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Minnesota Police Tase and Arrest Black Man for Sitting in a Public Space

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steve_davis8/28/2014 12:27:28 pm PDT

My assumption has always been that the cops have the right to ask you your name, pretty much in any public venue. Now, they don’t have the right to ask you for i.d., and if you are on a bicycle and they ask for a driver’s license, you can politely inform them you are not operating a motor vehicle, while handing them a library card or, as I once did, my Astronomical League card. And of course I’m white and middle class, so my working basis has always been to cede to some minor bullshit in order to avoid finding myself being ass-raped by a corrupt county sheriff, but maybe the lawyers here can chime in: don’t the police have some kind of constitutionally established right to ask you to identify yourself in encounters?