I have written about this very subject several times before, but I just keep encountering the same misconception again and again, so I decided to write about it again.
In the United States, in most if not all states, cops need "reasonable articulable suspicion" (ie. "RAS") of a crime before they can legally demand your ID, or arrest you for failure to provide it. This means that they need to be able to mention a particular crime by name, and their suspicion of you possibly having committed that crime needs to be reasonable, considering the circumstances. (This requirement and limitation is a direct consequence of the protections provided by the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution.)
However, many people (not just so-called "First Amendment auditors", but lot of other people as well) think that the "RAS" requirement extends to detaining people as well. They just keep repeating it over and over in their videos, when they have been detained by some cop: "You need reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime in order to detain someone, else it's an illegal detainment."
No they don't!
They only require reasonable suspicion that some crime may have been committed, and that you might have been involved. It has to be reasonable considering the circumstances, of course (they can't just go and detain people willy-nilly because they feel like it), but at that point in time they don't need to be able to specify a particular crime by name.
This is a so-called "investigative detainment": In other words, detaining someone (on reasonable suspicion) for the duration of an investigation. In other words: Investigate what actually happened, and temporarily stop the suspects (and thus possible culprits) from escaping for the duration of that investigation. They don't need to yet be able to mention a particular crime by name before they have actually investigated what happened.
Rather obviously cops should have this right. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise.
Assume this kind of scenario: The cops are called to a scene because of some kind of commotion or altercation, with the caller not being sure what exactly happened, but someone might be hurt, or something might be broken or something. When the cops arrive on the scene they find three people loudly and angrily arguing with each other over something.
Suppose that what had actually happened is that one of them had stolen something from one of the others, and punched him in the face while doing so, and the third guy had joined in in order to stop it and make a "citizen's arrest" to stop the culprit from escaping.
The thing is: The cops still don't know any of this because they just arrived, and whoever called didn't know what exactly happened. The cops don't even yet know if some crime has actually happened, much less which crime.
Suppose the culprit now says: "Am I being detained?" and the cops answer with "yes", and the culprit then says "what crime do you suspect me of committing", and the cops say "we are still investigating what happened." Now assume that what the "RAS" people were saying were true: The culprit could just say "you can't detain me if you can't articulate a crime I have committed", and that forced the cops to release him, and he proceeded to run away, thus escaping being arrested.
Would that make any sense? Of course not.
The cops have the right to detain all the three people involved until they have had the chance of investigating what happened. This gives them a chance of hearing what the victim and the other guy have to say, perhaps find the stolen object, perhaps see and photograph the bruises caused by the hit, and thus then have enough evidence to arrest the culprit, now with an actual articulable crime suspicion.
In short: Cops need "RAS" in order to demand someone's ID, but they only need "RS", without the "A", in order to detain someone for the duration of an investigation.
Why can't people (particularly professional "First Amendment auditors") get this straight?
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