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A new Jussie Smollet case? Another Nurse Karen versus black kids on rental bikes?
Former 'The Bear' writer handcuffed on train after alleged complaint from white woman
Alex O'Keefe is a writer for FX's The Bear and a former speechwriter for Elizabeth Warren. He's also black. On September 18 he was apparently arrested and taken off an MTA train when a white woman told him to correct his posture and he refused.
At least, that's how it's reported on Black Enterprise, which obviously has the most inflammatory version. Most other news sites, such ABC (above) and Newsweek ('The Bear' Writer Arrested on Train After Complaint From White Woman) also seem to be describing what at first glance is a pretty egregious case of "White Karen sics cops on a black man for being uppity." So egregious that I was immediately suspicious. I mean, really? A white woman just points her finger and has a black man arrested for his "posture"? In 2025, in the Bronx?
Well, reading the ABC and Newsweek articles, there are a few additional details.
So he was not actually arrested - he was cuffed and "detained," then allowed to board the next train.
Supposedly one of the woman's friends said "You’re not the minority anymore.”
There is plenty here to make this another scissors incident. I have watched enough bodycam footage on YouTube to imagine it going several ways. Maybe Karen really was being a bitch and didn't like seeing a black guy "manspreading." The cops arrive in authoritarian asshole mode, O'Keefe protests, winds up cuffed and taken off the train.
Alternatively, O'Keefe was spreading himself across two seats, the old lady wanted to sit in one of them, O'Keefe decides no white lady is going to make him move, and when the cops arrive and ask him to please move his feet, he goes into Aggrieved Asshole mode.
Or something in-between. I have seen variations of both these scenarios play out. I doubt this will blow up into a huge story since O'Keefe wasn't actually arrested, but I have definitely seen it in several places now, in some cases described as a near-lynching and something something Trump.
The woman's friend saying "You’re not the minority anymore” is one of those details that strikes me as so on the nose (remember "This is MAGA country"?) that I just don't know what to think. Is it fabricated? Did someone really decide to offer up the perfect soundbite like that? Or was it in the context of a longer exchange between her and O'Keefe (a context conveniently omitted in all reporting)?
Regardless of the merits of his claims:
I see this behavior (on bodycam videos) from my clients all the time, and it's always counterproductive. Even if someone is 100% in the right, there is no situation made better by being argumentative and belligerent with the cops. Once cops have shown up, the situation has gone to shit, and being a dickhead doesn't improve things. Passive resistance, petulance, argumentativeness, active resistance, outright assault on the cops... not going to help. It sucks, but being polite and pulling the "yes, sir, no sir" card generally keeps things from getting worse.
It's especially baffling from clients who claim they are in fear of the cops killing them at any second due to their race. What, the cop is going to decide to not kill you because you're so obnoxious? Very logical. It's reinforced every time I see bodycams of bored, time-killing cops doing a traffic stop during daylight where they're trying to give a speeding ticket (and do the usual cop thing of sniffing around for something else). Instead of giving a name, getting a ticket, and going on about their lives, that's the time clients decide the smart thing to do is refuse to give a name (or give an incredibly fake name and DOB), refuse to hand over a driver's license, and get belligerent, thus turning a speeding ticket into PC for arrest and a search of the car.
What's baffling? The cops are trying to make them eat shit (that is, to yield in a monkey dominance game) with all the 'yes sir' and 'no sir' stuff, and in the moment they would rather take the risk of greater consequences than do so "voluntarily". Probably especially culturally relevant to blacks, though I suspect all but the most beaten-down milquetoast PMCs dislike showing their belly that way. Law-n-order conservatives claim to think it's fine, but I think mostly they don't envision themselves on the wrong side of that.
See also: “do you know who you’re dealing with?” and “am I being detained?”
Lots of people will do unreasonable things when they sense a dominance game.
Aren't there a few cases where "am I being detained?" is actually a reasonable/correct response? Pretty sure it's followed by "if no, leave, if yes, ask for a lawyer".
It's definitely overused, though.
There's "am I being detained? If so, I would like to know what for" which is not the same at all as "AM I BEING DETAINED!?!?!?!? AM I BEING DETAINED!?!?!? AM I BEING DETAINED?!?!?!" and I would wager at least $100 that the former gets a lot better results than the latter, even in otherwise sketchy circumstances.
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"I'd like to go. Is that alright?" is probably better, maybe followed by "is there anything specific you need from me?" However, you must wait to deploy this until some "reasonable" (ill-defined but it is what it is) period of time has passed and the "basics" are fulfilled. For example, you must show ID in most states IIRC when asked, and usually are expected to reasonably comply with stuff. But if it's been, say, 10 minutes and questions are going in circles, or you're waiting on some abstract officer task, I think it's actually a great moment to either save a little time and be on your way because it was just trivial, or discern if there's a decent chance you're going to be in actual trouble, in which case you can and should adjust your behavior and compliance accordingly.
The reason I emphasize the waiting and basics is because there do exist some reasonable tasks that are mostly harmless but may take a little bit of time - in those cases asking too early risks a false positive alert on your part. And again it helps to be a little more conversational, while still figuring out what's going through the cop's head, which is the half of the point. (The other half is the cop is just fishing for stuff, realizes it's only fishing and won't become something more, and cuts their losses and ends the interaction)
Edit: My comment mostly assumes that you are in fact following the law, or at least not notably breaking it. If you're potentially in deep shit, and the cop has a decent chance of discovering such, there's less harm to immediately clamming up, because any marginal benefit in the off-chance the cop leaves ignorant is outweighed by the chance of you fucking up with a continued interaction or cooperation. Also, you generally should be polite, but you're not required to be super helpful.
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Yes, although I would avoid that specific language because it's a meme and will trigger some cops into thinking "oh, you're one of those guys." The key is to be calm while doing it instead of being belligerent.
The context of the "Am I being detained?!!@#!" meme is a SCOTUS case which held, laughably, that a person who every regular person would determine was not free to leave was determined based on a reasonable person standard to know they were free to leave. In that case, armed government agents boarded a bus at a scheduled stop and asked passengers questions and then asked one passenger if they could search his bag. They leaned on the fact in Bostick the police informed the person he could refuse the bag search (but not that he were free to leave). Another case followed 10 years later which emphasized the fact that the reasonable person standard is the test and that government agents are not required to inform anyone they can leave or refuse a search. I don't think I've found a single regular, reasonable person in the real world who would have thought they could have told the cops to move out of their way blocking the exit because they knew they were free to leave and like to go. In fact, this is patently ridiculous, but the SCOTUS soldiered forward. So lawyers recommended to people to ask if they were being detained to prevent that sort of silliness. It was picked up and turned into a meme so that anytime some belligerent person was arguing or resisting cops, they would shout "Am I being detained?" at the cops.
There are more cases from the SCOTUS which essentially require formulaic statements or else those pesky constitutional rights aren't so much rights, e.g., requiring affirmative declarations to trigger your right to remain silent or specifically asking for a a lawyer using that specific word. The last few decades of rulings on the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments are largely cases where the SCOTUS has gouged out exceptions to precedent so that police are protected and criminals are not protected.
It's been a long time since I spoke with police in a situation which didn't involve a client and on behalf of a client (and a while since I did that, too), but what I've always told others is to remain calm, tell the cops you understand they're doing a job, but that you do not answer any questions from police without an attorney present, that you do not consent to any searches whatsoever, and that you would like to leave and ask if you are free to go. If they say you cannot leave, tell them you would like to speak to a lawyer and will not answer any questions. Hell, given how bad some SCOTUS decisions in the last 8 years or so, you may even want to specifically say "I'd like to invoke my 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendment rights."
Does this mean you could increase your chance of getting a speeding ticket instead of a warning? Probably.
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The only time I'd recommend asking that question is in a situation where the encounter has already gone on way longer than a normal traffic stop and the officer is doing something indicating he's fishing for something more than a traffic ticket, like asking a lot of unnecessary questions or asking to search the vehicle. But I see bodycam videos of people asking a few minutes into a routine stop, or refusing to answer normal questions, and I wonder why they feel the need to unnecessarily piss the guy off.
the "normal questions" during traffic stops are fishing expeditions
the reason a cop is asking you if you knew how fast you were going, if you saw that red light/stop sign, if you've been drinking, etc., aren't because they're interested in your day
furthermore, due to relatively recent SCOTUS decisions, telling someone they should answer questions from cops because otherwise you'll piss them off and I assume, perhaps, stop talking or ask for a lawyer if they cross some line from "normal questions" is just bad
legal advicelegal information (this is obviously not "legal advice" on this board)I don't think you understand what a fishing expedition is. The questions you cited are directly related to either why you got pulled over or some related traffic offense. If he starts asking questions about illegal gambling or a string of burglaries apropos of nothing, that would be a fishing expedition. In any event, in nearly 25 years of driving I've never once been asked if I knew how fast I was going or why I had been pulled over. Traffic offenses are strict liability, and if they have enough to ticket me an admission isn't going to help much. I have been asked if I was drinking, though. And you know how often I was drinking? 100% of the time; the reason I was asked is because the officer already smelled alcohol. But I've never been asked that when I hadn't been drinking, and there have been plenty of times when I was drinking that I wasn't asked that, including on St. Patrick's Day at 11 pm.
Anyway, in these instances, refusing to answer questions doesn't get you anything that a simple "no" doesn't, other than irritating the officer. Telling a cop you didn't see the stop sign isn't going to be used in court later to nail your ass to the wall. Trying to maintain a cordial atmosphere is more important in some circumstances than asserting every single right you have.
For some questions that's true it's wrong to call them "fishing expeditions," but the cops are fishing for you to incriminate yourself with their questions. Regular people use "fishing expedition" in a different way and questions which may in some way relate to the reason a cop is asking the question would fall under it. A question like "Where are you coming from?" is not related to why you got pulled over for speeding despite it being a "normal question" which is regularly asked. The same is true for any number of other questions regularly asked by police to people they've pulled over.
Not admitting to the offense you're being pulled over may not "help much," but admitting to it does indeed make it more difficult to contest it. Answering "no" to a question which may be a lie does indeed make you worse off from any case which arises from the interaction. Government agents aren't asking questions in these situations because they're trying to be friendly or create a cordial environment, they're attempting to use social pressure and the power of their position to get you to put yourself in a worse position. Full stop.
Regular people, let alone lawyers, really struggle with what are "normal questions" or "fishing expeditions," and rarely know when they're harming themselves for no benefit. Giving them bright lines in these situations is far better guidance.
Being polite and calm and telling police officers you do not answer questions from police without a lawyer present may not create a "cordial environment," and it may even increase the likelihood some petty cop gives you a ticket over a warning, but it's better to get the ticket than stumble your way into serious problems. The more you talk the more chance mistaken cops can hear consent or reason to make your night even worse.
Your statements are just bad legal guidance.
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