The change could lead to fewer stops, purportedly for minor traffic violations, with the actual intent of searching the driver’s car for contraband such as drugs or guns.
If you don’t have any open warrants, officer stops asking you questions, cites you for whatever violation they pulled you over for, and you go on your way, dealing with that citation in the normal way.
Officer stops asking you questions, finds cause to arrest you, and you take a ride. You get to consult with an attorney from jail.
If there was cause to arrest you, you were going to take that ride anyway. Waiving your right to remain silent only firms up the officer’s grounds for arresting you and makes it more likely that you will be convicted.
Declining to answer questions without legan counsel and “ignoring any questions they may have” are two very different things. The former is an active assertion of your rights; the latter is not.
Also of note, police are not required to read you the Miranda warning immediately after arresting you. Often they do, to cover their ass, but they only need to read that warning before asking you questions related to the cause of the arrest. They can not read you the Miranda warning, and ask about what you had for lunch yesterday, get you talking about other things, in the hopes that you’ll get comfortable and spill some information related to the reason for your arrest.
It would proceed one of two ways:
If there was cause to arrest you, you were going to take that ride anyway. Waiving your right to remain silent only firms up the officer’s grounds for arresting you and makes it more likely that you will be convicted.
Declining to answer questions without legan counsel and “ignoring any questions they may have” are two very different things. The former is an active assertion of your rights; the latter is not.
Also of note, police are not required to read you the Miranda warning immediately after arresting you. Often they do, to cover their ass, but they only need to read that warning before asking you questions related to the cause of the arrest. They can not read you the Miranda warning, and ask about what you had for lunch yesterday, get you talking about other things, in the hopes that you’ll get comfortable and spill some information related to the reason for your arrest.
tl;dr: Shut the fuck up.