[HN Gopher] Bill prohibiting police from lying to children passe...
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Bill prohibiting police from lying to children passes Virginia
Senate
Author : _DeadFred_
Score : 187 points
Date : 2025-02-19 17:49 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.courthousenews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.courthousenews.com)
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Relevant context. It is not always legal for the police to lie,
| and they often do anyway. Be aware of your rights.
| https://www.cato.org/commentary/what-happens-when-police-lie
| https://www.blasslaw.com/faqs/when-can-the-police-lie-to-you...
| autobodie wrote:
| But also remember that you don't have any rights if you're
| poor, because you won't be able to leverage them and trying
| could get you in a deeper hole.
| nessbot wrote:
| I get what you're tying to say, but this kind of phrasing
| does more damage by instilling a (mostly) false sense of
| learned helplessness.
| autobodie wrote:
| No, it instills a reality about so-called "rights". Liberal
| society is full of lies like this and I'm just pointing
| them out.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > The law would "prohibit officers from knowingly and
| intentionally making false statements about any material fact,
| including by use of inauthentic replica documents, prior to or
| during a custodial interrogation of a child to secure the
| cooperation, confession or conviction of such child."
|
| This is specifically about lying to children to manipulate them
| into giving testimony/confession.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't understand why it's specific to children. Surely lying
| under any circumstances should be prohibited.
|
| Plus it's not like children are the only vulnerable group.
|
| Still, at least this is a step in the right direction. So we
| should be thankful for that.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > Surely lying under any circumstances should be prohibited
|
| You must admit that it's a tricky issue, differentiating
| between a cop purposely lying vs making an incorrect
| assertion. Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at
| trial that the cop said something that wasn't true?
|
| That said, it's sad how often people incriminate themselves
| with drug possession because of the "gentle" lie that things
| will be a lot worse for them if the cop is the one to find
| the drugs.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| This isn't about white lies. This is about purposeful,
| blatantly false things to manipulate witnesses/suspects
| into giving confessions. Often false confessions - the
| article lists as one of the law's justifications that in
| the cases they looked at, 34% of minors reported giving a
| false confession (50% for under 14), but the adult rate is
| 8%, which is still appallingly high - if any other
| profession had a "vital tool" that ruins incorrectly
| someone's life 1 in 12 times, there would be major outcry
| and regulation.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at trial
| that the cop said something that wasn't true?
|
| Should a defendant be found guilty if they were lied to by
| the cops? Explicit lied that are used to extract and
| manipulate confessions.
|
| Remember, people are innocent until proven guilty. We don't
| presume someone on trial is guilty. If they weren't
| properly prosecuted, we shouldn't assume the guilt is
| proper either.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't think it is a tricky issue. Lots of other countries
| have "no lies during interrogations" laws and manage just
| fine.
|
| If a police officer makes an honest mistake then that's
| fine. But if a police officer is repeatedly stating things
| during interrogations that they've misunderstood then
| they're grossly incompetent for whole different reasons
| than lack of honest character. Just like if a developer
| kept pushing broken code without any unit tests, you'd have
| a quiet word with them that they need to put more due
| diligence into their work.
| LordKeren wrote:
| The problem is that it leads to a classic game theory
| situation - where if you, an informed citizen, know that
| cops are allowed to lie to you, that the logical conclusion
| is to never believe a cop under any circumstance.
|
| It is deeply hostile and likely counter productive to the
| stated goals of police departments.
|
| There is no way for normal people to distinguish a lawful
| order given by a police officer from a lie.
| rurp wrote:
| We could start with a standard of not willfully lying about
| facts and see how it goes. I agree that the gray areas
| could get tricky, but just starting with most obvious cases
| might provide a lot of the benefit.
|
| I think the current status quo, where cops can lie to
| citizens about anything and everything with no consequence,
| is pretty bad. Sure it might help with some specific
| convictions, but the immense lack of trust and goodwill
| that generates in the entire public must cause a huge
| amount of harm and lose a number of other solvable cases.
|
| Even though I'm not engaged in any criminal enterprises I
| am still wary about saying anything to police. Even though
| most police are decent people, mistakes happen and they are
| often under pressure to hit certain metrics. Indictments of
| innocent people are hardly rare and you never know what a
| cop's angle is, given their freedom to lie at will.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah. It's really not very difficult to have a situation
| where (i) the bar for "the police officer made an
| inaccurate statement during the interview" being a reason
| to consider a "not guilty" verdict is really, really high
| and (ii) making misstatements in interviews is regarded
| as a blot on the professional record of the policeman
| involved and making intentional misstatements a serious
| misconduct offence
|
| Plenty of other countries manage it.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > Should a defendant walk if it they can prove at trial
| that the cop said something that wasn't true?
|
| Absolutely yes. These lies cause real harm, and the cops
| need to face consequences or they have no reason to
| abstain.
|
| A friend of some of my friends would be alive today if a
| cop had not lied to him about the consequences of a minor
| fender-bender, claiming he'd put someone in the hospital
| with critical injuries and it was uncertain they'd survive.
| (The cop was caught on tape telling his partner, "it's a
| lie, but it's fun"; nobody was actually hurt, at all.)
| Overwhelmed with remorse, feeling the world would be better
| off without him, he killed himself.
|
| The cop got a week's unpaid vacation for this.
| jopsen wrote:
| The fact that something like this is even considered against
| adults is just plain absurd.
|
| Law enforcement shouldn't be so adversarial at every step.
|
| Do you dare help the police, when you never know if they
| consider you friend or foe.
| rjbwork wrote:
| >Do you dare help the police, when you never know if they
| consider you friend or foe.
|
| No, never. Give the minimum required information and try to
| exit the interaction as soon as possible. You are always
| considered foe, and likewise, should nearly always consider
| the police your foe.
|
| The only exception is when you're the victim of a violent
| crime and need their assistance to pursue justice, but even
| then you have to be judicial in your interactions.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Most of the complexity arises from the simple fact that the
| job is unavoidably adversarial when it comes to criminals.
|
| Deception is an natural strategy with upside for catching
| criminals. It could be banned, but there would be a non-zero
| cost to enforcement. The public generally wants to have it's
| cake and eat it tool
| hiatus wrote:
| Still needs to be signed by the governor. Given the voting along
| partisan lines I don't expect it to pass.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I think it's a matter of which politicians are owned by which
| interests and pandering to said interests more than political
| lines. Once you get past the insane screeching reforming the
| police is popular with the general public on both sides of the
| isle.
| deweywsu wrote:
| How about expanding the law such that the police can't lie to
| ANYONE?
| op00to wrote:
| why?
| leptons wrote:
| Why not?
| op00to wrote:
| If I were at risk of being murdered, and only a cop lying
| could stop it, I'd want the cop to lie. Even to kids!
|
| Let's say you're being held hostage by a dangerous armed
| criminal who has already harmed others and is threatening
| to kill you. The police arrive, and the criminal demands to
| know if there are snipers positioned outside. If the cop
| truthfully says "Yes," the criminal might panic and shoot
| you immediately. Instead, the cop lies and says, "No, it's
| just us talking, let's work this out," buying time for a
| sniper to take the criminal down and save your life.
| jrs235 wrote:
| I'm sure we can make a framework around when they can
| lie. They can not lie to obtain facts or information
| while investigating. Doing so should poison what they
| gain and anything found afterwards.
| croes wrote:
| Why?
|
| There are lies that don't poison anything.
|
| For instance police lies in an online chat to be a 12
| year old girl to catch a child predator.
| jrs235 wrote:
| That's an easy situation to deal with. Have someone who
| isn't an officer sit at the computer and pretend they are
| a 12 year old girl to catch a child predator and turn the
| evidence over to the non-lying police.
| croes wrote:
| The same trick can than be used in an interrogation.
|
| That's still lying police just with extra steps.
| mrandish wrote:
| > should poison what they gain and anything found
| afterwards.
|
| That's a more expansive proposal than the law being
| discussed. The law is narrower than "investigating" and
| is focused only on interrogating a suspect, so presumably
| post-Miranda warning. And in this context being a
| "suspect" is a specific category elevated from being a
| witness or person of interest. And then the only penalty
| in the law is making a confession obtained as the result
| of a lie to a suspect during an interrogation
| inadmissable.
|
| Those differences address the concerns mentioned
| downthread with lying in the context of undercover work.
| patmcc wrote:
| That's not what anyone means when they talk about cops
| lying though.
|
| Cops can lie to suspects during questioning. They can say
| "your friend already confessed" or "we just got a call
| from the lab, your DNA matches" or "you're getting the
| death penalty unless you confess right now". As well as
| bullshit like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure)
| (in some jurisdictions).
|
| I'm fine with undercover cops lying about whether or not
| they're wearing a wire, or your scenario. I'm not so keen
| on uniformed cops lying to elicit confessions.
| op00to wrote:
| I agree lying to get a confession is like torture to get
| information. In most cases, the information you get (and
| the confession) is bullshit.
| croes wrote:
| If you prohibit all lies you also prohibit the good lies
| almostnormal wrote:
| How about not actively providing false information, but
| being allowed to respond with wrong information?
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's interesting to see who immediately jumps to a
| hypothetical involving the police protecting them from a
| crime, versus those who immediately jump to a
| hypothetical where they're being protected _from_ police.
|
| This may be irrational, but I'm more worried about being
| falsely imprisoned by legal means than I am about being
| murdered by illegal means.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| So what you're saying is "If you want to make an
| omelette, you've gotta break some eggs"?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think they shouldn't be allowed to lie about the law, but
| anything else is needlessly handicapping them.
| jrs235 wrote:
| "Better for 10 criminals to go free than 1 innocent man
| suffer."
| threatofrain wrote:
| For better or worse we're heading into a world with cameras
| everywhere. We can do better than 1:10.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Yeah we abandoned that a long time ago. Now we're at the
| corner of "Hide behind civilians, shoot the kidnappers, the
| hostage and a couple innocent bystanders then suppress the
| report about the incident for 5 years."
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Miramar_shootout) and
| "order the victim to approach you, shoot her, lie to the
| media to say that she was wearing combat fatigues and had a
| gun, then suppress video of the incident for two years" (ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Savannah_Graziano).
| Retric wrote:
| Lying police do more harm than good.
|
| False confessions don't just send innocent people to prison,
| they also close cases without finding the actual culprits.
|
| Remember the police are incentivized to catch people, not
| catch guilty people. So the easiest way for them to game the
| system isn't in society's best interest.
| fullshark wrote:
| A criminal investigation certainly requires at least lies of
| omission.
| croes wrote:
| So pretending to be a 12 year old girl to catch a child
| predator is illegal then?
| cherryteastain wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| >Contrary to popular belief, the United States does not
| require police officers to identify themselves as police in
| the case of a sting or other undercover work, and police
| officers may lie when engaged in such work. The law of
| entrapment instead focuses on whether people were enticed
| to commit crimes they would not have otherwise considered
| in the normal course of events.
|
| --your source
|
| Not as straightforward as you're implying.
| croes wrote:
| Now tell my how pretending to be a 12 year old girl forces
| somebody to commit a crime?
| hermannj314 wrote:
| This law is about lying during interrogation. When a police
| officer is wearing the uniform, asking questions, acting in
| their capacity as a protector of the public, I think directly
| lying to your face should be a crime. Their authority as an
| officer is the very thing they are using to get you to
| believe their lie. That is a critical piece.
|
| A detective doing undercover work may require a degree of
| duplicity to achieve their aim, their authority as an officer
| is not what gets you to believe their lie, they almost always
| conceal that fact from you.
|
| I think these are clearly distinct arenas of law enforcement.
| croes wrote:
| Parents comment says to anyone that includes people outside
| an interrogation
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Do you think that a person wearing a police uniform (that
| every person has an obligation to obey so long as they
| make a lawful order), can also, in the performance on
| that same duty, lie directly to a member of the public?
| grayhatter wrote:
| Fun fact, that is already illegal. Perverted justice was an
| entirely civilian organization.
|
| reading some of the criticisms of their former behavior does
| highlight pretty strongly why exactly that kinda thing is
| problematic.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If people understood how the legal system worked this would
| largely be irrelevant.
|
| People think police are judges or prosecutors and (falsely)
| trust what they say accordingly. The police are evidence
| collectors for the prosecution, who presents evidence to a
| judge. Police are the lowest men on the legal totem pole and
| have little power in deciding the outcome of your case.
|
| That alone should be enough to make you never trust whatever
| they promise, because really they cannot promise anything.
| exabrial wrote:
| Step in the right direction. Get this passed first, then later we
| can move to a spot where the government is _never allowed to lie_
| to its citizens.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| "Never" seems like a bad standard
| g-b-r wrote:
| You'd have to make at most extremely limited exceptions (for
| example, no, a generic "national security" concern would not
| be a limited exception).
|
| I'm convinced that the benefits of such a norm would far
| outweigh the downsides.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| I'm willing to allow much, much more lying than that.
| Especially for national security concerns.
| mjevans wrote:
| We live an in imperfect world. Some state secrets probably are
| for public benefit.
|
| Government lies should be strongly regulated and see multiple
| layers of check and oversight. Re-review by new agents should
| be a frequent event. Lies should be expensive, they should have
| weight, and they should be only when strictly necessary for the
| good of the people.
|
| As an example, 'fake' terrorists. Those who only rise to that
| level because someone in the government offered to sell (fake)
| explosives, etc. I believe that's more harm than good. However
| I'd also like real terrorists who would eventually figure out
| how to do bad things to get caught. Review, oversight, lies
| being expensive.
| qingcharles wrote:
| We've had this for a while in Illinois:
|
| 705 ILCS 405/5-401.6, "Prohibition of deceptive tactics."
|
| https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=0...
| hermannj314 wrote:
| The crazy thing that I think about is that if we were debating
| the 4th amendment today, it wouldn't pass. It wouldn't even come
| close to passing, we would be arguing how warrantless searches
| are necessary to keep terrorists away.
|
| An agent of the government can lie to your face, create fake
| documents to support that lie, and threaten you with prison to
| confess under the duress caused by this lie and we think this
| maybe shouldn't be ok, barely, but only for kids.
|
| This is an insane world we live in that this is debated topic.
| dmix wrote:
| this is a fun read
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure)
|
| > The use of this technique is essentially prohibited in some
| countries, including the United Kingdom[4] and the United
| States.[5] In Germany, which has high standards for what
| constitutes a voluntary confession, it may be more difficult to
| use confessions obtained by this technique.[5] The procedure
| has been used by police in Australia[6] and New Zealand,[7] and
| its use has been upheld by courts in both countries.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Since we're doing the van halen "right now your government is
| doing things you think only happen in other countries" thing,
| here's one about a 15 year old who was so mentally disabled
| ""He was unable to even tie his shoelaces and his mother
| would have to do it for him", but that didn't stop him from
| being groomed by FBI agents to say things that count as
| conspiracy to commit terrorism. They recorded everything that
| he said without regard to the fact that he had "the mentality
| of a 6-year-old", then waited until he turned 18 to arrest
| him so they could charge him as an adult and put him away for
| life.
|
| https://theintercept.com/2016/08/03/18-year-old-arrested-
| on-...
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| another example to reinforce: ICE commonly self-issues
| "administrative warrants" for agents to present at a raid.
| these are not the same as judicial warrants, have not been
| reviewed by a judge, and do not have any legal power. but none
| of that is obvious to the person looking at a document that
| says "warrant" at the top.
|
| annotated example:
| https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/i-200_and...
| zdragnar wrote:
| We know for a fact that high ranked government officials have
| lied on FISA warrants.
|
| The fact that there hasn't been any accountability for them,
| and that Congress is so resistant to changing the program, and
| the courts failing to uphold the Constitution, is a real
| tragedy.
| eadmund wrote:
| > if we were debating the 4th amendment today, it wouldn't pass
|
| Neither would the 1st, the 2nd, maybe the 5th, the 6th is
| already in abeyance when the accusers are minors, and
| definitely not the 10th. Maybe the 3rd would be approved?
|
| Needless to say, I heartily approve of the entire Bill of
| Rights.
| some_random wrote:
| The 3rd would be approved because it has a carve-out,
| soldiers can be quartered in private homes _during wartime_
| as long as a law says it's ok. That exact same type of carve-
| out would be added to every amendment if it was proposed
| today.
| some_random wrote:
| No amendment would pass with the possible exception of the 3rd
| (which already has the exact kind of wartime carve out the
| other amendments would receive), the modern discourse has very
| little respect for rights and liberties with a handful of
| highly politicized exceptions.
| mandevil wrote:
| Right now no amendment can pass at all. You can look at when
| amendments pass, and most of the time they come in bunches,
| when either the parties are unusually close together or one
| party or the other is unusually powerful. Right now- with a
| nation balanced almost exactly 50-50 and very far apart-
| nothing like that can possibly pass.
| programmerpass wrote:
| " _we_ would be arguing"? I wouldn't.
|
| I would argue it should be illegal for the police, media, and
| others who have significant roles in society to lie and that
| they should be criminally prosecuted.
|
| The only tragedy that I see is that most people seem to scream
| something in relation to free speech when the idea of
| criminally prosecuting folks for lying is mentioned. I prefer
| truthful discourse with serious consequences over whatever most
| call "free speech".
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| If this last election taught me anything, it's that people
| who share my beliefs about the sanctity of human rights are
| in a minority.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| US survey 2021
|
| Earth is flat, not round
|
| 10% agree 9% unsure 80% disagree
|
| With statistics like this, no state of affairs will surprise
| me. Perhaps needless to say, there's no reason to think whole
| 80% is reasonable; you'd expect a smooth gradient going across
| the 19%/80%, not through the 1% (which is lost in rounding I
| guess) but perhaps through most of the society, with only a
| small fraction of it being truly reasonable.
|
| The educational system succeeded in teaching writing and
| reading, and not with much more, not when it comes to masses.
| s_m_t wrote:
| That doesn't seem too bad to me. It isn't trivial to prove
| the earth is flat. 10th percentile IQ seems to be around the
| functional illiteracy threshold. The military won't take them
| because as much as they have tried they can't seem to get
| that 10th percentile trained in just about anything. If such
| a person looks out into the distance, sees that things look
| flat and not like a sphere, and then watches some video with
| half-baked reasoning telling them they are right then I'm not
| sure how you could realistically convince them otherwise.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| The assumption that everyone has equal capabilities can
| cause a lot of needless struggle and suffering. Similarly
| assumptions that an individual can't or won't grow or learn
| or improve can also lead to a lot of unnecessary struggle
| and suffering.
|
| Both things: that everyone's capabilities (and limits) are
| different and individuals can increase their capabilities
| can be and are true.
|
| So I can understand someone's concern that we have flat
| earthers, as well as your lack of concern.
| hk1337 wrote:
| ...
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| if the cops cant question kids at all, then what would they do
| if a group of kids are acting suspicious?
| krapp wrote:
| Nothing. "Acting suspicious" isn't a crime, it's a pretext.
| Usually to shooting some unarmed black kid in the head.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| "Acting suspicious" is a grammar crime.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| They were acting as if they were suspicious of me! Why
| would anyone be suspicious of the police!? I had to shoot
| them!
| efa wrote:
| I guess no more Operation Flagship (well maybe since this is just
| lying to kids). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Flagship
| openasocket wrote:
| This bill is focused on handling juvenile suspects, but there's a
| lot of work that needs to be done to improve things for juvenile
| witnesses and victims. In too many jurisdictions in the US, if a
| young child is believed to be a witness or victim of a crime,
| they are treated the same way as adults. Sometimes this means
| little children are placed in interrogation rooms with
| detectives. This can be traumatic to children, and can often lead
| to inaccurate information. Anyone who's tried to get information
| from a 5 year old can attest to how difficult that can be, even
| about mundane subjects.
|
| The gold standard is to use child advocacy centers (CACs).
| Children suspected to be witnesses or victims to a crime are
| taken to a facility specifically for child interviews (i.e. not
| an interrogation room in a police station) and the interview is
| conducted by a trained forensic psychologist. These psychologists
| are specifically trained to work with children, and ask questions
| in a way that isn't leading and is likely to get accurate
| information. There is a ton of scientific literature and known
| protocols in this field.
| Vortigaunt wrote:
| Every time I see this pop up it reminds me of this part of an
| epsiode of This American Life [0]. At parts its quite difficult
| to listen to, however it seems like an important thing to be
| aware of. If they're willing to do this to children, what are
| they fine with doing to adults? It's beyond words how someone can
| imagine that this is moral behavior in the pursuit of justice. I
| don't see how anyone can harass a child like that - already
| distraught by the death of his sister - and to treat some kid
| like a murderer for hours on end.
|
| [0] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/210/perfect-evidence/act-
| tw...
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