In the March/April 2024 Combat Handguns magazine, we have another article called “What To Say To The Police” by the vetran Massad Ayoob. Ayoob writes great thought provoking articles and his experience provides him great insight.
I’ve written about this topic in the past here and here, so I’ll try and focus on a couple of different aspects. In general, this is a controversial topic that elicits emotional responses. What concealed carriers want to know is what to say. Quoting from the article: “Andrew [Branca] agrees that a brief statement can be helpful, but worries you may not be thinking straight under stress. […] Andrew says getting arrested is the least of concerns; the point is not to spend your life in prison.”
Unfortunately, in a caption to an Armed Citizen article, the following is stated: “Notice how many people in the “Armed Citizen” column aren’t even arrested? Does anyone think that would have been the case if the “didn’t say anything to the police” after shooting someone?”
I feel this caption is very misleading (it is also repeated in the article). The only way to properly understand if the people in the “Armed Citizen” column did the right thing is to create a report where the people and location where protected (i.e., made anonymous), provide a transcript of the discussion with law enforcement, elminate the outcome (e.g., arrested, not arrested, or criminally charged), and provide this report to various criminal defense attorneys. Ask the attorneys if the suspect said too much to law enforcement. If you read my blog post on Annie Duke’s book, you’ll know that making a bad decision and getting a good outcome is still a bad decision. How many of these “Armed Citizen” suspects talked too much with law enforcement in the opinion of criminal defense attorneys?
Also in the article, there is a discussion about Marc Victor and a brief statement. It is stated that both Victor and Ayoob recommend a brief statement if it was a “good shoot.” The following is then stated. “If someone doesn’t know what constitutes a good shoot, why are they carrying a gun?” Again, I find this misleading. It isn’t whether you think it is a good shoot, it is a question of how it is presented to a group of reasonable people and whether they think it is a good shoot. The whole point of saying nothing, giving a brief statement, or spilling your guts to law enforcement is about that.
Lastly, there is this statement in the article: “At the start, let’s be clear that speaking ot the police is good avice only for those who have acted justifiably. It is certainly not the advice that defense lawyers give to their general clientele, who a high percentage of the time are in fact guily of the crime or at least some lesser included offenses.” Unfortunately, I can use this statement to justify not talking to law enforcement. Guess who law enforcement mostly deals with? Guilty people. The more information you give them, the more the confirmation bias kicks in – they started out assuming you were guilty of a crime and everything you say confirms their initial suspicion! Also, what you think is justified versus what reasonable people think is justified could be very different.
The bottom line is that a veteran law enforcement officer will get any ordinary civilian in stressful circumstances (more than likely, their first time in such circumstances) to sing like a canary. Really the only way to get this resolved is to print out something on the back of your lawyer’s card (if you carry a gun, you should have an attorny on retainer) that you can simply repeat over and over to the law enforcment officer. Marc J. Victor has such a card, but whether law enforcement and other criminal defense attorneys agree with what he writes is another matter.
In the end, the back and forth between law enforcement and criminal defense attorneys on this matter should be enough to convince a law-abiding ordinary civilian to seriously evaluate less-than-lethal options for self-defense.