What I'm about to write on is a topic of personal interest to me, which is why it's likely to be delivered with some emotions along the way. However, I do think the potential for authority abuse when it comes to cops is so enormous that being academic about it wouldn't inspire you, my dear reader, to think about it or take any action but instead just play dead when dealing with cops.
Playing dead is a survival tactic used against a predator or a set of predators who are overwhelmingly more powerful than the prey. They are faster, stronger, smarter and tougher than the prey, who can't outrun, fight back, outsmart or outpace them, so the only way to survive is to – play dead. The idea is that predators are attracted to movement and chase what's running away from them, so playing dead should make the predators not notice the prey, lose interest and move along.
Playing dead may work in cases where the prey is relatively short-lived and avoiding predators by playing dead substantially extends the prey's life but it's a horrible, horrible survival tactic when used by and on humans, who can live up to a century. The self-induced paralysis, which is what playing dead is, shouldn't constitute a significant portion of your life but it ends up doing so when you try to use it with cops.
Playing dead is a fear-based response and fear is always founded not on what we know, but what we don't know. In the case of cops, the fear that leads to playing dead and other fear-based responses stems from the unawareness of what they're meant to do and what they're trying to do. My goal is to elucidate on both through this article and thus dispel at least some of that fear and paralysis.
The gist of it is that cops are meant to maintain the peace and assist citizens but end up trying to find crimes where there are none to self-aggrandize and receive an ego boost. Ultimately, cops cause crimes to justify their behavior and existence. I believe this paradoxical counter-productive outcome is intrinsic to any system that wields any amount of power. The solution is very simple – measured feedback that serves as a correction and diminution of the amount of unchecked power in the system.
What's interesting is that cops know about fear-based responses and so on and they intentionally stimulate them to provoke a response that they then use to justify aggression and escalation of force. By putting you in a stressful situation, the cops interpret your natural stress response as a proof of guilt that is then used to put you in even more stressful situations to exact even more proofs of guilt.
If you've ever seen footage of 4-5 cops tackling some poor woman while shouting "stop resisting", know that it's an instinctive response of the body to tense up, which cops see as "resisting arrest", hence they shout "stop resisting" so they can later claim the woman resisted, justifying their escalated response. It's a wicked, vile and comprehensively disturbed system.
However, our mind is so powerful that knowing their procedure effectively neuters it; you will still feel stress but it won't evoke a fear-based response or provide any "proofs" of guilt. I also plan to offer an alternative response based on higher mental faculties, a response that I'm sure will sting a little bit.
Let's talk about the truth. We all have a perspective that's based off of our unique measurements and feelings. Maturing as an adult involves realizing that our perspective isn't the only valid one because feelings can take over our thinking and guide us whichever way before we've done the measurements. The truth we think is forever indisputable may be only a transient, emotionally colored fragment of an overarching set of measurements that line up in an array of perspectives, which we can call the Grand Truth (Stefan Molyneux, eat your definitions' heart out).
A great example of trying to piece together unique measurements to offset our feelings and reach the Grand Truth is science. Everything that's inherent to the scientific model of observation, gathering the facts and reaching the truth without emotional obstructions is actually the ideal quality that fosters a realistic way of thinking.
We'll never discover the Grand Truth, which would be all perspectives of all people in a single mind; what we consider the truth may be only our own feelings that we took as facts. All right then, so what do we have left? Facts. They are emotionally neutral measurements and observations made using a widely held standard that's survived the ages. Facts that support a truth are called "proof".
If we start out with a truth we'd like to see happen, our brain will yearn to find proof for it, neglecting to account for or outright ignoring any other facts. By constantly trying to remain emotionally neutral, we focus on gathering the facts, which lead us to a truth that is in alignment to the Grand Truth. A person that holds a truth dear will cling to it and try to cherry-pick from the pool of facts to gather proof for it. I know I've gotten too philosophical in this text that's meant to talk about cops, but trust me, it's for a good reason. What I'm trying to say is that facts should come first, not our own truth we're trying to support by cherry-picking from the pool of facts around us.
Cops aren't interested in finding the Grand Truth or even the facts, other than the proof they can cherry-pick to establish a crime by supporting their own truth. The Grand Truth is beyond the mental capability of any one person and the facts are tedious to gather and relay with precision; what cops want is the bare minimum of facts that supports their truth, their personal perspective they've already decided is the only valid one, which is to pin a crime on someone, anyone who comes their way and move on to the next prey after having received their ego boost for being excellent predators and solving "the crime".
You can even be told by the cops that "they just want the truth" but without them defining what they mean by that, you are likely to fall into a trap of offering your own truth, from which the cops will cherry-pick facts to serve as proof for their truth that is then presented as the Grand Truth. Keep in mind what I said about the facts – they are tedious to gather and relay with precision. Proving something that we take for granted is so extraordinarily difficult that it boggles the mind and makes life come to a standstill.
We can take a very simple statement, one you take for granted and think to be the truth, which is, "I am alive", and see how it holds up under scrutiny. You may think you're alive but guess what – you can't actually prove it. You don't have a way to objectively measure if you're alive; you might as well be a zombie. I believe the fascination with zombies in the modern-day culture is due to this realization that people can be moving and acting but be dead and how profoundly scary the notion is, which is why we always presume ourselves and people around us to be alive. All right, so how would one prove he is alive?
Proving someone is alive would involve checking the pulse, the breathing and the brainwaves. But hold on, can anyone check those three? Of course not, we need medical professionals who are sound in mind and with extensive experience to do the check for signs of life. Those are the most basic standards of checking for signs of life but we could go a bit further and say, "What about checking for signs of life without involving subjective measurements?" Now we have to include clunky, expensive machines too. Oh, and they have to be calibrated and have a qualified person running them.
By simply questioning if and when the machines were calibrated and if a qualified technician was running the tests, we can already cast into doubt if the person is even alive or a zombie. Keep in mind, this is the most essential truth, one we take for granted and base our lives on but we don't have the means to prove any of the underlying facts, we just accept this as truth at face value. My point is that it's possible to cast doubt on anything, including whether we exist or not but we commonly don't do it because it would bring life to a standstill and disgrace us.
A couple decades back, there was a movement known as "Free Men on the Land" or "Sovereign Movement" that tried questioning the most essential facts when interacting with the cops, which led to them being roundly ridiculed since the simplification of concepts that entailed involved these Freemen and Sovereigns saying things such as, "I accept your parking ticket at face value" and "I consent to being arrested at a fee of $2,000 per hour".
While I do think we should question these widely accepted truths that are taken at face value, we shouldn't be doing it in a way that disgraces us or brings us into ill repute. Indeed, these Freemen and Sovereigns would eventually be treated like felons by the cops by merely identifying or associating themselves with Freemen and Sovereigns.
At its core, the Freemen and Sovereign movements were antagonistic, aiming to provoke cops into an argument, which plays nicely into the cops' strategy of causing stress and distress to provoke a response that they then use to justify aggression and escalation of force. It doesn't matter if you accept something for value if cops handcuff, tase and pepper spray you while laughing in front of your screaming wife, who then gets the same treatment. The optimal strategy for you is to shut up, obey and observe.
This might seem like another fear-based response but it's not that at all. By shutting up, you deny the cops the information from which they can cherry-pick facts to suit their truth and frame you with a crime. By obeying, you deny the cops the opportunity to escalate and use aggression. Finally, by observing you gather facts yourself which can be used to write up a formal complaint later on. Oh, you'll see how glorious it is to complain.
If you try exposing the cop right then and there, you will be revealing your hand too quickly and forcing the cop to double down, which I noted elsewhere is a survival strategy born out of panic. Let the cop make as many mistakes as possible and then collate all the evidence into your complaint.
The key thing about interacting with cops is to realize they feed off of fear, stress, anxiety and anger. When dealing with cops, your mind should be clear of all emotions and your body should be in a neutral state of relaxation, as if you're chilling in a hammock. Keep your arms stretched out, stand or sit up straight and don't speak unless spoken to. Answer questions with 2-3 words max.
Take a moment before answering to think about the question or just don't answer at all; I carry a water bottle and was in one interaction with the cops taking a gulp of water before every one-word answer. Let them wait for it a bit.
Internet armchair lawyers might advise you to never speak to cops, no matter what, but in some jurisdictions your silence can be held against you as proof of guilt. The entire police/court system is designed to maximize the number of people arrested and harangued for whatever reason, with the rules against you every step of the way.
Does this make you angry? Are you feeling anxious or tense? You shouldn't be, because the solution is so glorious that you'll cry tears of relief when you hear it. There is such a solution, a remedy to this power imbalance between the citizens and the cops, that it makes Freemen and Sovereigns with their "A4V" statements look like raving lunatics. Ready for it?
I've been teasing you long enough, so it's time to give you the money shot. In essence, when you're faced with cops, they are faster, stronger, smarter and tougher than you and there's always backup for them, allowing them to swarm and overwhelm you. Everything you say can and will be used against you. Resistance is futile but complaining in writing isn't.
In fact, there's no tool at your disposal that can protect you except – a written complaint. Whoever instituted this vessel of a formal complaint should be awarded all the awards there are, because it's the single most powerful tool for feedback against government institutions that also doesn't bring you into ill repute.
By shutting up, obeying and observing, you play the part of a paralyzed prey who hopes all of it blows over, which makes the cops gloat but minimizes the excuses they have to pester you, while also giving you a chance to gather enough facts to file a formal complaint that bypasses the cops and their entire power structure, going straight to the top and shaming them to the bone.
You won't be hurting any body but you will be crushing the pride and the sense of righteousness of cops throughout the structure, which is what actually powers their abuse of authority. My goal with writing complaints against cops was never to have them suffer, but to have them shamed by their superiors.
The formal complaint you write will contain:
Your wording will be terse and your tone neutral. Cut out all emotions and sappy words except when talking about your feelings. After your interaction with the cops, proceed to writing the complaint immediately, while the facts are still fresh in your mind. Refine the writing and make it factual, except 1-2 sentences at the very end. I'll provide an example later on in the text.
A formal complaint, as structured above, has the power of a nuclear bomb thrown right inside the police department and delivered to the captain's lap. It detonates and leaves no survivors, with radioactive fallout lingering for months and years afterwards to poison careers.
Cops fear and loathe formal complaints but against them – they are truly powerless and helpless. No gun, taser or baton is effective against a formal complaint; it pierces through an infinite amount of kevlar vests and riot shields. In fact, it's the only weapon that can make the cops feel the way regular citizenry feels near them: disarmed and fraught with fear.
Any attempt by the cops to retaliate against the citizen who wrote a complaint becomes grounds for more complaints. Any wrong word or excessive emotion by the cops becomes more complaint fodder for the citizen who shuts up, obeys and observes. This attracts the attention of other citizens, who start exercising their unimpugnable right. Just like cops provoke stress, anger and fear to feed off them and become stronger, so too can citizens file formal complaints to turn the tables and entice cops to overreact, filing one complaint after another in an endless, merciless flurry of stings delivered with a simple pen.
If you want justice, you're never going to get it through courts, but if you want fairness and equality, your only recourse is a formal complaint, made using the strongest weapon you have—your mind wielding a pen against a sheet of paper. A single sheet of paper exerts a small amount of pressure on the corrupted individuals hiding behind the uniform; a stack of sheets of paper exerts significant pressure that pulverizes all those who just want to abuse their authority in the institutions. In this way, only the ones worthy of wearing the uniform can actually get access to it and it finally starts meaning something. All you have to do is exercise your unimpugnable right.
How fair is it to file formal complaints against cops who simply stopped and rummaged through your vehicle while planting drugs on you? It seems like a nuclear option to punish these hard-working men who are simply trying to catch the bad guys and happen to plant drugs on hundreds of motorists. I was actually scolded a few times by people who were shocked to learn I was complaining against cops who stopped and frisked me for no reason. How justified is it to file formal complaints against cops?
Those who wield authority need to be held accountable in proportion with their authority. I have no authority to stop people or cars, frisk, rummage through vehicles and belongings, tase, pepper spray, beat, handcuff, shoot or interrogate anyone. Yet, I am the one being scrutinized and surveilled every step of the way without any cause or facts against me. Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion is that cops need to have at least 200 times more scrutiny levied against them.
Their every word, action and mood need to be impeccable, just like they expect the citizens to be, or they aren't worthy of wearing the uniform. Their own colleagues can't hold them accountable because they'll get betrayed, abandoned or accidentally shot when they least expect it, just like happened to Serpico. It's down to us, citizens, to perform our civic duty and watch the watchmen, filing complaints every step of the way so that the weeds can be nipped in the bud.
In September 2018, a certain Florida cop named Zachary Wester was caught planting drugs on unsuspecting motorists; it took years before he was caught. In an article titled "119 cases dropped involving fired Jackson County Deputy Zachary Wester", the Tallahassee Democrat relates how he used a sleight of hand to plant drugs in vehicles to bump up his arrest quota, even as his own bodycam filmed it. What you're about to read shows the absolute height of arrogance that ruined hundreds of lives and besmirched the Florida police uniform for decades to come.
People who Zachary planted drugs on didn't know how to refute the accusations and most commonly plead guilty, at times losing custody of kids, having their spouse divorce them or losing a job. Since these news websites tend to prune pages, I'll quote a massive excerpt from a related September 2018 article titled "'RUINED LIVES': As drug-planting probe intensifies, people charged share their stories" here, so carefully read and try to discover how Zachary was stopped:
On their way to a wedding, Jeffrey Helms and his girlfriend April Middleton watched from rear view mirrors as the deputy turned around and accelerated behind them with lights flashing.
When the deputy got out of his car, Middleton recognized him instantly from her days waiting tables in Marianna. It was Zachary Wester, a 26-year-old Jackson County deputy who happened to come from a prominent law enforcement family.
Middleton and Helms weren’t too worried. They’d had run-ins with the law over drugs before, but they knew they didn’t have anything on them at the time. There were scales in the car, but nothing more, she said.
They pulled over in someone’s driveway. Wester ordered them to get out of the car and onto the ground. It was the afternoon of Sept. 23, 2017. A small crowd of onlookers began to gather and gawk.
Wester said he smelled marijuana, which gave him probable cause to search the car without consent. After rifling around in the front and back seats, he went to his own vehicle for a few moments before coming back to search their car again.
Not long after that, he held up a clear film canister he claimed he found under the driver’s seat.
“He said, ‘Oh, what do we have here? You all need to be a little more careful,’ ” Middleton said. “And I said, ‘Yeah, of who pulls us over. At this point I looked at (Helms) and he looked at me. And he was like, ‘That’s not ours.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I know. Believe me, I know.’ ”
The crystal substance from the baggie tested positive for methamphetamine and weighed more than 3 grams. Wester handcuffed Middleton and Helms and put them both in the back of his patrol car.
“I said, ‘This is crazy,’ ” Middleton recalled. “This is just bull----. And (Helms) said, ‘I’m about to go to prison.’ ”
After complaints about Wester surfaced in courthouse circles, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement opened an investigation Aug. 1. The probe is ongoing, and no charges have been filed. Prosecutors have said they're waiting for a final report from FDLE.
The allegations are that Wester was pulling over drivers — some with records, many unable to afford their own lawyers — and planting drugs in their cars before hauling them to jail. A number of the encounters were captured on Wester’s own body camera, but it’s unclear how many.
How was Zachary Wester stopped? Can you see it? Complaints. It's only when people complained that there was sufficient reason to start dismissing cases, and when that happened, judges and prosecutors just wanted to get it over with, release people and sweep it under the rug to save face and cut the embarrassment short. Note how innocence was no protection against stopping, arrest, prosecution and judgment.
The entire point of complaining is to do it before drugs are planted on you to get the feeling for the procedure and break the anxiety of thinking you are weak if you complain. You want to have judges, prosecutors and cops painfully aware that they are the ones who will be stung by complaints if they don't uphold the standards expected of people who wield their authority. As for Zachary, the body count is still rising.
A 2019 article titled "Florida Cop Busted For Planting Drugs on Drivers, Faces 100 Years In Prison" by BearingArms.com states that Zachary faces 100 years in prison and the cases involving him are still being dismissed. Too little, too late, but that's how the court system works – suffer through the injustice and we'll release you when we get too embarrassed to keep you locked up. The only reason why Zachary is being prosecuted to such a degree is because he endangered the cushy careers of judges and prosecutors, not because of planting drugs on people.
What Zachary Wester did was despicable and atrocious and yet it took years before he was caught. Why did people just accept the planted drugs as their own? Because they believed there's nothing they can do, that the cop is the ruler of heaven and earth and can twist the truth any which way he pleases. That might be true but the cop can't bend the facts, especially not those established in a formal complaint. Had any one of those victims complained sooner, dozens of others would have been spared the humiliation of being branded a drug user.
Why did judges and prosecutors not question the efficiency with which he was working? Though cops, prosecutors and judges are meant to constantly probe the cases they're presented with, it's a public secret that they're actually in bed with one another, sometimes literally, where a different kind of probing goes on. I was actually told about this by a lawyer girl I once met, from which I concluded that lawyers are keenly aware of the supreme authority of cops and yield to them to avoid being put through the grinder. Ultimately it's the citizens that get shafted by this secretive arrangement that is a conflict of interest, a breach of professional ethics and grounds for dismissal of any case the two lovebirds worked on together. Once you get attuned to what's going on in courts, you'll never again want to watch reality shows—what's happening in real life is much more interesting.
Judges and prosecutors are aware of the poisonous potential of complaints as they grind through defendants to gain enough reputation to apply to a cushier job with better pay, meaning they won't be deterred by such trifles as the facts but will by complaints. One complaint is like a single hornet that can be swatted away, but from 50,000 hornets there's no defense except to flee, cower and do nothing to anger them further. That's what citizens should act and think like, that their complaint is a stinger that on its own does nothing but a mere dozen is already a substantial impediment to further abuse.
Had 12 of Zachary's victims filed a formal complaint against Zachary immediately upon being framed, the formal investigation would have been opened much sooner, with the prosecutors and the judges apprised of Zachary's intent to falsely accuse people of hauling drugs, not wanting to touch any cases that have to do with him and releasing people to cut the embarrassment short and cover up other irregularities. Had Zachary's victims shut up, obeyed and observed what he was doing, they would be able to report the facts in order to hold Zachary to a higher standard of behavior. Had they kept writing complaints about the prosecutors and judges responsible, rest assured they too would start sweating on their high horses; they would be complicit in Zachary's crime.
We have a civic duty to report all irregularities when it comes to public servants and the higher standard of behavior they are held to. This civic duty doesn't have to be done by anyone; you actually won't get any recognition or reward for doing it and might even end up hurting for it. Yet, the civic duty must be done or everyone suffers.
The only way to prevent suffering is to hold ourselves and others around us to a high standard of behavior that's been distilled and passed down through generations, with some of it described by Latin phrases that entered law as maxims, such as (source for the following is FamGuardian.org's page titled "Maxims of Law from Bouvier's Dictionary of Law"):
Facta sunt potentiora verbis. Facts are more powerful than words.
Factum negantis nulla probatio. Negative facts are not proof.
You already learned what the first maxim means but I'd also like to describe what it means that "negative facts are not proof", since that will be your biggest pain point when naively dealing with cops. In short, denying accusations holds no weight with the cops but again, some jurisdictions hold silence and failure to deny as an admission of guilt. So, you can't just stay quiet but what can you possibly say?
In logic, it's impossible to prove a negative. For example, if a cop accuses you of being a giraffe, your first reaction would most likely be shock and disbelief, followed by intense denial, "No, I'm not! How dare you say such a thing? That's impossible, I can't be a giraffe!" This is the exact same reaction innocent people have when accused of stabbing someone, and it never helps them establish their innocence because you can't actually prove you're not a giraffe; denying that you are in fact a giraffe is futile and does nothing to prevent the case from going forward. Now let's imagine the said cop perseveres with accusations and decides to interrogate you, meaning lock you in a room and put you under stress until you confess that you're a giraffe.
Over time, you're likely to start breaking down under stress and gradually confessing to being a giraffe without even realizing: "Well, I do have a long neck and my tongue is unusually long and I have these patches of color on my skin. Maybe I really am a giraffe?" Once you're made to doubt yourself, and kind of thought or emotion can be implanted into or extracted from you. At this point of self-doubt, your brain is likely to actively reshape your memories to make you think you actually did or are whatever is being suggested to you. If you think that's incredible, try reading Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" to see how efficiently the Communist regime extracted confessions to all sorts of things, which was also related in Orwell's "1984".
After a while, you'll beg the cops to let you confess to being a giraffe, just to end the isolation and stress. So, an important aspect of dealing with cops is being mentally strong by knowing who you are. Instead of denying that you're a giraffe or a stabber, both of which are accusations that erode your sense of personality, you should say something more wholesome. For example, a wholesome statement could be: "I might be a giraffe or a stabber or a kind person who nurtures animals. Let's see what the facts support. By the way, you're getting paid to do this, correct? I think I'll file a couple complaints to your superiors about tax dollars being wasted and numerous irregularities." If you succumb to self-doubt, you'll be entering a kafkaesque world of inquisition.
Kafka tried to warn people of the absurdity of this kind of self-referential police/court system detached from reality in his "Der Prozeß", which talks about Josef K., a guy accused of some crime that nobody knows what it is, but the cops assure him that the mere accusation is proof of guilt and the courts are flawless, all the while eating his breakfast. The crucial theme in "Der Prozeß" is that there's never a definite acquittal, but always an indefinite postponement of the final guilty verdict.
It's when K. tries to get answers from a supervisor who arrived with the cops to his apartment that we get this exchange:
"Who is issuing the indictment? What office is conducting this affair? Are you officials? None of you is wearing a uniform, unless what you are wearing” here he turned towards Franz “is meant to be a uniform, it’s actually more of a travelling suit. I require a clear answer to all these questions, and I’m quite sure that once things have been made clear we can take our leave of each other on the best of terms.”
The supervisor slammed the box of matches down on the table. “You’re making a big mistake,” he said. “These gentlemen and I have got nothing to do with your business, in fact we know almost nothing about you. We could be wearing uniforms as proper and exact as you like and your situation wouldn’t be any the worse for it. As to whether you’re on a charge, I can’t give you any sort of clear answer to that, I don’t even know whether you are or not. You’re under arrest, you’re quite right about that, but I don’t know any more than that."
This uncertainty can cause people to break down and confess to all sorts of things just to end the uncertainty of waiting for the final verdict. In Kafka's story, well, I won't spoil it for you but it doesn't end well. If you think that you'd never confess to being a giraffe, remember that there are historical cases of people being interrogated to confess they are warlocks, wizards, witches, in communion with Satan etc. These confessions were exacted by the Inquisition, the most infamous police/court system to accept confessions extracted under duress because the accusations were so absurd that there were no facts to support them – they could only be supported through a confession.
What's interesting about interrogations is that they can be used to extract confessions that serve as proof of guilt instead of facts; instead of having to go through the tedium of gathering facts, the cop can simply make you confess, which is then used to extract facts to support his truth, neatly sidestepping reality. In a sense, the reality becomes pliable once you're inside the interrogation chamber, and once the confession is presented to the lovebird wielding the gavel, the case proceeds smoothly and without any bothersome facts to drag the prozeß down.
It doesn't matter what is, what matters is what you confess to, and once inside the interrogation chamber, you'll be made to confess to whatever the cop wants. The line "everything you say can and will be used against you" is said to you on purpose, to tell you that you're entering a dark place where your words are twisted against you to support any wild accusations. You should understand that this police/court system wasn't initially designed like this but became that way due to apathetic citizens going through it and not bothering to send any feedback upstream.
Instead of denying that you're a giraffe, you should prove what you are, which is a human. This also works in cases where you're accused of doing something; if a cop accuses you of stabbing someone, saying, "I didn't do it" is an attempt to defend yourself using a negative fact, which the maxim states isn't proof and the cops just ignore.
Instead of denying that you stabbed someone, you need to say an affirmative statement, such as, "I stabbed someone", which will make the cops perk up, or you can say an affirmative statement that works in your favor and which you know you can back up, even if it seems meager, such as "I nurture animals". That statement would go towards establishing your character; people who nurture animals aren't prone to going around stabbing people.
If a cop accused me of stabbing someone, I'd ask to check that assertion against my records, such as file dates and browser history, to ultimately say something along the lines of, "At the time you indicated, I was browsing Hacker News and reading the comment thread found at <LINK>".
Rather than fighting against their accusations with a variation of "I dindu nuffin", I present positive statements that I can back up with facts. All of a sudden, I've got myself an alibi and can already start piecing together a formal complaint:
I feel aggrieved for being accused of stabbing someone. That was mean and hurtful. Also, the interrogation lasted over 6 hours, which is against the law (in Bosnia and Herzegovina), qualifies as torture and makes any confession I made inadmissible. I will be making formal complaints based off how I've been treated to various ministries and complaint bureaus".
Stating that you don't remember is a perfectly valid answer as well. Anyone who's had to cram for exams knows that our memory isn't flawless and constantly twists things, especially if you're under stress. What's absurd is that cops are allowed to lie and "make mistakes" (file false reports) and it's considered a mere human error that can be and often is fixed retroactively (tampering with records) but a citizen has his every word scrutinized with a microscope.
In my case, I'd say that "I'm not sure and would like to check my records" because I spend so much time at the computer that simply looking into file history would show what I was doing at the time but I bet I could also fish out receipts and various tidbits that would show what I was doing at any given moment. Immediately after, I'd look into writing a complaint letter for each irregularity to send to the complaint bureau; if imprisoned, I'd be writing hundreds of complaints a day until released and likely for decades after release. Sting, baby, sting.
To each complaint letter, the complaint bureau is expected to reply in two letters in a procedure that to me seems globally established. The first letter is the letter of acknowledgment, stating that "we hear you", and the second letter is the one in which the "no foul play" ruling is delivered. These two letters and the procedure they entail don't necessarily serve to discover or correct irregularities but rather to appease the complaining citizen.
Since the police/court system is interested in saving face and meting out punishments internally, without raising a fuss, you are not meant to know how effective your complaints are, which is why you're likely to always receive the verdict of "no foul play", no matter what transpired. That shouldn't concern you because it's the number and volume of letters complaining against any given cop or just the procedure and institutions in general that matters.
As citizens take note of the complaint process, they gradually get involved as well and start doing their civic duty, which is reporting irregularities. Instead of choosing the lesser political evil, these citizens can perform their civic duty and go back to living their lives, knowing they've made their metropolis a slightly more bearable environment for everyone, which is the core principle of political action. As complaints pile up, randomly mentioned droplets of facts in them create a pool of data reported by dispassionate observers.
Their complaints swell and fill up the archive cabinets, overflowing and flooding the complaint bureau's offices. A single letter may weigh 20 grams, meaning 50 complaint letters equal a kilogram of post. If 50,000 citizens of any given metropolis complain about the police, this equals a 1,000kg of post or a metric ton that someone has to go through, one by one, and reply to twice. 500,000 complaints are now 10 tons of mail, which is more than can be archived in an office, lest the filing cabinets fall through the floor, to which 20 tons of "we hear you" and "no foul play" mail have to be sent out in response.
This swell of complaints soon grows into political action without any party affiliation, which provides a surprising amount of decentralizated protection. Such citizens can't be starved of funds to force them to give up, their complaints can't be declared illegal, they can't be discredited by the media and they can't be censored because doing so would Streisand the method and attract even more hornets to rabidly sting. If the police complaint bureau is shut down, that simply breaches the containment zone and the citizens redirect their complaints to another government office or bureau, causing it to implode and crush its employees under metric tons of paper.
Shuttling the complaints and responses back and forth clogs the entire post office system, which buckles under stress like a citizen in interrogation. Soon enough, nobody wants to work in the government, especially when they peek inside the complaints and see an endless train of wrongs and abuses. When complaint bureau employees abandon their posts, complaints pile up even faster.
Trying to conceal the volume of complaints fails as well because there's no way to do it effectively. Even trying to dump the complaint letters in the trash stops being effective as the trash can't be hauled in time, overflowing and littering the streets, which attracts all sorts of attention. Besides, once sent, the formal complaint becomes an official government record and destroying it is again the offense of tampering with records. Winds blow and carry the complaint letters like tumbleweeds; it does read like an apocalypse story, doesn't it? So, what does a complaint look like?
COMPLAINT TO THE BEHAVIOR OF POLICE OFFICERS
My first and last name
My address
JMBG (unique identifying number of the citizen assigned at birth, added to provide more legitimacy)
Addressed at: Police Complaint Bureau
On 8. December 2019. at 22:40h, I was stopped and asked to present my ID by two police officers at <ADDRESS>, near the coffee shop <COFFEE SHOP NAME>. The two officers did not introduce themselves or show their badges.
One of the officer's uniforms had a label with "<COP 1 LAST NAME AND INITIAL>".
"<COP 1 LAST NAME AND INITIAL>" asked me about my: hair color, eye color, jacket color, address, name of one parent and height.
I was not told the reason why I was stopped or why my ID or this personal information were asked of me, if there was a reason at all.
Stopping and checking ID of a citizen for no reason is an illegal restriction of freedom of movement.
I feel worried because the two officers did not introduce themselves or show their badges and frustrated because my freedom of movement is illegally restricted for no good reason.
Also, I believe I was asked for identifying information so the two cops can falsely accuse me of a crime.
Kind regards,
<SIGNATURE>
This was only my second complaint but it was much better than the first one, which did come out as whiny and too emotional. This time around, I refined the text until only the facts remained and peppered in the simple accusations of illegal conduct. The cherry on top is the preventative mention of being falsely accused.
It might sound paranoid, but when you think about it, why would they need to know my jacket, hair and eye color? So that if there's a burglary or a robbery or any kind of problem, they can use that tidbit of information to try and pin the crime on me. What other reason is there?
I plan on refining the complaint process even further, since now I've found the law that governs police conduct. It indeed turned out that police officers need to explain the reason why the ID was being asked but they need not present their badges when in uniform, except when explicitly asked by the citizen.
The reason why I mentioned the coffee shop name is because there's no address number at the exact location, which is why I stated an approximate address and referenced an existing establishment. You can do that too and even describe the cops' appearance with "hazel hair, hazel eyes", etc. Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out and plan on referencing the specific sections of the law that were violated when I'm stopped the next time.
A cop will typically avoid presenting any kind of ID or badge, which they consider a standard police practice but is actually highly illegal. So, you use their trick and describe the appearance, approximate the height, physical features and so on. Naturally, you complain to all of these illegal practices because, well, what happens with a citizen that drives a car without license plates around? Laws should guarantee equality but that's not the case if you don't complain, and sometimes it's worth it to complain in advance.
Why did my complaint include a raising of suspicion that foul play is afoot? I was warned by another police officer that cops can and do falsely accuse people of crimes, but his solution was to just stay away from it all and hope I don't get pulled into the meat grinder. I didn't see it as a warning but as a confession, and I reported it as such.
I have no intention of shying away from abusers of authority but will face them head on and report all irregularities, no matter how tiny, which will be followed up by as many warnings that they also frame people for crimes. The entire point of police standards of behavior is to prevent complaints; if the cops don't abide by behavior standards, they are opening themselves up to complaints, which we should sting them with mercilessly, just like hornets.
The pettiness with which the police hunts down and punishes citizens grows by the day because unchecked authority knows no bounds. Courts that should be overseeing the abuse of police authority are also a part of the game, churning out as many guilty verdicts as possible to bump up their stats, like it's a video game, which is why your "day in court" consists of you getting at most 10 seconds to speak before getting cut off by the judge that then does business as usual.
There's only temporary relief in playing dead when faced with this police/court system, since you'll eventually be put through the grinder yourself in one way or another, and the grinder simply gets more intricate. In the US, that's now the non-police police TSA that frisks and pats down even the people in wheelchairs and babies. Unless you complain, things won't just stay the same – they'll actively get worse.
Remember that you're sending your complaint to people, not robots. Your complaint should read and feel genuine. It's crucial that you include a section in your complaint about how you felt during the ordeal. This gives a human note to your letter and makes the event feel palpable. State your side of the story and don't be afraid to sound vulnerable by saying stuff such as: "I felt afraid/worried/frustrated/sick to my stomach." To this, there is no defense, but do stick to the facts and don't exaggerate. If unsure whether something was irregular, ask yourself if it was fair; if you were treated unfairly, it was irregular in some way or plain illegal. Check up on your local laws and reference them specifically when complaining, if you can.
Don't play dead, don't feel fear and don't reveal facts that can be used against you; ignore "the truth" and focus on presenting facts that benefit you while constantly complaining in writing about every irregularity to perform your civic duty.
Complaining is the pettiest way to react to what Carlos Castaneda termed "petty tyrants" and as such is perfectly just, which is at the root of the word "justice". What else could we ask for from a system that intentionally aims to maximize the number of prosecuted people than to cause people working in it the same amount of anguish they're causing us?
Some more law maxims:
Prima pars aequitatis aequalitas – The radical (root) element of justice is equality.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum – Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall.
Lex neminem cogit ad vana seu inutilia peragenda – The law forces no one to do vain or useless things.