Part 2 about BDSM Legal Rights. So, what do you do?
When it comes to your legal rights, the most important thing to do is to stay calm. If you are the dominant, take care of your partner first. Offer the officer(s) a chair, accept that they will want to make sure you are not going to run away and ask them to wait a few minutes so you can take care of your partner and – if you need to – either put on some clothes or change into something more appropriate (in other words, get out of your kinky outfit if you are wearing one).
If you are wearing a kinky outfit, think about the image you are projecting. The officer(s) are trained to look for certain signs of potential violence. Like it or not, a leather jacket, spiked collars, whips on your belt, chains and handcuffs are such signs, regardless of your legal rights. Whatever you try to explain, more than half of of what you are about to say will make very little sense due to your studs, spikes and boots. In all fairness, to the officer you look like Kermit the Frog explaining the United States foreign policy. Changing clothes and more importantly re-assuring (and untying) your submissive partner is important and will buy you time to calm down yourself.
Next, people who are into erotic power exchange should educate themselves and be aware of the dilemmas, sketched elsewhere in this section, law officers are confronted with. There will almost always be a need for education, but one can hardly expect the officer in question to rely on information from what he/she sees as an offender or victim. Hence in a crisis situation such as an arrest, do not try to educate, because it will not help. Instead, try to understand a few simple facts:
* the officer involved has all rights to see that as trying to talk yourself out of the situation. They cannot help that. For very good reasons they are trained that way and when you yourself are the victim of a fraud scheme or a rapist, you better be glad they are being trained the way they are;
* law officers are almost always in a hurry. The main reason for bringing you (or asking you to come) to a station is because that will allow others to take over AND create sufficient time for explanation. Their job is to be on the streets; others do the talking. Plus, the officer involved has been trained not to take risks. Talking to you may very well be a legal risk for the officer, that – at a later stage – may backfire on him or her personally. Again, officers have been trained not to do that and procedures do not allow them to;
* the officer will do wise to explain his/her situation briefly. That leads to mutual understanding of the situation but do not assume he or she will or even can. If he/she does not do that, ask. If you, as a couple or individual, are confronted with a situation like this, you may want to point the officer(s) in question to external neutral sources for information (such as this one). In any case: always point your lawyer and police officers to organizations that have experience with assisting and educating lawyers and law officers in erotic power exchange related cases. The POWERotics Foundation has a long track record in many different countries, but there other resources as well. For Canada for example this might be the Toronto Safer S/M Project. For the USA the National Leather Association, a nation wide organization with a separate law-project, may also be a very good choice.
Finally if all this happens in a club, bar or during a munch or event and you are the person responsible: this is NO time for activism. The officers involved will not go away because you tell them to and they have neither the time nor the interest to listen to your arguments. Be reasonable, explain and do the talking at the appropriate time and place to the appropriate people. In the meantime, attend to your guests and use your position to make sure the situation is being dealt with professionally.
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