Politely Decline to Speak to Police

This week in 1881, near Yreka in Siskiyou County, Charles Earl Bowles, an English born bandit know as Black Bart, committed his sixteenth robbery of a Wells Fargo stage coach. Mr. Bowles would go on to relieve the early armored cars of their loot another dozen times often leaving poems at the scene of his crimes.

Such audacity is hard to fathom today. Anonymity has become more difficult with the proliferation of security cameras and the use of modern investigative techniques ranging from the collection of DNA evidence to the mining of social media.

While we do not condone actions such as those carried out by Mr. Bowles, The Bruce Law Firm believes that you are the most important link in protecting your rights. If confronted by law enforcement, please follow these two simple rules. First, be polite. The officer is doing his job and it does not serve your interests to be confrontational. Second, politely decline to answer any questions. You are not going to talk yourself out of trouble. More likely, you will incriminate yourself in a crime you may not have committed.

Currently, The Bruce Law Firm has two clients in Siskiyou County. Neither is Black Bart.