That is really terrible advice. What you’ve done is irrelevant. It’s what they believe you’ve done that’s important.
Found this book from 1931 that was inspired by the Wickersham Commission on police corruption in NY. Author Ernest Jerome Hopkins describes the methods cops use(d) to break suspects, including simple street justice, isolation, disappearance and the “third-degree”.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Our_lawless_police.html?id=K1QYAAAAIAAJ
That’s when they come back with “Gee. An innocent person wouldn’t ask for a lawyer.”
I wonder if the “good apples” are the ones most likely to accidentally kill them selves while cleaning their sidearm.
That’s all you say. Over and over until you get a lawyer.
The only other thing you should ever say to law enforcement is:
“I refuse to give you permission to search my property/car without a warrant.”
And then you call your lawyer.
They might still do it anyway, and the bar for probable cause is laughable, but it makes anything they find, whether it belongs to you, someone else or is planted by them (and cops routinely plant evidence) that much easier for your lawyer to argue against being admissible in court.
Remember, cops are not the good guys and they are no one’s friends but each other. If you’re targeted by them, directly or as a person of interest, you are their prey, end of story.
ETA: Oh, and record where possible, because cops do and will lie to judges.
Mobile Justice app available by state including a stop and frisk app for New York:
“A good cop wouldn’t arrest an innocent person”
/smirks as the cop gets paid to beat him over hurt feelings/
I didn’t even think of ‘brow-beating’; I just took the title literally, because that’s often the case, if one happens to possess a certain amount of melanin.
Handy dandy flow chart for exercising your 5th amendment rights: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2897
The right statement is typically: “I’m not answering any questions and I want a lawyer.” when told “you have the right to remain silent”, though it’s more complicated than that.
Once Mirandized (which is actually waiving your Fifth Amendment rights) you can be questioned until you explicitly invoke your right to be silent and to an attorney. Being silent (i.e. exercising your right) isn’t the same as invoking your rights.
There’s nothing incriminating about saying you wish to remain silent and see an attorney (“I’m not answering any questions and I want a lawyer”). You need to actually do these things to end an interrogation.
Or, to steal a panel from the wonderful lawcomic.net that @billatq also linked to:
The police are not allowed to question you once you request a lawyer and express a desire to remain silent.
Yeah, it was only because I started reading the post that I realized it was being used in the sense of “to win against.” It never would have occurred to me otherwise. It’s not just the phrasing, which obvious evokes the long and still current history of police brutality, but the whole idea that there’s some sort of competition, between suspects and police, to get suspects to say something that will be seen as incriminating - that’s not how I would think of it. Though really any sentence involving “beat” and “the police” is going to make me leap straight to police brutality.
It’s nice to know that US cops really are as bad as they’re made out to be on tv.
Not that I necessarily trust British cops, but at least the whole power dynamic is different, and of course the chances of getting shot are much, much lower.
I remember an episode of NYPD Blue that scared the blazes out of me way back… one of the cops got into a cell in the station, pretending to be just another prisoner/interviewee, then they slammed the real suspect into the adjoining cage.
They get to talking - I don’t remember the details - but he shared some confidences with his “fellow suspect”. Who then let himself out and, this being TV scriptland, had him bang to rights.
So I guess, in addition to all the good advice above, stay silent in your cell also!
I watched this the other night.
His #1 reason to never talk to the cops : It can NEVER work in your favor.
That stuck with me, and is pretty much all you need to know. 
So what?
It doesn’t matter what they say at that point, unless your gullible enough to fall for it and open your mouth.
