When police are investigating a reported crime, they can ask for ID and arrest if you don’t cooperate.
However a report of legal activity is merely that and should be handled by the dispatch.
E.g., if someone calls the cops and says “There are people driving on the highway”, the cops don’t go pull everyone over. The dispatcher should explain that this is legal and not to report such info to the police.
>When police are investigating a reported crime, they can ask for ID and arrest if you don’t cooperate.
They can also, according to *that*sort of thinking, ignore the Fourth Amendment.
Far too many people will excuse police action (especially if it starts legitimately); far too many people weekly acquiesce to any pretense of authority (as opposed to standing with manly firmness holding to the Righteousness of Justice).
As an example:
I live in New Mexico, an open-carry state. I was once exercising that right at a social gathering where I apparently “made some people nervous” and one leader, a man whom I respect, asked me to put it in my car: I acquiesced, believing that the entire situation had been resolved [this was a Wednesday night].
Not so, though; several of the leaders of this social gathering had a meeting about me [I was not present] and they called my National Guard unit [I was enlisted at the time]. No apparently this story made its way through the rumor-mills of my old unit and then someone called the police telling them that I was “at my house” and “waving a gun around.” I assume this call was made on the Friday, because that’s when the police showed up at my place, weapons drawn.
I happened to be away at this time, which in hindsight is probably a very good thing. Anyway the police came onto the residence’s property (I live in an apartment) and were looking in a van with tinted windows when that vehicle’s owner [and incidentally the landlady] asked why they were there and what they were doing. The officer’s only reply was to ask if I lived there and to tell the lady to “get in the house.”
She said that I did live there but that I wasn’t present at the time, and again she asked the officer for identification which he refused to supply. Now at this point you must realize that this officer is on very shaky legal ground; as I understand it an officer in execution of his duties must supply [adequate] identification such as Driver’s license and badge number. It is also good to consider that there was no warrant issued at all regarding this incident; AND THAT ALL [POLICE] ACTION WAS BASED ON HEARSAY.
The landlady’s husband forbade her from filing a complaint regarding the officer’s actions; IMO precisely because of the circular-reasoning that: authorities must be obeyed because they are authorities and no-one who is unsuitable for an authority position would be given a position of authority so their merely holding a position-of-authority is proof of both their adequacy and the validity of that authority.
(i.e. one of those Christians who thinks that “render unto Cesar that which is Caesar’s” means that any defiance or disagreement over what Cesar claims to be Caesar’s is unchristian... despite that Jesus also said “Render unto God that which is God’s” and there exists the distinct possibility that Caesar may try to claim that which is God’s: like in Daniel.)