Once they pull you over some people are bothered more by the inconvenience of being pulled over than they are by the rights they give up. One of my friends allowed the police to search his car because he didn't want to wait for the drug dog. He got out of the ticket by cooperating, but what if they said they found something?
By not cooperating I got a range of tickets: live in this city but don't have a city parking sticker, don't have a safety inspection sticker, have the wrong type of insurance coverage. This was after the original reason he pulled me over (not speeding) didn't pan out. All of this because I wouldn't allow him search my car without a warrant.
Also, different states have different interpretations on cellphone contents. California, (normally quite liberal) just has a shitty interpretation of the law.
The police cannot search your car simply because you've been pulled over in a traffic stop. They are required to have probable cause to effect a search or an arrest. There are whole log ACLU videos about not being bamboozled by staties who "ask" to search your car.
Additionally, I think it's important to keep in mind the specific way your protections against search bind on the state. You can always sue the state for harassment or somesuch, but the real day-to-day potency of the Fourth Amendment comes from the Exclusionary Rule, which forbids the introduction of evidence from searches that contravene the Fourth Amendment as interpreted by the courts.
Point being: yes, the police can always find reasons to arrest you. For that matter, they can ignore their General Orders entirely, throw you up on your car, and search you and your bags with no cause whatsoever; if you resist that illegal search, you'll be charged (and probably convicted!) of battery. But in the system we have, there's not much point to them doing that, because if they make a bullshit arrest, the evidence they generate from the resulting search will get tossed. Getting arrested is a big deal. They can't just arrest you because you look funny.
The problem is this can be more of a hassle for you. I've been pulled over as a teenager and when I said no he decided to search my car anyway. Saying no doesn't always help, in fact sometimes it makes them give you more trouble and search harder.
At least the last time I was searched (11 years ago), it was still "requested" by the officer, so I'm assuming I could have said no and he would have had to get a warrant, etc, but he let me know that he could either search my truck or ticket me for my tire hitting the white line (which may be illegal, or may not be, I don't know).
Had I been smarter, I would have taken the ticket and fought it in court, but as a scared 18 year old, I allowed myself to be cuffed, placed in the backseat of a cop car while he tossed my truck. He had ever opportunity to plant anything he wanted, and thankfully he wasn't too corrupt of an officer - other than coercing an illegal search.
That is why I have a slight anti-police bias. I have family in the force, so I try to be respectful of police, and I know plenty of amazing police officers, but there are a lot of bad apples that spoil the bunch.
> drug task forces seem to have no problem getting warrants pretty quick to search a car that is stopped.
Does this happen often? Most stops tell the story of the officer having probable cause for a search, even if that's just the smell of weed or something (not sure if it's still a valid reason).
I got stopped in Canada, and was asked that same question. I said sure, go ahead, took 5 minutes and I was on my way again.
Same happened somewhere in Texas on a road trip, same outcome.
I asked my lawyer in Canada what would happen if I did not consent to a search, and he said they would probably have taken that as a reason to stop me again a few miles down the road for some infraction and would have searched the car top to bottom with a fine comb.
If you have nothing in your car it's quite ok to have it searched, what specific reason would you have not to consent in the knowledge they can force the issue if they want to?
Probable cause is used to search the car. Police can't randomly search cars. However in order to target areas with minorities who are involved with drugs, they use police dogs that can supposedly sniff drugs. But the dogs really just read their handlers and bark when their handlers want them to. Police can stop anyone at any time for documents. /papers please
Recently in Canada a driver was charged for distracted driving for simply wearing headphones while driving. The judge decided that regardless of whether they were functional or not he was guilty.
All these things just point to the fact that you don't want to deal with the police or with the law as both them don't really care about reality, just their manufactured fictions they use to justify their power over people. As Fault called it biopower.
I was “pulled over” by a police officer when I was driving into Chicago from Washington state. He had followed me off the highway where I had pulled over to make a phone call, and he came up to me asking for registration and wanted to know who I was calling. All of this was justified because he suspected drugs in my car because a lot of drugs come from Canada through WA into Chicago. He said he had a dog with him in the car as well. I said I didn’t care because I don’t have any drugs and that I’m just traveling through the state and needed to phone a friend for a place to stay. He never ran my registration after I handed it to him, nor did he go back to his car for any information or dog, then he said I was clear to go. When he pulled away it was clear there was no dog in the back seat. I know to say as little as possible to cops even if I know I’m not guilty of anything but this was outright so stupid I couldn’t invoke “I want a lawyer” either.
Cops and other forms of law enforcement seem to have a history of lying to suspects to try to uncover criminal behaviors and I’m really not sure if this practice is even constitutional let alone effective. I don’t know what’s reasonable anymore in our police state.
Some things you'd want to know before formulating your own opinion:
* Since at least '73, the law of the land has been that after you're arrested, the police can without a warrant lawfully search you and the immediate area under your control. The lawful objectives of that search are either officer safety or preservation of evidence. If you're arrested while driving a vehicle, and either of those objectives militate a search of the passenger compartment of your car, the police can search the passenger compartment of your car.
* The argument was made here in an earlier hearing that the cell phone search occurred as part of an "inventory" search; this is one of the contexts in which cell phones were claimed to be a "container". But the controlling appellate opinion here rejected that interpretation; the police cannot search a cell phone to "inventory" its contents.
* But that is a moot point if you are arrested, because the police are explicitly entitled to search your person and your car for evidence if you're arrested. Don't get arrested! Here we have the second "phone-as-container" context: the phone is a container for evidence of crimes. It's this interpretation that the appellate court affirmed, and reasonably so!
* More importantly, in this particular case, this guy was screwed from the get-go. He was arrested for driving a car without a license, for which he could not document lawful possession, after doing 90MPH in a 65, on suspicion (later validated) of being under the influence, accompanied by a clearly intoxicated passenger. When the police searched his car incident to the arrest, they found a loaded gun in the car under the drivers seat, along with drug paraphernalia. Then they found the Blackberry with the screensaver set to the guy holding two assault rifles. Face it. That phone was getting searched. The notion that searching the phone pushes the bounds of "incident to arrest" searches is at best a technicality; under the same pattern of facts, a warrant for the search would be a no-brainer as well.
* ...but it seems extremely dubious to argue that this is even a real technicality. A search of your car is a big deal. The police are not lawfully entitled to invade the privacy of your car without reason. Getting arrested is a big deal. The police are not lawfully entitled to arrest you for no reason (there is a world of difference between arrest and mere "detention"). The search the police get to conduct when they arrest you is explicitly not limited to officer safety (like the weapons search frisk of a Terry stop). This guy's lawyer argues that the phone search was out of bounds because of an expectation of privacy. What expectation of privacy? They're in your car. They found your gun and your secret drug shit. Your privacy is largely out the window. Your trunk might, for a few minutes, be out of bounds because it's not necessarily your trunk. But the phone with your dumbass picture on it holding assault rifles is clearly yours.
Someone downthread had the right practical response to this: lock your phone. There's no secret software the police have that will suck all the info off an iPhone with a 6-digit PIN. Politely decline consent for searches. Do not get in a police officer's face; if you give them a justification to arrest you for any reason, all bets are off. Don't get arrested.
Conversely, you do not need to give permission to police just because they ask. Even at police checkpoints, they do not have the right, without probable cause or your permission, to search your vehicle. If we don't stand up for our rights, we will lose them.
(Now, realistically, if you say "no", they will bring a dog over that they've trained to signal, thereby giving them "probable cause".)
>you'll need to, say, do an open-air drug transaction, or get stopped for running a red light and then have drugs plainly visible in your car (or have a dog authorize the search, which is plainly problematic).
Or be a totally innocent person who is unknowingly transporting contraband and say, "of course I don't mind, search my car, officer."
I've had friends consent to a search to avoid a $120 speeding ticket. I've also had a friend consent to a search. They found a seed of marijuana in his backseat (probably left behind by another friend). And used that as evidence to hit them for further charges.
You can't search a car on a traffic stop without probable cause of an actual crime.
However, if your traffic stop is for a moving offense that warrants arrest (DUI, for instance, or reckless driving), all bets are off, because the police can do intrusive searches incident to an arrest.
Also, if you're stopped for a moving violation and either authorize a search, or have evidence of probable cause in plain view (for instance, a bag of weed in the passenger seat), all bets are again off.
I once had a pair of police officers try to tell me that my refusal to let them search the vehicle was grounds for probable cause and would enable them to legally search my vehicle.
I laughed and pointed out that I'm not a teen and am quite familiar with my rights. They were visibly disappointed and told me that I was kicked out of Kansas and that I'd be arrested if I ever went back to Kansas. I giggled again but left and they followed me to the interstate slipway.
"Speeding, being a crime, allowed him to do these things that parking tickets do not."
That's not entirely true (excluding the pat down). The "search" you are talking about is simply plain sight/smell/etc. A cop writing a parking ticket can look through the window of your car and run the plates to see if it's stolen, lacking registration, etc. In either case they need probable cause to do an actual search of your vehicle.
Not to mention, they can stop (in most states) you even if you didnt commit a crime, like at a DUI checkpoint.
THey still need cause to search your car. Not that they won't manufacture it if they want to. But I've been pulled over for speeding, expired tags, and other minor traffic issues a few times and have never had my car searched.
You don't need a warrant to tail someone's car, especially to write them a speeding ticket. From Wikipedia, "In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that a search occurs when 1) a person expects privacy in the thing searched and 2) society believes that expectation is reasonable."
Society does not believe that it's reasonable to expect your speed to be private on a public highway, and so a "search" never takes place. (You're not being charged for a misdemeanor or felony anyway, so the Constitution is even less applicable.)
Personally, I think that stricter enforcement of speeding laws would be great. Eventually enough people will complain to get freeway speeds bumped up to something reasonable (how about 75?), and people driving fast on surface streets deserve what they get anyway. (Cities are extremely car-friendly with respect to speed limits; you're allowed to drive 35 on my tiny little side street in Brooklyn! 35!)
Not really. When I was younger, I owned a fast car and was pulled over several times in small southern towns as I drove between university and my parents house. Being young black man in dixie country, you would expect that this would lead to lots of tickets and poor relations with the police?
No.
I was polite, respectful, and the such, but when asked if I knew why I was pulled over I would simply shrug.
I got 2 tickets, but many more warnings, and even the tickets had leniency.
In my view, the police are not out to get you. Sure, they want to make ticket quota, but thats just the job... nothing personal.
Once they pull you over some people are bothered more by the inconvenience of being pulled over than they are by the rights they give up. One of my friends allowed the police to search his car because he didn't want to wait for the drug dog. He got out of the ticket by cooperating, but what if they said they found something?
By not cooperating I got a range of tickets: live in this city but don't have a city parking sticker, don't have a safety inspection sticker, have the wrong type of insurance coverage. This was after the original reason he pulled me over (not speeding) didn't pan out. All of this because I wouldn't allow him search my car without a warrant.
Also, different states have different interpretations on cellphone contents. California, (normally quite liberal) just has a shitty interpretation of the law.
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