Getting Arrested

Since becoming a lawyer, the biggest eye opener for me has been just how easy it is to get arrested in NY.  Let me give you two examples.  A woman walks into a major retail store.  She looks at some items and puts them back in a different location.  After she pays for her items and leaves the store, a private security guard follows her out of the store, and asks her to return with him.  The security guard asks what happened to the item and the woman says she put it on the table.  When they walk to the table, the item is not there but the woman sees it on the floor.  So she says "there it is, on the floor."  The security guard says "very sneaky, I saw you drop it out of your pockets."  Leaving out some details, the woman is eventually arrested.  This woman, a white-collar professional, spends the night in jail with drug addicts and prostitutes.  Eventually someone points out that she couldn't have dropped the items out of her pockets because she was wearing a dress with no pockets.  Nonetheless, the arrest stays on her record, and the prosecution moves on, until the case is resolved.

A woman's sister gets beat up by her boyfriend.  She was the one who set them up, so she goes over to his house and rings the bell.  No one answers.  She leaves and calls the cops.  The boyfriend also calls the cops and says that she broke his window (she didn't).  He gets arrested for domestic violence and assault and she gets arrested for criminal mischief.

The attitude of the police seems to be I arrest them and let the issue of proof be decided by the lawyers.  I understand where the police are coming from, but I think they are failing to consider all of the consequences that attend an arrest.  The first woman was a permanent resident.  For her, even the arrest can have consequences.  The second woman was suspended from her job, without pay, until the case is cleared up.  People who work for a public union have a clause in their contract that they have to report an arrest within a certain number of days.  Many of them get terminated for failing to make this report.  Many of these types of cases will eventually get dismissed and sealed rendering the arrest a nullity that in most circumstances does not have to be reported.  However, to get a job with the military, police, and other government jobs, even sealed arrest records are fair game.  This is to say nothing of the cost of defense and, for some, the discomfort of a night or more in jail.

Comments

[ken]

both of the cases you described are she said he said,very hard to judge by police,in a small town this might not happen,but in n.y. city even the cop's look like crooks

[Lightfoot Letters]

 Interesting thoughts of logic on illogical behavior. As a liberal is this you?   Liberal and liberalism:  Attitude, philosophy, or movement that has as its core concern the development of personal freedom, popular sovereignty, right of rebellion against oppression,  free markets, free trade, and the exercise of free will.  One of its central theses has long been that a government's claim to authority is justified only if the government can show those who live under it, that it secures their freedom, concerned to protect their life, liberty and property. The government that governs least governs best. Freedom of conscience, limited government that does not try to re-distribute wealth or goods. Benefits and burdens are distributed justly when government allows every individual the freedom to do what he chooses to do for himself and others