"x x x.
If you are "invited" to the police station by policemen or men in power or authority, always ask if they have a warrant of arrest. If they do not have any such warrant, their "invitation" should be politely declined.
Even if they were to appear "friendly", do not go. If they insist, insist on calling your lawyer first. Better still, upon hearing at the outset that you are being invited, be sure to have witnesses around you, and then just go ahead and call your lawyer.
Better to be safe than sorry.
The use of "invitations" by policemen has been so abused such that even our Supreme Court has said that such "invitation" has become a "euphemism for an arrest without a warrant of arrest" ( People vs. Dilao G.R. No. L-43259).
Once you are in a police station by yourself, without a lawyer, in the midst of these policemen or men in authority, you are at their mercy. Subsequent events will be beyond your control. Without realizing it, you are already being probed about a crime. Interrogation will have been set in motion.
The environment can be quite intimidating. "In such an atmosphere", the Supreme Court described, "a man of ordinary or average composure may yield to a skilled investigator or one who though unskilled is prone to brutal techniques."
You might say things, admit events or even sign documents involuntarily. Your constitutional rights against warrantless arrest and forced extrajudicial confession will most likely be violated without any witness except your tormentors. Worse, the interrogators, if questioned in a court of law, might invoke, as they usually and abusively invoke, the presumption of regularity of actions of public officials. An incompetent and coward judge, fearful of politicians, may just take the path of least resistance and simply believe these arrogant policemen or men in authority.
x x x."
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