As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, each sack held a forty of malt liquor, and a cat. Each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, thug jugs, sacks, wives, how many were going to St. Ives? 
Have you not met my friend Terry…Terry V. Ohio that is:
ETA: Foiled by DSYoung…again.
DSYoungEsq and askeptic, then I’ll change my same argument to “reasonable suspicion.” And also, I don’t mean for a traffic stop. In fact, I already agree with the arguments for Terry stops and such. So… I’ll rephrase. I’m walking in the park, minding my own business, just like every Tom, Dick, and Harry with an open can of Pepsi – except I have my can of Pepsi (or Labatt Blue) in a brown paper bag. I guess what I’m questioning is, is that brown paper bag on its own sufficient to establish reasonable suspicion and warrant a search? Like the other posters said, it gives the officer a reason not to bother you if you’re not causing problems, at the whim of the officer. But… let’s say he’s just pissed and wants to take it out on someone. Is the brown bag enough of a cause?
Terry had nothing to do with a traffic stop. A cop saw two guys walking back and forth in front of a store and repeatedly looking into the window. Then they met another guy. All could have a perfectly innocent explanation. Just like your bag could have a pepsi in it. If a cop walks up to you and says “What’s in the bag?” and you show him the pepsi that is the end of it. However a smart cop won’t ask you. He has reasonable suspicion that you are in violation of the open container law and now has a basis to pat you down “for weapons” which he will use as a pretext to search for contraband. With the “plain feel” exception the Court has carved out if he happens to feel something that based on his “training and experience” feels like a gram of dope, suddenly your open container is the least of your problems. Even if it turns out it really was just a pepsi, since he didn’t know that(because he intentionally didn’t ask)when he searched you, the subsequent search without warrant will be upheld.
When my friends and I went to Daytona Beach for spring break, we could buy cases of beer at beachside hotel stores. We’d then take it out to our pickup truck parked on the beach, then pour the beer into used McD’s cups and drink freely.
Cops came by constantly, but as long as we didn’t act stupid, they didn’t bother checking our cups. But one of our stupid neighbors made a point of either flashing or flipping off the cops once, giving them just cause to examine his drink cup and interior of his car. We casually walked to the other side, just in case they thought we were with him.
askeptic has provided the answer from a legal standpoint, so I’ll simply add this:
Do you really see lots of people walking around drinking non-alcoholic beverages out of containers contained within brown paper bags? If YOU saw someone drinking out of such a bag, what would YOU naturally think was being ingested? 
I would WAG it would give a cop less reason to stop one if you are being discrete about it, even if he knows what’s in the bag.
Silenus, you ARE joking, right? Say you are…
I was once drinking a delicious Jamaican ginger beer (they are not alcoholic) out of a frosty bottle on a hot day while waiting for a BART train. This clean-shaven guy with a baseball cap & a backpack (translation: undercover transit cop) kept staring at me, then looking away in that characteristic undercover-cop way when I’d meet his eyes. I can’t help it; I love to play with those guys, because they often seem to be clueless about who the actual bad guys are (i.e., not me). So once I catch them “observing” me, I don’t look away after a moment, like most people ordinarily would do. I stay locked on, and watch them keep trying to unobtrusively start staring at me again. It’s funny, they are like one of those rotating fans when they get stuck – peek, look away, peek, look away, peek…
I finally said, “Hey, it’s a ginger beer. Non-alcoholic.” He said, “Oh, cool. You had me worried.”, or something like that, and walked away to another part of the station.
I had assumed that the lack of a paper sack would make it obvious.
You’re right – I assume it’s alcohol! I wonder from the legal standpoint, because although I respect police, have nothing to hide from them, and have only ever had pleasant experiences with them, I sense the winds of change in the treatment of civilians by the police. Taser deaths, unjustified force, and so on. I know that given the great number of civilian-police actions that occur every single day, these occurrences are only statistical outliers, but I suspect that abuses have the potential to occur more and more given the climate in the country, and given the fact that completely surrendering one’s rights is simply to be expected, because after all, if you have nothing to hide, you should just comply. Then it becomes a self-fulfilling series of events – since everyone complies whether they’re required to or not, then by exerting your rights, you’re automatically suspect of violating the law.
:eek:
Once in awhile when riding the subway in high school I’d have a soft drink in a paper bag. The dirty looks were priceless, plus on occasion people would move away enough so you’d have more room to stretch out.
[Chief Wiggum] Wha…? Where’d it go? [/CW]
I agree with your WAG. There is a store in my neighborhood in D.C. that sells beer singles with a paper bag to guys that hang out on the corner in front of the store drinking them and panhandling to go buy more. Everyone knows they are drinking beer, but if it is in the bag, then we can all pretend they are not drinking beer, cops included. Also, when they drop them on the street, the bag contains the broken glass and make it less of a hazard to others.
I’m afraid I don’t follow here. If someone is drinking alcohol in public in a state with an open conainer law, they are, get this: breaking the law. Why should they expect that they should get away with this illegal behavior? Why should hiding this illegal behavior through the ruse of a paper bag be an impediment to the police in trying to enforce the law??
I assume it’s because there are lots of ways people break the law that cops don’t want to deal with (eg jaywalking on an empty street). The brown bag just gives them the “cover their ass” they need to ignore it and deal with real crime. At the same time, if the person drinking from a bag is being a jackass, it’s the probable cause they need to detain him.
Does everywhere in the US have such tight alcohol laws? We have places in town centres in the UK where you can’t drink (whether bagged or not) but I believe they are really there to give the police more power to arrest people for drunk and disorderly conduct in high incidence areas rather than to stop ‘normal’ people from drinking. The reason I ask is that someone has mentioned that alcohol has to be sold in an opaque bag so that you can’t see the contents, what is the reason for this? Is alcohol considered so evil that you aren’t allowed to even look at it?
Public consumption of alcohol is illegal in most places in the US. There are places in the US that are dry: one can’t purchase alcohol anywhere in the municipal limits. In some places, you can only purchase alcohol in government run stores.
ETA: In Washington DC, woman was cited for drinking a glass of wine on her own front porch.
Wtf? How can you be banned from drinking alcohol on your own property?
My guess is that she was visible from the street, making it “in public.” Just like laws against public nudity. Doesn’t mean you can parade around in your front yard waggling your stuff at the passing motorists.