Wrong. If a civilian saw a baby in a carrier on the roof of a van, you have every right to get the driver to pull over. If you see an old friend in traffic and want him to join your new rock band, you can stop him out flag him down (see Buffalo Springfield). If the road ahead washed out, anyone can flag someone down to warn them.
There’s no law against flagging down a driver.
How does anything in your post contradict anything he said? What is “wrong” about his post? For that matter, how does anything in your post even relate to what he said?
The police can pull you over if they have a legitimate reason, I assume that applies to some definition of legitimate reason in every state. In some states the police cannot pull you over randomly. Here in RI the police are not even allowed to conduct drunk driving checkpoints because our state courts have declared it unconstitutional (state constitution).
So I’m still wondering what would happen if the police pulled over a car to give the driver a gift card and then saw evidence of a crime. The driver will think he’s being pulled over for a legitimate police purpose, but if that is not the case he’ll probably claim he was illegally searched.
A police officer could certainly use his Official Blue Lights to stop a car that had a baby on the roof, and probably to let someone know the road was washed out ahead. (For the latter I would normally expect the police car to be blocking the road ahead of me, not coming up behind me and “pulling me over”, but under some specific set of circumstances I guess it could happen. For the former, a child is in obvious danger, not to mention some crime is likely being committed–“child endangerment” or “reckless endangerment” or something like that.)
The point pkbites is making is that a police officer pulling someone over–using emergency lights and sirens (which will likely be restricted equipment in most if not all jurisdictions)–is a use of police power that is regulated by law. A police officer should NOT use his emergency lights and sirens and so on to “flag down” an old buddy he hasn’t seen in a while. (People do things they shouldn’t do all the time, even cops sometimes, so I can imagine some cop pulling over his old frat buddy–“Ha, ha, man, bet you though you were busted!”–and it not generating any complaints–“Aw, man, you got me good! Shit, you ain’t gonna look in the trunk, are ya? I got a dead hooker in there, ha ha ha!”) However, as a matter of law and policy, if a cop wants to “flag you down” and invite you to join his band (or ask you out on a date or tell you how much he agrees with your bumper stickers or tell you how much he disagrees with your bumper stickers), he or she is not supposed to use his or her authority as a police officer to do that.
Another motorist can request that I stop and chat. A police officer can require that I stop, and can require me to do other things (like show my drivers license and proof of insurance). But the police officer’s authority to require me to stop is not unlimited; it is bound by law and the Constitution.
Technically, no - any time an officer pulls you over and stops you, that’s a detention (seizure) under the Fourth Amendment, and such stops can’t be unreasonable - in other words, there needs to be a reason for it. So, I would think that if an officer puts on their lights to pull someone over, and they’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, the officer can’t technically pull them over. Of course almost everyone is going to pull over when they see the lights and won’t argue much when the officer lets them off their way with a gift card.
Well, it is a pretext stop, but pretext stops have been held to be perfectly legal as long as there is still an objectively valid reason to pull the person over.
Yeah, I imagine the defendant would argue he was being illegally detained. In my experience, if the lights and/or sirens are on, most judges will say that the person was being ordered to pull over by the cop and thus subject to the 4th Amendment and that the cop would need a real reason to pull them over.
WTF? 
Did you even read the OP’s cite? Did you see this on the news lately?
They’re not “flagging down” anyone. They are putting lights and sirens on and pulling people over on public roads. And they’re doing it saying the reasons they’re doing is because the driver did nothing wrong. that’s freaking ludicrous. There is nothing legal about it.
People have been posting on here all sorts of reasons police can pull people over. NOT violating the law isn’t one of them.
Drug dealers and people who know they have warrants drive carefully all the time. Eventually they’re going to stop one of them. Are they running 28’s to see if these people they’re stopping have valid drivers licenses? if they do and the person doesn’t, how could they cite them for it if the stop wasn’t legal in the first place?
And what happens when someone they pull over to give a gift card to doesn’t want to have contact with the police and says “fuck you and your gift card” and drives off. There was no reasonable suspicion or probable cause for the stop in the first place, are they going to chase that person?
Just because a driver isn’t speeding doesn’t mean they aren’t in a hurry. No some well meaning patrolman pulls them over for not speeding and makes them late for work. How’s that not a lawsuit?
Unless I’m missing part of the story these traffic stops, no matter how good intentioned, are not legal, but the ignorance on this thread from some is baffling.
I’m not getting it at all either. It sounds very wrong to me too.
Probably not.
If you are correct that they can’t be cited for it, why would they bother to check in the first place?
If there’s no reasonable suspicion or probable cause, I’m sure they won’t chase them.
Because most people , even those who are annoyed because a cop wasted a minute of their lives have a sense of proportion and don’t want to waste even more time trying to sue the police department.
What you’re missing is that whether they are strictly legal or not , no one is likely to complain and the police departments in question are counting on that.
And I have questions about that - there are a whole host of things that can’t legally result from these stops, but that doesn’t means the mere fact of the stop violates any law. And by mere fact, I mean just that- no arrest based on evidence seen during the stop , no chasing people who don’t stop, no running driver’s licenses. Literally nothing but " I stopped you because of your good driving- here’s a gift card". Why are you so certain that this would not be considered a de minimis intrusion ? I’m not saying that I’m certain it would be- but I’m guessing that whichever police departments are doing this sort of thing believe it will be seen as de minimis at worst.*. There won’t be a definitive court decision until and unless someone spends an awful lot of time, money and effort on a lawsuit complaining that a cop wasted 60 seconds of his life and gave him a gift card.
It doesn’t necessarily violate agency policy- you don’t know the policy of every police department , and it wouldn’t violate policy if this was done as an agency initiative.
In PA its called the “routine check” and its been a standard for ages; some places more than others but even in the cities it happens now and then. “Just a routine check, sir. May I see your license, registration and proof of insurance please?” Usually the targets are strange cars in small townships or younger drivers but they happen. While it was 15 years back, I got snagged by one of those from the same cop once every month or so. It got to be enough of a pain that I did get a lawyer and look into it. His best advice was use a different road to get from Point A to Point B. Not being a recognized protected class my chances of proving harassment were basically slim and none. I could introduce you to a couple folks who have been pulled over like that in the past year - and I am pretty sure I can get you the name of an officer who does those kinds of stops once or twice every patrol. Are they fun for either party? Not really, I would think. But if they weren’t legal, half the cops in this state would be out of work or in jail.
Yes, it does. It’s an illegal seizure. Those are unlawful by statute in most places and by numerous court decisions.
The question of the OP is nothing more than* “Is it legal for a cop to pull you over if you haven’t done anything wrong?”*
And just because you and others like program doesn’t change that the answer to that question is a resounding NO!
How court decisions come out very often depend on the specific facts of the case. And they often differ from court to court. Therefore, there is no way to determine “is this legal” until and unless someone takes a case with those specific facts to court. Not a case where the police stop someone intending to give him a gift card but instead arrest him for the heroin they see on the front seat. That doesn’t tell you what the court would have decided without that arrest. Prior to a court decision, everything is opinion. Some opinions about how it will play out in court are more valuable than others, but they are opinions nonetheless.
And just because you keep saying “NO” doesn’t mean that you have even described a single case where a court found this sort of stop to be illegal.It is indeed legal in at least some states for cops to pull you over if you’ve done nothing wrong under certain circumstances.- happens all the time at sobriety checkpoints. But that doesn’t mean it’s always legal- circumstances do matter. In both directions.
It’s been many years, but I once had a personal friend who was a (very reputable) local cop, and he’d sometimes pull me over just to say, “Hi!”. It was a small town, and I didn’t mind (we played in the same band together, among other things). I’m quite sure he wasn’t using our friendship as a pretext, and he never searched my car or even pretended to.
But times have changed…
Then I was illegally pulled over twice for doing nothing wrong. Must happen hundreds to thousands of time a year. Of course the officer thought I might have done something wrong… or perhaps they used their years of experience to make up a safe unfalsifiable story about how they thought I was doing something wrong. I just found it curious though that both times in different provinces over 1000 miles apart in distance and years apart in time by 1 young and 1 old officer they had they exact same reason: “can you tell me why your license plate doesn’t match the make of vehicle it’s registered to?”. Nope… and both ended the same way with me being causually let go, with both officers giving about the same explanation when I asked what they found out after looking at my paper info supplied: a very non-commital and vague suggestion that maybe the computer system had an error (as they walked away). Was that legal, did their computers really say that, what was my recourse to find out… I didnt even know who they were so Id had to have got out and approached them to start challenging them and getting their IDs… donèt think that would have ended well for me. I do know that their supervisors didnèt hop out of the bushes and get to the bottom of it. Nothing at all happened.
Don’t get me wrong, I think pkbites may well be legally correct on the question in a specific scenario… but what I’m indicating (and others as well) is that minor technically illegal things happen all the time and go both unpunished and unnoticed by a public that in general is grossely ignorant of just what is and isn’t legal. Part of that is simply ignorance, but the other part is a very real possibility of big-time trouble if you challenge an LEO on the street about whether he’s legally justified in what he’s doing or asking of you. The advice I see from lawyers all the time is to shut up and comply even if it doesn’t seem legal. The suggestions I read to civillians from LEOs is the same in that they get real irrate when challenged.
So, thatès probably why they pull these kinds of initiatives off or get away with it. Because sensible people dontè challenge a uniformed officer with a gun strapped to his hip when he gives them $20 and a smile. Doing so would be ridiculous.
looks like my keyboard went wonky; sorry for the weird punctuation near the end.
That’s still reasonable suspicion. Just because the officer was wrong doesn’t negate his reasonable good faith belief that he was justified in making the stop.
There was just a SCOTUS case related to that (Heien v. North Carolina).
And in cases like check points there are generally warning signs and alternate routes set up. But I am perplexed as to these programs of pulling people over using not breaking the law as justification. I’m going to shoot off an email to my states Assistant Attorney General Dave Perlman and see if he has an opinion on this. He’s slow to respond so it might take a while.
I am not a lawyer, none of this is legal advice. But it’s funny how the only 2 people (AFAIK) who are actually peace officers on this thread think doing this isn’t legal and the majority think we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.
Some “angel” gave the police force of the small town of Longueuil south of Montreal (across the river) 25 new $100 bills to give out at random as Christmas gifts. So 25 random drivers got pulled over to be presented with a $100 bill. Legal? I don’t know, but none have complained. This is the second year this happened.
Could this theoretically harm the case against someone who refuses to stop for the police in one of these communities?
I mean, do I have to stop for an officer who is effectively saying “you might have to stop because you’re being detained, or on the other hand I might just want to give you a prize”? It’s illegal for me to try to evade being detained, but the other side of that is that the police have to tell me to stop. Normally I’d know I have to stop because the police don’t (or at least shouldn’t) pull me over except to detain me for some valid reason. But in these towns, being pulled over can just mean you won a Christmas gift. You don’t have to stop for a Christmas gift, so doesn’t it muddy the message of “hey, you’re being detained, so you must stop now and wait until I give you permission to leave” that being pulled over should send to a reasonable driver?
I’m one too. But I probably spend a lot more work time than you do reading court decisions from county A that conflict with decisions in county B that don’t get resolved until an appellate court makes a decision which may or may not agree with either of the lower court decisions. Which is why I haven’t said 'it’s legal" but rather that it could be legal. And of course, that the police departments in question are counting on the high probability that no one will complain- which has nothing to do with the legality but everything to do with “how are they getting away with it”.
Coincidentally, just last evening, I started listening to the audio book version of Michael Connelly’s newest novel: The Crossing featuring (now retired) LAPD detective Harry Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller.
One of the opening scenes of the book takes places in a Los Angeles court room and it has (almost) exactly the same premise: The police had been flagging down motorists who haven’t done anything wrong and who have obeyed all traffic rules in order to present them with what is called a “turkey ticket” which seems to be a voucher for a holiday meal.
As luck would have it, the cops stumble upon a pair of drug dealers. One of the drug dealers panics and flees the scene. The cops become suspicious, the remaining drug dealer (the driver of the car) is handcuffed, but he doesn’t grant permission for the car to be searched (which the officers don’t do at this point). The cops call for a drug sniffing dog who alerts them. The car is then searched and the officers find drugs as well as a big stash of drug money.
As far jurisdictions in Canada go, at any time police can pull you over to check your driver’s licence, vehicle registration, liability insurance and vehicle fitness, but during such stops they cannot further question you or your passengers or search your vehicle unless the hear or see something that gives them reasonable suspicion to believe that an offence had been committed. If they happen to give you a hundred bucks at the same time, more power to them.
If they want to pull you over for some offence, they must have reasonable suspicion that an offence had been committed.
Note that this is for Canada, ymmv elsewhere.
“getting away with it” probably wasn’t the best choice of words for me to use, but they’re getting away with it because so far nobody has made a fuss. But most case law is built on someone “making a fuss” over something that was always done a certain way. Nobody got their rights read to them until Miranda, getting a public defender wasn’t universal until Gideon, and so on. All it takes is one person to get pulled over for not breaking the law and then arrested when the officer realizes they’re drunk and the charge tossed based on lack of RS for this ridiculous use of police resources to stop.
Don’t get me wrong, police community relations is essential. This just isn’t the way to do it. And I don’t see how pulling a car over, lights & siren, for “not breaking the law” can be legal.