NEVER EVER EVER Talk to the Cops.

I have a lot of friends who get into trouble. I get into trouble, too. Being as close to 7' as 6', and loud, and an asshole (read: blunt and intentionally tactless) I'm easily visible, and likely to be remembered. Unfortunately- as so many people have told me- I remind everyone of someone.

Enter the police. I remember one go-getter putting me in the back of a hot patrol car, while he tried to be super cop and get me to confess. The only problem: neither of us knew what the fuck I was supposed to be confessing. He had caught me buying smokes- I was 17- but there was an APB (maybe a "warrant", maybe just an "Action Alert", who knows what they really call 'em) for me for questioning.

Fortunately, for me, I liked to read these old hacker journals. Kult of the Dead Kow- still around, in a way, but they dropped the K's- 2400, etc etc. One of the issues I had discussed the case of a hacker. It was written, in a very compelling way, as a first-person account of his arrest, and how that later helped convict him of a lesser crime. The article was intended as advice for how to deal with the cops. Essentially, it said "Don't EVER EVER talk to cops. There is no 'off the record;' they can lie to you. Cops DO NOT have the authority to make a 'deal'."

Turns out, those 'zines I was reading 3-4 years after they had first been published, were right.

(After the cut, 2 videos- each about 22 minutes- the first being a criminal defense attorney and law school professor. The second being a cop, who affirms everything the professor says, and gives the cop's-eye version of why.)



Prof. James Duane of the Regent University School of Law:


Officer George Bruch of the Virginia Beach Police Department