When a crime has taken place, everyone at the scene is going to be a bit on edge, be this the police officers, the people involved in the crime, and anyone that may have witnessed what took place. 

If you ever find yourself in this scenario, it can be helpful to know beforehand how you should be interacting with the police so that you can keep yourself and everyone else on the scene as safe as possible.

To help you learn how this can best be done, here are three tips for interacting with police officers at the scene of a crime, be it a domestic dispute or a car accident. 

Follow Basic Safety Guidelines

As with all interactions with police officers, there are a few basic safety guidelines that you should always keep in mind. These guidelines are meant not only to keep you safe, but to allow the police officers to do their job in keeping the scene secure and ensuring that they’re able to focus their attention on what’s needed to get to the bottom of what happened. 

First of all, what’s going to help the situation is if you’re able to stay calm. While this won’t always be possible at a crime scene, if you can keep your wits about you, everything will be able to go much smoother for everyone involved. 

When you’re working directly with the police, make sure that you don’t try to run, resist them, or obstruct the work they’re doing. These things could all put you in hot water. Along with this, you’ll want to keep your hands where the officers can see them and not lie to the officers or give them any false information. 

Try To Be Cooperative

While tensions might be high, when you’re at the scene of a crime, it’s best if everyone involved tries to be as cooperative as possible in order to get the scene processed and get people on with their days. As part of this, you should try to maintain a respectful attitude toward the officers as they do their job. 

If you take it upon yourself to be confrontational, uncooperative, or disrespectful toward the police officers or other first responders who are there at the scene, you’ll just be making unwanted difficulties both for yourself and for everyone else there. 

Be Prepared To Answer Similar Questions Multiple Times

Regardless of whether you were directly involved in the situation or were just a witness to what happened, you will likely be asked a lot of questions by police officers as they try to ascertain what happened. In most cases, you’ll be asked similar questions multiple times and by multiple different people. And while this can be annoying to deal with, try to prepare yourself for this possibility so that you can give them all of the important details of what happened. 

If you ever find yourself at a crime scene and interacting with the police, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you get through this experience.