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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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Cops should always, always, always be able to identify themselves. Can anyone tell me if it still qualifies as resisting arrest or refusing a lawful order if the officers directly refuse to identify themselves?
https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/8129/in-the-us-when-and-how-must-police-identify-themselves-during-an-arrest-what-a
So it looks like she would have been within her rights to resist. And, tbh, I wish she had. I was minding some kids recently in a public location and tried to form a plan of what to do if plainclothes ICE officers tried to roll up on us. The plan effectively amounted to mighty morph into a seagull; yell about how they're trying to kidnap these kids, they're pretending to be cops and refusing to identify because they're not cops, point out specific people and demand that they help me protect these kids from the kidnappers, get staff or security involved, be as difficult as possible, and basically make such a clusterfuck about it that these mfs decide to go work for Starbucks instead.
That's specific to Massachusetts police. If these were federal, they wouldn't be beholden to that statute, as it only applies to the commonwealth filing charges of resisting arrest. There is no federal law or statute requiring they identify themselves or agency. That being said, a lawyer likely could prove to a jury an individual was acting reasonably given the information available to them by resisting. That hangs on the hope that you survive the encounter and make it to a court. This is really a rock and a hard place scenario, particularly given the number of masked officers present. Everyone will have to make the call that they can live with or die by in the moment.
And so I just started blasting….