Fun little quirk of the judicial system: while police reports can be used to bring charges against people, they can not be admitted as evidence to a trial being they qualify as hearsay. In order to get that information to the jury, an officer would need to testify to it. Obviously, if what's in the report is beneficial to the defendant, a prosecutor would not call that officer as a witness or would not question him in a way that opens the door for cross examination to use the report in order to impeach his statements in court. In other words, nothing you say to the police will ever be allowed to help you, it will only ever do nothing, or hurt you. It's the way the system is built. Have many friends who are officers, as well as kids of officers; they have all told me the same thing, if you're involved in an incident where there's even a chance you may be implicated in a crime, get a lawyer and do not talk to the police. It's what they teach their own kids as well. That's not to say never cooperate with them, but as I said, if there's a chance (or even if you get the feeling) that you're becoming the target of an investigation do not talk to the police and get a lawyer. This is not an indictment on officers, this is just the way our justice system operates and they are just doing the job they were trained to do. I do think it's important information not enough people understand though. And any officer you are close with will tell you the same. While Rice's situation goes way beyond this, just wanted to point out that in general not talking to police is not an indictment on someone's character. If anything it's a testament to their intelligence of the system and exercising their rights as a US citizen.
OK, but he could have stuck around, checked on the safety of the people involved in the accident and still not talked to police when they showed up. Demanded a lawyer. I would have understood that. But just packing up your bags and taking off without checking if you injured or possibly even killed someone with your actions is what most people find disgusting.
Pretty solid assumption that he had a strong reason to just take off and hide out for 4 days. That's against the law. Not OK.
No one is arguing against this.
There are two factors at play here, and they are both true:
1. Rice was completely wrong to flee the scene - it's a scumbag move, and the presumption can be made that he fled because he was [drunk/high/in possession of things he should not have possessed].
2. Rice probably did the smartest thing he could have done by fleeing the scene, because now all anyone can do is presume, which is easier to defend in court than being caught dead to rights drunk, high, or in possession of things he should not possessed.
Saying it was smart is not an endorsement of the action, nor does it suggest it was "good" for him to do. But of all the stupid things he did that night, that was arguably the smartest thing he could have done in the moment.
At the end of the day I'm not sure it will be a huge difference to the outcome, though PR-wise it's a little better for him, sort of.