politics

Yes. We need police in a society, as a force to prevent and stop crime. But what we have now across the US as police are shit. We need them to be rebuilt from the ground up as community policing with a focus on protecting people, not just enforcing violations.

ACAB makes sense with the system we have. But I kinda doubt we're going to get many tear down-rebuild efforts. Our best bet is to focus on stuff like this: institutional change in huge areas that change how police think and operate.

Any system of government will require some way to handle unlawful/harmful conduct, yeah. It's just a matter of making it not complete shit.

No idea if it would work in practice, but I once heard an idea where policing is a (mandatory?) duty for all citizens, but in regular rotation. Meaning, at any given time, some % of the population is now cops, and once your turn is up you're back to a regular person with no enforcement obligations or privileges. No idea if that would work in practice, but it would give people real consequences for being a shit cop. Nobody could just be a terrible cop in perpetuity.

For that scenario all you'd have to do is pay a lawyer to file a motion of discovery, and the charges will almost certainly be dropped. You could probably talk a paralegal to do it for cheap, or your jurisdiction might allow you to file it yourself.

It costs more to gather the evidence than they'll get from the fine.

I'm pretty sure "did we have a moment?" got me out of a minor ticket once.

I was out at a bar the other night with a bunch of fellow dads. I mentioned how I just got my son with the dikfore joke, figuring everyone knew what I was talking about.

One guy is like "I havent heard that one" and it was like time stood still. I was once again a middle school boy about to drop an embarrassment bomb onto someone, from which they would never recover. Everyone else seemed to sense it in the air because they all went silent too.

"You don't know the dikfore?"

We all know what comes next, and he realized what he had walked into the second it came out of his mouth. We all started cracking up, thinking it had been 30 years since the last time we were able to get a peer with that joke.

He still hasn't lived it down. He never will, as long as I'm still breathing.

Was it because my vehicle exceeded the weight limit with all of this updog I'm transporting?

yes you are under obligation to answer any questions for whatever reason no matter the state

You need to have brain damage to believe this is true. Police can detain you for whatever reason they might have, and refusing to answer them might cause them to place you under arrest, but you are not obligated to answer questions while you are under detention or arrest.

Sorry, that's arguably some bad advice. The most well known counterpoint is there in your Miranda Rights: you have the right to remain silent. That right exists under the 5th as the other comment mentions.

This applies to a traffic stop for most everything but name, address, and the required documents (insurance, driver's license). As to whether you have to sign a ticket, I can't say.

And of course this video is gold, watch it yearly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE