Stop and Identify Statutes

With the recent spat of people exercising the full extent of their liberties and testing the authority of law enforcement (examples here and here), I thought it would be a good idea to investigate exactly how much information a person is required to give an officer when suspected of a crime. The path led to the interesting article on Stop and Identify statutes at Wikipedia.

Apparently in Illinois, when a person is suspected of a crime and stopped, an officer may "demand the name and address of the person and an explanation of his actions." The implication, of course, is that a person must truthfully give the officer their name and address. The statute says nothing about providing additional information or showing identification of any kind. Also significant is the fact that any questioning must take place close to the stopping place and within a reasonable time period.

Unfortunately, the Illinois statute doesn't specifically exclude the imperative of providing other information, like the one in Ohio does. However, I suspect you will have grounds to legally challenge any situation where an officer wants more information than is required from you.

Now, I'm not advocating everyone to go out there and challenge police officers every opportunity they can get. It's just important to recognize that although law enforcement officers have the authority to police the streets, they are given that authority by us, the people. They only have as much authority as given to them by the people, and those powers are detailed in statutes of state and federal law. The more we allow these powers to be exceeded, the more we allow our rights to be taken away from us. Know your rights.