So-called first-amendment auditing is a common hobby in the United States (and a few other countries): People going with cameras to public places to see if their right to film in public is respected by the police, security guards, federal employees, and so on.
Usually experienced auditors are very well-versed in the relevant laws that pertain to public photography and the rights of citizens and the extents of police authority, and thus they know, for example, when they need or don't need to present their ID, or when a detainment by the police is legally sound.
Except for one very common mistake and confusion that I have noticed in a lot of First Amendment audit videos related to that.
You see, in most if not all states of the United States there are laws that state that in order for the police to be able to demand someone's ID (and thus issue a sanction if he refuses to produce it), they need to have reasonable articulable suspicion ("RAS") that a specific crime has been committed, is being committed, or is going to be committed. "Articulable" in this context means that the police has to be able to name the particular crime in question. They can't just demand ID from someone for an unspecified "crime" that they cannot clearly articulate. They cannot demand ID from someone just because they suspect him of "some crime" if they can't specify which one. They especially cannot demand ID if they don't suspect any crime at all.
The very common mistake I have seen auditors do is confuse it with the regulations on when the police can detain someone. (Detaining someone is different from arresting someone. Someone who is merely detained is not yet arrested.) Many of them seem to think that "reasonable articulable suspicion (of a particular crime)" also applies to detainment, not just to demanding ID.
In most if not all places in the United States that's not so. This is a confusion of two different things.
In general the police does not need to be able to articulate a particular crime in order to temporarily detain someone. It is enough for them to have a reasonable suspicion that some crime might have happened or is being committed, even if they have yet not investigated it to the extent that they can specifically name the crime. (Usually court rulings on this matter use wording like "considering the totality of circumstances" etc.)
Many auditors seem to think that the police cannot detain someone unless they can articulate a specific crime by name. This is most definitely not so. It wouldn't even make sense. If the police has just arrived and something suspicious is happening, or someone has reported something suspicious happening, the police most definitely has the right to detain all suspects until they investigate in more detail what exactly has happened and whether an actual crime has been committed that warrants an arrest.
It wouldn't make much sense if they couldn't do that. It would mean that criminals would have to just be let go if the police cannot articulate at that precise moment an exact crime by name. It should be rather obvious that if someone is suspected of having committed or is committing a crime, that someone should be detained until it's determined if that's actually the situation or not. That someone shouldn't just be let go. They should be let go only when it's determined that no crime has happened.
"RAS" applies to demanding ID, not to detainments. The rules governing detainment are different and separate from that. First Amendment auditors should really learn the difference.
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