The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 12: I Was Entrapped!
Entrapment pg 14: Myth #1—A cop has to tell you if he’s a cop
MYTH #1: A cop has to tell you if he’s a cop.
Counsel explaining to Cora
CORA
False. No undercover cop ever has to admit he’s a police officer.
CORA
But everyone knows they have to!
COUNSEL
Well, everybody’s wrong.
It’s amazing that this myth has stuck around so long, when tons of undercover arrests prove it wrong every day.
Cora isn’t convinced.
CORA
I still don’t get it. I’ve heard it a thousand times from kids at school, in movies, on T.V.
Well, maybe it’s not so amazing after all.
Regardless, without deception, the police couldn’t do their job very well.
Cora’s balding, middle-aged undercover
UNDERCOVER
If someone knows I’m a cop, they’re not likely to let me catch them in the act, are they?
[Side note for those who’ve read this far: Busting this myth is literally the reason I started this comic in the first place. It was the first one I mentioned in my blog The Criminal Lawyer, of which this comic is an offshoot. As you’ve noticed, it was more a blog with the occasional picture at first. Turned into a comic without my realizing it. Anyway, this point was the one I had in mind at the outset, first and foremost, ahead of all the myriad other myths and misconceptions that people have about the law that made me realize I could draw this comic until the day I die and still have plenty of material left to cover.]
Reminds me of one of Terry Pratchett’s characters who went to the school of “My dad says”, the college of “It stands to reason” and was now a post-graduate student at the university of “Some bloke in the pub told me”.
That’s an excessive generalization. Undercover cops might need to deceive, but most cops aren’t undercover. Saying “Without deception, the police couldn’t do their job very well” sounds like you’re talking about all police.
Even when not acting undercover, police regularly use deception in order to get cooperation from people they feel would otherwise be cooperative. There are many situations where police are legally allowed to lie to those they have in custody, and they tend to lie frequently in all of them. Even traffic cops regularly outright lie or omit truths in order to catch criminals (a common omission being “do you know how fast you were going,” which they use to get people to admit to speeding when they see someone and think they were going to fast, but didn’t actually clock them with their radars to confirm it, you can often get out of speeding tickets by just looking at the officer and saying “no, I don’t know, how fast was I going” or by just saying a number under the speed limit when asked).
Although reading the comic and then reading my response again, that really only applies to the general case of “police being deceptive” and the specific case of “police claiming to not be cops.” Claiming to not be a cop is literally only useful when undercover, yes, because by definition a police officer becomes undercover when they start trying to hide the fact that they’re a cop.
I think a better response would be:
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Yes.”
When thinking about the scenario, it is very tempting to be clever (“How fast do YOU think I was going?” “What does your radar gun say?” “If you don’t know, why are we here?”). When sitting at the side of the road I wouldn’t recommend saying anything that could be interpreted as smart-ass. Cops can ruin your whole day (or more), without even pulling their guns. Best to swallow your resentment, keep your hands visible at all times, move slowly, and address them as sir or ma’am. And if you are a black man with a concealed weapon permit, praying might be in order too.
“If someone knows I’m a cop, they’re not likely to let me catch them in the act, are they?”
The stupid ones are. But then again, they’re not the real troublemakers, are they?
Which is why I never understood why people believe that