Thanks Steve!srothstein wrote:Sorry to take so long getting back to you on this. The only time, in Texas, that you must identify yourself is if you are under arrest. If you are a suspect or a witness, you may refuse to identify yourself but you cannot lie about your identity. Your identity information you must provide is you name, date of birth, and home address. I do not recommend refusing to ID yourself but you can. If you do, as soon as the officer says the magic words "you are under arrest", immediately give him your information. A key point on this is that the only time you must provide your DL is if you are driving or if you are carrying a pistol on or about your person and have a CHL.C-dub wrote:I don't know this very well either. It seems quite fuzzy to me. How am I to know if I'm a suspect or not? They don't have to tell me, right? I know I wasn't involved in a crime, but the officer may not know that and if I'm considered a suspect then I must ID myself, right?srothstein wrote:It is also illegal to lie about your name, date of birth, or home address to a police officer if you are a suspect or witness to a crime. You do not have to answer at all, but you may not lie about it. That is in 38.02 Failure to ID, which it is obvious that HPD does not know very well.
I thought a person had to ID themselves if they were being questioned as a suspect and or being detained and not free to go. I don't think I would refuse to ID, but I were just walking about I would be confused by the request. I understand the current requirement to inform an officer during a traffic stop that requests ID since the entire premise for the stop at all is that I'm suspected of violating something in the traffic code. However, I don't understand the requirement to ID when just walking about if I also happen to be carrying my concealed handgun. Is that what you're saying?