What you wrote is far more rational than the overwhelming majority of posts and likes in this thread. However, I will point out that it is incumbent on you to be willing to have a mature and rational discourse with curious cops, and this often begins with a statement that goes something like this, “Hey Officer, we have rather strict privacy laws that govern what patient information we can release. Help me understand the nature of your investigation so that I can better determine if I’m allowed to discuss this with you.” I’m far more likely to be helpful to an officer is trying to determine if the girl in bed 6 is being trafficked, than say an officer who is trying to determine if the drunk guy in bed 7 was the driver or passenger.
It started getting twisted when you posted the ridiculous and false claim that talking to the police, “can ONLY get you in trouble.” That’s insane. It really went off the rails when a forum moderator posted a video about not trying to talk your way out of an arrest as if it’s somehow pertinent to interactions with police as part of our jobs. Seriously, they couldn’t tell the difference between free legal advice to suspects being detained by the police versus how we as EPs should be interacting with cops as part of our jobs? So yes, some people should never talk to the police and a select few should probably even avoid eye contact.
There are literally hundreds of EP-police discussions each day that involve rational discourse about crimes committed in our communities. The overwhelming majority are legal, compliant with HIPAA, serve the greater good of our society, and come at no harm to the physician. In fact interacting with LE is such an integral part of our jobs as emergency physicians that our residencies often have shared didactic instruction with LE (ie range day, lectures on ballistics and wounding, SWAT operations, preservation of evidence, etc).
