<story><title>Illinois first state to tell police they can&apos;t lie to minors in interrogations</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1016710927/illinois-is-the-first-state-to-tell-police-they-cant-lie-to-minors-in-interrogat</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Clubber</author><text>&amp;gt;It&amp;#x27;s slightly less disturbing to think that the cops legitimately think they&amp;#x27;re doing a good job over the alternative of intentionally ignoring their responsibility. Still troubling to think they could be that deluded.&lt;p&gt;Stalin truly believed what he was doing was for the greater good of the USSR. It&amp;#x27;s extremely easy to justify bad deeds and fool yourself that the ends justify the means.</text></item><item><author>boomboomsubban</author><text>I saw something before that said something like 80% of cops thought they had never arrested an innocent person. From that, it is likely that they believe these people are the criminals but the crafty villains won&amp;#x27;t admit it without being tricked.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s slightly less disturbing to think that the cops legitimately think they&amp;#x27;re doing a good job over the alternative of intentionally ignoring their responsibility. Still troubling to think they could be that deluded.</text></item><item><author>_fat_santa</author><text>I also never understood this. It almost seems as if interrogations aren&amp;#x27;t for discovery of information but moreso &amp;quot;we have this lead and we&amp;#x27;re going to beat you into submission until you confirm our lead&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;You see it all the time with wrongful convictions and people signing confessions to crimes they didn&amp;#x27;t commit. I often wonder in these cases, do the officers, does law enforcement in this case really care who did it? If you bring someone in and interrogate them for 12+ hours and eventually they give you the answer you want to hear, do they never stop and ask themselves if the reason the person gave that answer is simply to make whatever they were doing stop?&lt;p&gt;It seems like some of these investigations the point isn&amp;#x27;t to solve the crime, but to dot the I&amp;#x27;s and cross your T&amp;#x27;s. It seems like actual public safety is an afterthought as long as you &amp;quot;catch the criminal&amp;quot; on paper.</text></item><item><author>tomalpha</author><text>&amp;gt; After hours of interrogation, police told one of the teenagers, Terrill Swift, that if he just confessed to being at the scene he could go home — so he did.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s the advantage to society of allowing interviewers to lie (to anyone, let alone kids)? Not just insinuate something like &amp;quot;your partner&amp;#x27;s in the next room, it&amp;#x27;s only a matter of time until he talks so you should come clean now&amp;quot;, but blatantly lie and then be able to rely on the result of that in court?&lt;p&gt;It kinda feels a &lt;i&gt;little&lt;/i&gt; like the common law doctrine of Promissary Estoppel [0] where if someone relies on something you&amp;#x27;ve promised, you can&amp;#x27;t then hold them responsible for relying on that thing.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;wex&amp;#x2F;promissory_estoppel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;wex&amp;#x2F;promissory_estoppel&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eldavido</author><text>Great illustration of why respect for individual rights is so important.&lt;p&gt;There will always be some megalomaniac, whether dictator, president, cop, or some authority figure, who &amp;quot;knows best&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Individual rights are the brakes. They&amp;#x27;re the lines we&amp;#x27;ve agreed not to cross as a society, even when we&amp;#x27;re really sure we &amp;quot;know best&amp;quot;. Example: property rights. No matter how sure you are that there&amp;#x27;s stolen property in the building, even law enforcement doesn&amp;#x27;t get to enter without a warrant.&lt;p&gt;Individual rights &lt;i&gt;limit&lt;/i&gt; what others can do.</text></comment>
<story><title>Illinois first state to tell police they can&apos;t lie to minors in interrogations</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1016710927/illinois-is-the-first-state-to-tell-police-they-cant-lie-to-minors-in-interrogat</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Clubber</author><text>&amp;gt;It&amp;#x27;s slightly less disturbing to think that the cops legitimately think they&amp;#x27;re doing a good job over the alternative of intentionally ignoring their responsibility. Still troubling to think they could be that deluded.&lt;p&gt;Stalin truly believed what he was doing was for the greater good of the USSR. It&amp;#x27;s extremely easy to justify bad deeds and fool yourself that the ends justify the means.</text></item><item><author>boomboomsubban</author><text>I saw something before that said something like 80% of cops thought they had never arrested an innocent person. From that, it is likely that they believe these people are the criminals but the crafty villains won&amp;#x27;t admit it without being tricked.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s slightly less disturbing to think that the cops legitimately think they&amp;#x27;re doing a good job over the alternative of intentionally ignoring their responsibility. Still troubling to think they could be that deluded.</text></item><item><author>_fat_santa</author><text>I also never understood this. It almost seems as if interrogations aren&amp;#x27;t for discovery of information but moreso &amp;quot;we have this lead and we&amp;#x27;re going to beat you into submission until you confirm our lead&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;You see it all the time with wrongful convictions and people signing confessions to crimes they didn&amp;#x27;t commit. I often wonder in these cases, do the officers, does law enforcement in this case really care who did it? If you bring someone in and interrogate them for 12+ hours and eventually they give you the answer you want to hear, do they never stop and ask themselves if the reason the person gave that answer is simply to make whatever they were doing stop?&lt;p&gt;It seems like some of these investigations the point isn&amp;#x27;t to solve the crime, but to dot the I&amp;#x27;s and cross your T&amp;#x27;s. It seems like actual public safety is an afterthought as long as you &amp;quot;catch the criminal&amp;quot; on paper.</text></item><item><author>tomalpha</author><text>&amp;gt; After hours of interrogation, police told one of the teenagers, Terrill Swift, that if he just confessed to being at the scene he could go home — so he did.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s the advantage to society of allowing interviewers to lie (to anyone, let alone kids)? Not just insinuate something like &amp;quot;your partner&amp;#x27;s in the next room, it&amp;#x27;s only a matter of time until he talks so you should come clean now&amp;quot;, but blatantly lie and then be able to rely on the result of that in court?&lt;p&gt;It kinda feels a &lt;i&gt;little&lt;/i&gt; like the common law doctrine of Promissary Estoppel [0] where if someone relies on something you&amp;#x27;ve promised, you can&amp;#x27;t then hold them responsible for relying on that thing.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;wex&amp;#x2F;promissory_estoppel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;wex&amp;#x2F;promissory_estoppel&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mumblemumble</author><text>This seems like a valid, if hyperbolic, point to me. I think that one could make a plausible argument that one of the most basic implications of the principle of rule of law is that, at least where the police are concerned, the ends &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; justify the means. Allowing them to behave otherwise isn&amp;#x27;t a slippery slope that leads to rampant abuse of power; it&amp;#x27;s a dead drop.</text></comment>