Kevin Fellows
July 5, 2019
Former Retired 2017 at Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
Can you be arrested for not talking to the police?
Sort of. There is no crime of “not talking to the police”. If you are arrested, rest assured, “Not talking to the police” won’t appear on your booking paperwork.
However, if you refuse to explain or answer questions to support certain circumstances or actions you took, your lack of communication may result in the police forming the opinion you have no excuse for whatever they are investigating, and result in your arrest.
What the heck? Ok. So a police officer hears a gunshot, runs around the corner to find you holding a pistol in your hand. You are standing over the body of someone who appears to have suffered a gunshot wound. Well, you may have fired your pistol while committing a robbery.
Or you may have fired your pistol to repel a robbery. Perhaps the person you shot was with another person, who ran off with the suspects knife or gun, leaving you to explain why you apparently shot an unarmed person.Maybe you witnessed the shooting, and drew your pistol for protection.
Maybe you were the shot person’s bodyguard, and reacted a little too slowly to the actual shooter. The suspect ran around the corner before the police arrived. Since you refuse to speak to the police, you’ll almost certainly go to jail under such a scenario while the investigation continues.
Caught slim jimming open a car? The officer runs the plate and quickly figures out you are not the owner of the car when he detains you. You refuse to speak to the officer in the field. The only question for him will be are you trying to steal the car, or only trying to steal items from inside the car.
If the car belongs to your friend who you have on speed dial on your phone, you’d do well to explain that to the officer. Refusing to talk will only make the officer assume that you were breaking the law when you were caught in the act.
Sure, the officer or detective may be able to figure out later that you had the owners permission to drive the car, or attempt to open it with a “slim jim” (a burglary tool if you aren't authorized to have it per 466 of CA Penal Code). If you had a valid reason for doing what you were doing, why wouldn’t you talk to the police?
Real life case example… Pulled someone over driving a Honda Accord. The driver wasn’t the registered owner, and the “key” was a screwdriver jammed into the ignition (commonly done to steal these particular Hondas). If the driver refused to speak to me, he goes to jail for RC (reasonable cause) 487d or 10851 vc pending further investigation.
Since he was able to explain that he was in the process of registering the car, and had recently retrieved it from a police impound lot after it was stolen and recovered, he was sent off on his merry way. I was able to call the police department and confirm his story.
Since the storage had been cleared out of the SVS (stolen vehicle system), I was not able to see the recent storage of the vehicle under authority of 22651c cvc (recovered stolen vehicle). Only with his help could I discover that he was telling the truth in a timely manner.
