be friends with her.
• Give you an embarrasing haircut.
• Cut in line at the movies.
• Come into your house late at night and mess up the place, unless a judge told them it was ok.
• Give you an F on your term paper
• Spend the rest of their lives looking at the barrel of an Armalite.
• Rape you with state-approved sticks.

If the police do any of these things to you, then you should probably call a lawyer or something, because that shIt’s not cool. If The Police do any of these things to you, that’s awesome.

Cops are allowed to lie.

There is a common misconception that if you ask a cop if they are, in fact, a cop, they have to say yes. People who believe this are actually thinking of George Washington, which is an easy mistake to make. Lying is part of the American dream, and cops can lie to you about lots of stuff if they want to. This rule exists so that undercover cops don’t get shot by drug lords, which is considered by members of the police community to be a good thing.

Cops don’t need a reason to arrest you.

I found this one out the hard way. Did you know that It’s a crime to throw an empty whiskey bottle at an off-duty police officer? I’m still not sure it is — it was empty! — but the cop arrested me anyway.

And even if you’re not minding your own drunken business, cops can usually make up a reason to arrest you. If you disagree, then you’re resisting arrest, which is a real crime.

Then there’s this dude, who has not only learned that the police can arrest you for eating at Taco Bell, but also that they do not crumble under the massive political pressure stirred up by a badly-made webpage. The real lesson that you should take away from his misfortune is that you aren’t allowed to take your fast food with you if you get arrested.

Not all police officers are trying to avenge their murdered partner

Statistically speaking, only 50% of cops have got a personal score to settle with the man that killed their partner. The other half are said murdered partner.

In Conclusion

The police can be your friends, if your friends are the kind of jerks who will totally narc on you for trying to make an honest living by smuggling a few hundred pounds of cocaine over the border. If you don’t want friends like that, print this page out and keep it handy, so that when you have your next inevitable run-in with the law you can give the cop a paper cut and run off into the woods.

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