OU law organizations hosted a panel on Wednesday to discuss personal rights during police-citizen interactions, including rights during a traffic stop and a stop and frisk, and how to behave when around police.
The Know Your Rights panel was co-hosted by the OU Law American Constitution Society and the Black Law Student Association. The panel was moderated by BLSA vie president and ACS co-president Alyssa Sloan with an opening statement from Adam Hines and instructions from OU Law juris doctor candidate Camille Burge.
The panel featured local attorney Lorenzo Banks, Norman Mayor Breea Clark, Executive Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma Tamya Cox-Touré and OU Law Professor Joseph Thai as panelists.
“When a community knows its rights, we’re all safer for it. Knowing our rights, knowing how we as a community can invoke those rights, is a way to lead together, can promote fairness in our own community,” OU Law student Adam Hines said.
Thai began the panel by giving a history of Miranda rights as well as some comments on the right of silence.
“Ironically, if you want to invoke your right of silence, you must speak up,” Thai said.
When asked about how law students can make an impact, Banks advised reaching out to communities where they have connections, as well as seeking the guidance of a more experienced local lawyer.
Cox-Touré mentioned the Mobile Justice App, a tool to instantly record police encounters on the cloud.
The ACLU also provided Know Your Rights information sheets that included advice for various police encounters. The information included strategies when questioned by police, like immediately asking for a lawyer upon arrest, being searched by police, arrests, police use of force and language.
“It’s the people who need to know these rights that don’t,” Clark said.
While Banks talked about reporting instances of racial and sexists slurs to your local government, Clark said that sexual harassment must be added to that list.
“I would add sexual harassment to that as well, for either gender,” Clark said. “I mean, that needs to be taken so seriously and we don't enough and I'm done with it. So I hope that you are too and be an ally in those instances.”
