Props to TQ, he's spot on about this.
Opinion by Sean Barsik, opinion contributor for MSN
I recently saw of a man lying quietly on a public park bench during the day. Someone had called the police, claiming someone was sleeping.
When the officer arrived, the man was awake, calm, and simply looking at the sky. He asked the officer if he was being accused of a crime. The officer said no. He asked whether lying on a bench was illegal. Again, the officer said no.
Then the man declined to provide identification, stating plainly: “If I’m not breaking the law, I’m not identifying myself.”
The officer responded, “Are you going to give me your name?” The man said no. The officer said, “Then you’re under arrest.”
That was it. No crime or justification, just a refusal to submit to authority without cause — treated as a crime in itself.
What made this encounter even more striking was how calm and civil it was. Neither the officer nor the individual escalated the situation. There was no aggressive behavior, no raised voices, no resistance. The man complied peacefully with the arrest, despite the clear violation of his rights.
And that’s the point — this was the best-case scenario. A person temporarily lost his freedom for no reason, suffered no physical harm and was calm throughout.
Yet the harm was still substantial. His rights were violated in the open, and the system offered him no real protection — only the right to seek recourse after the fact.
The potential for this to escalate was immense, but the fact that it didn’t only makes the reality more disturbing.
That interaction, while common, is a clear window into a larger problem: We talk about “individual rights” as if they were protections. But in practice, they function more like legal defenses we have to assert after the damage is done. And by that point, it’s already too late for many people to be made whole.
As a lawyer, I understand the importance of law enforcement officers having the tools to do their job. They operate under pressure and face complex, high-risk situations. But that’s exactly why there must be systems in place that reinforce accountability, not vague thresholds that only matter in court filings months later.
Let’s be honest: Most people don’t know when they’re legally required to provide ID. And many officers don’t explain it.
The standard is “reasonable suspicion” — a constitutional requirement for detaining someone and, by extension, demanding identification. But in practice, officers rarely articulate this threshold clearly, if at all.
Meanwhile, citizens are expected to comply or face arrest, even if they were never told that a detention was in effect or that the law required compliance.
This creates a dangerous legal fallacy in practice: that individuals are free not to identify themselves unless they are lawfully detained, but also that they may be arrested for exercising that freedom even when there is no clearly stated basis for detention.
The result is a false choice: identify yourself or go to jail, regardless of whether the officer has met the legal threshold to make that demand. In real life, compliance is not optional, even when you’re right. And when asserting your rights still leads to arrest, those rights cease to function as protections and instead become risks you take for speaking up.
This disconnect isn’t just a communication failure; it’s a structural imbalance. Citizens are held strictly accountable for knowing and obeying the law under the doctrine that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Yet there is no equivalent burden on the government to educate the public or ensure that its agents meet the same legal standards in real time.
Even more troubling, officers are empowered to interpret and apply the law on the spot, without the level of legal training required to even give advice on that same law. A citizen can’t legally explain someone’s rights without a license to practice, but officers can act on their own interpretation of those rights with force and arrest authority, and often there is no recourse for the person harmed.
This is not a call to limit policing — just to make the authority we grant law enforcement reflect the principles of justice we claim to uphold.
If an officer is invoking the power of the state to detain someone, then he or she should, at a bare minimum, be required to articulate the legal basis for that detention. If the legal obligation to comply hinges on whether reasonable suspicion exists, then those being asked for ID should be told that such suspicion has been formed.
Otherwise, we are conditioning people to comply blindly or risk being punished for asserting rights they were never told they had.
We need real-time accountability. Body cameras should be required to be on for all public interactions. Officers should be required to state, on the record, the specific facts that generated reasonable suspicion before requesting identification. And individuals should be clearly informed that they are being detained and that their legal obligation to comply has been triggered.
But accountability can’t stop at policy recommendations. There must be real consequences for violating individual rights. Without it, there’s no meaningful motivation for officers to fully understand the scope and limits of the authority they have been given.
The absence of accountability creates room for negligence, and worse, indifference. If we expect officers to apply their power judiciously, we must create structures that reward good judgment and address misconduct directly. Otherwise, we aren’t just failing to prevent violations — we’re incentivizing them.
This isn’t radical. It doesn’t interfere with legitimate police work. It simply ensures that authority is exercised within a clear framework — one that respects the public’s rights, instead of asking them to figure out whether they were violated after being handcuffed.
Transparency is not a burden. It is the cost of legitimate power. If we want a justice system that protects the rights it promises, then we need to stop treating those rights as courtroom arguments and start treating them as obligations that bind everyone — especially those with the power to take them away.
Sean Barsik, Esq., is an attorney practicing in Bethlehem, Pa.
Opinion by Sean Barsik, opinion contributor for MSN
I recently saw of a man lying quietly on a public park bench during the day. Someone had called the police, claiming someone was sleeping.
When the officer arrived, the man was awake, calm, and simply looking at the sky. He asked the officer if he was being accused of a crime. The officer said no. He asked whether lying on a bench was illegal. Again, the officer said no.
Then the man declined to provide identification, stating plainly: “If I’m not breaking the law, I’m not identifying myself.”
The officer responded, “Are you going to give me your name?” The man said no. The officer said, “Then you’re under arrest.”
That was it. No crime or justification, just a refusal to submit to authority without cause — treated as a crime in itself.
What made this encounter even more striking was how calm and civil it was. Neither the officer nor the individual escalated the situation. There was no aggressive behavior, no raised voices, no resistance. The man complied peacefully with the arrest, despite the clear violation of his rights.
And that’s the point — this was the best-case scenario. A person temporarily lost his freedom for no reason, suffered no physical harm and was calm throughout.
Yet the harm was still substantial. His rights were violated in the open, and the system offered him no real protection — only the right to seek recourse after the fact.
The potential for this to escalate was immense, but the fact that it didn’t only makes the reality more disturbing.
That interaction, while common, is a clear window into a larger problem: We talk about “individual rights” as if they were protections. But in practice, they function more like legal defenses we have to assert after the damage is done. And by that point, it’s already too late for many people to be made whole.
As a lawyer, I understand the importance of law enforcement officers having the tools to do their job. They operate under pressure and face complex, high-risk situations. But that’s exactly why there must be systems in place that reinforce accountability, not vague thresholds that only matter in court filings months later.
Let’s be honest: Most people don’t know when they’re legally required to provide ID. And many officers don’t explain it.
The standard is “reasonable suspicion” — a constitutional requirement for detaining someone and, by extension, demanding identification. But in practice, officers rarely articulate this threshold clearly, if at all.
Meanwhile, citizens are expected to comply or face arrest, even if they were never told that a detention was in effect or that the law required compliance.
This creates a dangerous legal fallacy in practice: that individuals are free not to identify themselves unless they are lawfully detained, but also that they may be arrested for exercising that freedom even when there is no clearly stated basis for detention.
The result is a false choice: identify yourself or go to jail, regardless of whether the officer has met the legal threshold to make that demand. In real life, compliance is not optional, even when you’re right. And when asserting your rights still leads to arrest, those rights cease to function as protections and instead become risks you take for speaking up.
This disconnect isn’t just a communication failure; it’s a structural imbalance. Citizens are held strictly accountable for knowing and obeying the law under the doctrine that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Yet there is no equivalent burden on the government to educate the public or ensure that its agents meet the same legal standards in real time.
Even more troubling, officers are empowered to interpret and apply the law on the spot, without the level of legal training required to even give advice on that same law. A citizen can’t legally explain someone’s rights without a license to practice, but officers can act on their own interpretation of those rights with force and arrest authority, and often there is no recourse for the person harmed.
This is not a call to limit policing — just to make the authority we grant law enforcement reflect the principles of justice we claim to uphold.
If an officer is invoking the power of the state to detain someone, then he or she should, at a bare minimum, be required to articulate the legal basis for that detention. If the legal obligation to comply hinges on whether reasonable suspicion exists, then those being asked for ID should be told that such suspicion has been formed.
Otherwise, we are conditioning people to comply blindly or risk being punished for asserting rights they were never told they had.
We need real-time accountability. Body cameras should be required to be on for all public interactions. Officers should be required to state, on the record, the specific facts that generated reasonable suspicion before requesting identification. And individuals should be clearly informed that they are being detained and that their legal obligation to comply has been triggered.
But accountability can’t stop at policy recommendations. There must be real consequences for violating individual rights. Without it, there’s no meaningful motivation for officers to fully understand the scope and limits of the authority they have been given.
The absence of accountability creates room for negligence, and worse, indifference. If we expect officers to apply their power judiciously, we must create structures that reward good judgment and address misconduct directly. Otherwise, we aren’t just failing to prevent violations — we’re incentivizing them.
This isn’t radical. It doesn’t interfere with legitimate police work. It simply ensures that authority is exercised within a clear framework — one that respects the public’s rights, instead of asking them to figure out whether they were violated after being handcuffed.
Transparency is not a burden. It is the cost of legitimate power. If we want a justice system that protects the rights it promises, then we need to stop treating those rights as courtroom arguments and start treating them as obligations that bind everyone — especially those with the power to take them away.
Sean Barsik, Esq., is an attorney practicing in Bethlehem, Pa.
