excelsior

Here are some more “ambiguous” phrases which courts have found DO NOT invoke your right to a lawyer:

“Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first.”

“I might like a lawyer.”

“I think I should have a lawyer present for this.”

“Could I speak to my lawyer first?”

“How long until my lawyer gets here?”

And perhaps most egregiously – “Get me a lawyer, dawg – ‘cause this is not what’s up.”

Here are the magic phrases which you need to know if you want to invoke your Miranda rights:

1) “Am I free to leave?”

It’s worth asking this even if the answer is obvious. Even if the officer does not let you leave, by forcing them to admit that you are not free to leave, you are creating a record which your attorney can use to prove that you were in custody. Miranda rights only apply if the interrogation is custodial, meaning that police officers will frequently claim that their suspects were “not in custody” to get around their Miranda rights.

2) “I am invoking my right to remain silent.”

Simply staying silent will not invoke your right to remain silent. As absurd as this is, you must explicitly say that you are invoking your right to remain silent in order to invoke that right.

3) “I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

As stated above, you must be not only clear and unambiguous, but clear and legally unambiguous. Don’t get cute. Don’t get sassy. And on the flip side, don’t get intimidated and use verbal ticks to minimize your request. Say the line with those words exactly – say it clearly, and say it once, and then say nothing else.

Because even after you’ve done all this, the police can still try to get you to talk. They’re not supposed to interrogate you, but they’re allowed to make casual conversation, and if that conversation just happens to circle back around to the thing they wanted to question you about, well, that’s really your fault for talking after you said you wouldn’t, isn’t it? Can’t possibly fault the poor officers when you initiated – if you really wanted to have your rights respected, you wouldn’t have talked to them in the first place.

The police know this, and they will mercilessly exploit this loophole. So, once you’ve successfully invoked your Miranda rights, any and all conversation you have with police officers will put those rights back into jeopardy. 

Putting it all together:

Ask: “Am I free to leave?”

If they say no, say: “I am invoking my right to remain silent and I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

And then shut up and do not say a single thing to them for any reason whatsoever until you have actually spoken to an attorney. Yes, even if it takes hours. Yes, even if they start talking to you about something else.

Finally, a very important disclaimer:

****** !!!!!!! IMPORTANT !!!!!!! ******

Theres a Serial Killer on the Loose named Ed Buck: A  Democratic Donor Who’s Targeting Young Gay Black Men

The second gay black man to be found dead inside a Democrat donor, Ed Buck, house in 18 months described him as the ’f***ing devil’ before his death, it has emerged.

Timothy Dean, who died of an apparent “overdose” at the West Hollywood home of Ed Buck in January, had been warning friends for months that he was bad news. DeMarco Majors, who had known Dean for 20 years, claimed to have seen strings of text messages from Buck to Dean trying to get him to go over to his house, which Dean had been ignoring.

“Don’t you go over there,“ Majors recalls 55-year-old Dean telling him in November last year. “I’m not going over there either. Shit, I’m not trying to end up dead.”

Even though Dean had known Ed Buck for years, it wasn’t until 2017 after 26-year-old Gemmel Moore was found dead at Buck’s home that Harris said Dean became afraid of Buck and “didn’t want nothing to do with [him]”

In text conversations with multiple friends in which they discussed Moore’s death, Dean described Buck as a “horrible, horrible man” and “the f***ing devil”

In the end, no charges were filed against Buck after Moore’s death, though the investigation has been reopened since Dean died.

Source / Source / Source

I have a family friend who worked at our local Salvation Army headquarters as a a secretary. This particular office took all the Christmas donations for children in need, put them in a warehouse, and on a designated day the staff and their friends picked through them all, taking whatever they wanted. She saw people hauling away bikes donated for specific families. Some local children had hundreds of dollars of gifts donated in their name, and on Christmas they received three cheap things, items likely not even from the person who sponsored them.

My friend quit, and I’ve not given them a dime of my money since then.

I’m a wildfire and disaster logistics specialist.

I deal with a lot of agencies who provide disaster relief.

I used to say the Salvation Army’s disaster services were the one (literally the ONE) good thing they did.

They would come in, set up a canteen trailer, make and pass out hot coffee and donated food in a disaster, usually being one of the first agencies to get there and the last to leave.

Then I found out.

Every time they did this, regardless of if they were actually invited or deployed by the agency in charge (usually FEMA, sometimes others) they would SELF-DEPLOY. Meanjng they would just show up. Ok. That’s not TOO bad, sometimes agencies have to take initiative and get there before the red tape is sorted out. BUT. They, after they left at the end of the incident, they would send FEMA or the host agency a BILL. They used one or two paid employees (usually the driver of the truck and a supervisor); and many VOLUNTEERS, but they would bill for EVERYONE’s Labor at standard federal rates. They would bill for the food they distributed even though it was all donated by another agency or private parties. They would bill for the coffee they made and the supplies. Except they would use electricity from the shelter location, water from donations or from the shelter, and in many cases, they would get the coffee and industrial filters DONATED, but bill for them at retail prices.

Intense background and criminal background checks and anything violent automatically disqualifies you.

Make getting a gun/gun permit more like getting a driver’s license:

permit to learn

includes an exam with 18 or more questions on the policies, laws, and etc of guns and gun ownership

if you get more than 8 questions incorrect you must retake it.

30 hours of practical experience at a gun range with a licensed teacher

Must take a 5 hour class on the dangers of guns and how to use them safely which will then yield you a certificate that grants you to take the practical exam and lasts for one year. If you don’t gain the license within the allotted year you must retake the class.

A practical exam with a licensed instructor who will grade you on various skills. If you pass you may be granted a permit on the weapon of your choice, the exams may differ on the type of firearm you want.

Follow the Japanese model where you must have two gun safes in different areas of the house, one to store the gun and one to store the bullets and you must provide the police with information on where those safes are.

No concealed carry and only handguns may be allowed to be out in public.

If transporting a weapon, it must be in the trunk of the vehicle, in a bag or some other case, safety on and unloaded and may not leave the vehicle until you are at the destination.

If you’re a hunter or some other gun hobbyist that requires a functional weapon other than a handgun then the gun must stay on the premises, whether that is a gun range or the Fish and Wildlife facility.

If you live in a rural area where police (and people, for that matter) are few and far between, something akin to a deer hunting rifle should provide plenty of protection from predators and poachers, you still have to follow the aforementioned steps.

It was simple, effective, and meant that the only guns in civilian hands were on farms a fuckmillion miles away from the cities and were actually being used for constructive purposes, not just collecting dust in a closet, waiting for some curious five year old to find them and blow their own heads off.

The other day a rifle was discharged in my street.  It was used by a volunteer wildlife rescue worker to euthanise a badly injured kangaroo.  He kept it in a locked case in his truck until he determined there was no way to save the animal.  He retrieved it, fired it once, returned it to its case and then phoned the local police department to let them know that he had discharged a firearm and why he’d done so, because it’s a semi-rural area and most people are like me.  It was the first time, in my 20+ years of living in Australia, that I’ve ever seen a gun fired for anything other than practice.