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The suspect says, "I want to talk with my (wife, mother, father)." Or,
"I want to have my (wife, parent, father etc.) with me while we talk."

If the suspect is in custody, some jurisdictions have ruled that this is the same as a request for an attorney. There are also legislated juvenile acts, which may require public law enforcement to contact specific youth officers and/or parents whenever a child is taken into custody.

The private sector has no such constraints. There is an employer/employee relationship that does not have to allow parents or family members to be present during proprietary company meetings. This would be like allowing an employee to bring a spouse to a salary review session. Whenever a company is bound by a collective bargaining agreement, there are usually provisions for union representation anytime there may be potential disciplinary action against an employee. The employee usually is required to ask for a union representative and most contracts do not require the company to ask if the employee wants representation.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2000 expanded the ability of an employee in a non-union company to have a representative present during meeting where disciplinary action might be taken against the employee. Again, the employee must request the representative and the company is not bound to make the offer. The NLRB has flip flopped on this issue over the years and it will bear watching to see whether they will change again. For the interrogator and company, there are no guidelines at the time of this writing as to who the employee might select to sit in on the meeting. It is evident that a union steward would have value to the employee because of his training and knowledge of the contract, but it is unclear in a non-union setting who could be selected and who has the right to select or object to a particular person.

Police Officers acting as agents of the state are not required to abide by the contracts signed by the company. This becomes less clear with officers who have police powers and employee investigations, such as postal, railroad, utilities, and colleges. In many cases, the employer would probably have to act under the Garrity rule, telling the employee whether the case was being pursued as an administrative or criminal action.



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