Re: are you required to exit vehicle if asked by cops
To further address Broker's concern......
We had a situation not so long ago that started in my city with one of my fellow officers and ended up being upheld by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Barnes v. State of Indiana
What occurred was officers were called to a domestic violence run and the suspect resisted officers entering his home to speak to and check the welfare of the adult victim. He resisted violently and was arrested and charged.
The case was appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court. They upheld the conviction and issued an opinion. The gist of the opinion is that you should not violently resist police. Sufficient remedies exist in the current day that if you rights are violated you should handle it in court. The reasoning behind this is a citizen resisting will simply bring an escalation of force and result in the citizen being harmed.
Our lawmakers overturned this with a poorly written statute that give you permission to resist if you don't believe police are there legally..
Of course this brings up a couple serious issues:
1. How do you know if police are there legally if you have not taken the time to do your research and evaluate the evidence. You don't get to sit and depose the witnesses that are cited on the search warrant. You don't get time to go to your computer and research recent case law. Few citizens if any realize that laws change EVERY YEAR.
2. If you do resist, the police are not going to stop and leave. They are going to escalate force until the situation is controlled and the person resisting is controlled. If the suspect escalates to deadly force, there is a very good chance they will be killed.
Who does any of this benefit? Lawyers? Family members who get rich of a settlement?
We have to stop and think about this.
Common law held that you have the right to resist unlawful arrest because there was a very good chance that getting imprisoned was a death sentence. Disease and malnutrition were rampant in prisons of the time. This is not so today. Most criminals have a healthier life in prison than they do in their free world.
Anyone who knows me knows my stand on Constitutional Law. I feel in this day and age we have attempted to replace common sense with laws and it has horribly failed. I feel we really need to go back to a set of laws that enables the layman to understand them and successfully defend himself in court. (that doesn't mean always being found not-guilty).
However, resisting the police is going to go bad for anyone who attempts it. It doesn't work well for protestors who cross the line to criminal conduct and it most certainly doesn't work well for the wife beater who thinks he can hide his crimes with the Bill of Rights.
Until we fix our busted justice system, for your own safety I suggest you comply with lawful orders at the scene (you may refuse requests) and fight it out in court.