It’s not so much that as:
a) Given what I know of your posts I think you are a reasonably responsible officer. Not every officer I know (including some I really like) fits that description.
b) Somewhere in-between legal and illegal there really is a gray area in some jurisdictions of “what will the mayor, chief and local magistrate let me get away with”.
And the c) we have on the Dope constantly – Your Mileage May Vary.
The problem with that is, law enforcement actions are dependent on what is legal.
In the USA a traffic stop is a seizure and SCOTUS said everyone in the vehicle is seized.
Pulling over a vehicle is based on Reasonable Suspicion that the vehicle did something illegal, has an equipment violation, there is a hazard, etc… Reasonable suspicion is a lesser standard than probable cause. But not doing anything illegal is not RS to be detained.
All it takes is one of these good will stops to blow up in someones face and everyone will go “Ohhhhhhh” like Edith Bunker and realize these things weren’t legal to begin with.
My "YMMV’ is that there is a piece of the story we’re missing.
Right. Other posters have hit around it, but the real issue hasn’t been addressed. The scenario is:
The Bumbleweed, WV police force is doing a nice thing around Christmas and handing out $50 gift cards. The “joke” is that they pull over a random motorist for no reason at all, make the driver think he is getting a ticket, but surprise, he gets a gift card! Merry Christmas from your local PD! Cops get headlines for being good guys.
But, the OP’s objection (I believe) is that suppose during one of these “joke” stops the officer notices that the driver is drunk off of his ass with four open whiskey bottles, a bag of coke, and a machine gun on the passenger seat. Since the stop was done with no legal basis, no reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime was occurring, the seizure was illegal, and the evidence of drunken driving, coke and machine gun possession would almost surely be suppressed.
Well - come to the UK and you can be pulled over for no reason at all. “The police can stop a vehicle for any reason. If they ask you to stop, you should always pull over when it’s safe to do so.You’re breaking the law if you don’t.” You don’t have to have your documents like licence and insurance, as you can produce them later, but it’s better if you do have them handy; also some photo ID.
We see all the time, on reality TV shows, where a cop in a car fitted with ANPR, will pull someone over simply because your car was connected in some way with a previous drug offence. They will get everyone out and search the car, even calling up a dog unit. Sometimes, hopefully not often, the car is a rental and the driver is totally innocent. Drug dealers like to hire high-end cars a week at a time.
I can remember two times I was pulled over. Once, a Louisiana cop saw my license plate and pulled me over to cheerfully ask where is Prince Edward Island. He made it clear that it was just an inquiring mind’s need to know, and he waved me on without asking for license or any other documents or ID.
Another time, in a small town in Florida, I was pulled over because a suspicious lady saw me stop in front of her house and look at her bird-feeder with binoculars, and called the police to report my behavior. Luckily, bird-watching did not fall outside the cop’s narrow view of normal human behavior.
Odd local laws can also come into play. My wife and I once arranged to car pool to an event, and we’d meet our companions in front of a supermarket in Licking, Missouri. After a couple of minutes, a cop dropped by and explained that it is a violation of a local ordinance to sit in a parked car on a public street in Licking, we’d have to pull into the supermarket parking lot, or else get out and stand by the car.
Whether or not you did anything wrong is not your call to make.
A personal note as data.
A cop once pulled me over. And he was a royal dick right of the bat. His excuse was my tag didn’t match my car. When I explained I knew for a fact that the tag on my car was the proper one because I had carefully looked at ALL the paperwork I got from the DMV, he just got even pissier. Then he tried even some more lame assed excuse for the stop. I had been at the local 7-11 a few minutes earlier. He said he pulled up and then I “quickly and suspiciously disappeared”. Which was shit because he pull up there when I did. I then filled my tank with gas. Myself and my passenger TOOK turns using the one person bathroom. We did a good bit of comparison shopping in the little store before we headed to the local campground.(because we were poor/cheap and our wallets were fighting our empty stomachs so to speak). Then after all that, we both basically took baths with swim trunks on out on the side of the store with the hose because we were both dirty as crap from the days activities. We had to have been there 15 minutes while he was there. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 30 minutes. When I pointed THAT out he got pissier still.
So now he pulls something about my proof of insurance. First it was suspicious that I had “all those” insurance cards. My insurance company sent me a new card every six? months. I took one and put in my wallet. I threw the other one glove box .And all I ever kept in there was insurance paperwork. What the fuck is suspicious about old insurance cards from same fucking company for the same fucking car with the same fucking address with the same fucking name on it that goes back a few years? All that proves is that I have a long history of actually paying my fucking insurance regularly.
Well, after I point THAT out he’s gotta double down even more.“This card doesn’t look legit to me and isn’t proof of insurance”. I point out that THE CARD he is holding is something the insurance company only GIVES to people who ACTUALLY HAVE INSURANCE WITH THEM AND HAVE PAID FOR IT. Then I ask him if the associated policy paperwork AND the card aren’t insurance then what (the hell) IS? And let me note this wasn’t some who the fuck ever heard of them insurance company. It was either All State or Statefarm back in the day when insurance companies weren’t a dime a dozen. And for that matter, this was back in the days when printing up some bogus looking documents wasn’t something any old Billy Bob could do because almost nobody had computers and even fewer had fancy high resolution COLOR printers.
Either that cop was biggest fucking moron in the county or he lied about the tag not matching and was justing fucking with me because he could.
That fucker better hope he dies before I find out I have a terminal disease.
Probably along the lines of “Officer Y - here are 10 gift cards. Hand them out to the first 10 drivers you see exhibiting responsible behavior. Failure to do so may influence your future career here”. You have the Routine Check to fall back on as justification for pulling the car over as not everything required by law in the operation of a vehicle is visible to the naked eye; sometimes you need to have someone on the side of the road before you can be sure. Your last ditch fall-back can always be “I wasn’t sure his/her seatbelt was properly fastened”. Not being an idiot, Officer Y sizes up the person during the stop; respond badly and you are sent on your way not knowing that something more than a routine check was involved - respond well and you get a nice little gift and the officer is on his way to making his quota for the days patrol. Respond badly enough and an arrest may result. Will it stick? It depends on how hard the driver fights it and exactly which magistrates and/or judges they draw.
“Almost surely” being the operative words. And there are ways around that I would think. Officer Y in trying to make his chief happy and get rid of his gift cards pulls me over and sees something that makes him suspicious. I don’t get a gift card; I get thanked and sent on my way. Officer Y radios Officer Z in the next county or town and says “There is a Subaru headed your way. You may want to tail him a bit”. As I cross jurisdictions, Officer Z drops in behind me and follows behind. Chances are real good that if I’m dirty, I’ll do something wrong in the operation of my car giving probable cause for a more than routine stop. Officer Z then lights me up and the dead body in my trunk is discovered. Assuming I can connect the dots, Officer Y can still honestly say that he relayed no information other than a suspicious vehicle and Officer Z can honestly say that he took no action until he saw me change lanes without using my signal (for example). Will it stand up? Maybe; maybe not. But chances are I’ll cop a plea rather than fight it out and risk the loss and the extra time.
Look, I know as well as you do that there are judges out there looking to toss out any case or evidence they can. Lord knows, get a dozen cops together with a few pitchers of beer and you will hear the tales. But the opposite is also true; some judges never met a cop or traffic stop they didn’t like. Legal? Illegal? Like everything in law enforcement, that is more after the fact. During the fact, for some officers, it’s more “What expectations am I being asked to meet and how do I do that?”
of course you are joking
I read this in my voice of sarcasm:rolleyes:
bold original.
!
Am I the only one to be blown away by this fact?
In fact, these days, before they pull you over, they know who owns the car (well - who it’s registered to) who is insured to drive it and whether it has a valid MOT (annual mechanical check).
Once they have done the usual checks to see if you really are the person who is insured to drive the car (very few cars have all-driver insurance these days) they will have a good sniff for cannabis and alcohol. This may lead to a search and arrest for dealing quantities or a caution for the odd spliff, or a breathalyser and arrest for DUI.
Bear in mind that the officer in question might be a 5’6", woman, armed only with a stick, and the car may well have two or three large guys in it. Even drug dealers rarely go armed with anything more than a blade here - the only reason to have a gun is if they are in dispute with another gang. Get arrested with a couple of grand and a K of heroin and you might get 5 years, reduced to 2½ for a guilty plea and good behaviour. If you have a gun it will be double that or more.
In the UK it is considered foolish to carry licence & insurance papers in your car because if it gets stolen it makes things easier for the thief.
If you get stopped you may be given an ‘order to produce’ these documents at a police station within 7 days. You are likely to get one even if you are clearly the victim because somebody drove into your stationary car.
The non-obvious bit is that you are likely to be waiting in a queue for hours (3 hours last time) before anybody will deign to look at it. It’s a handy way to punish anyone at all.
Not during the original stop it isn’t. The time to question it is later in court.
Say one of these well meaning officers pulls over someone for not breaking the law only to find them intoxicated and arrests them for that. One of the first things an attorney does is try to argue whether the stop was legal in the first place. These stops aren’t legal therefore I can’t see a judge not tossing a case like that.
Let’s say the officer realizes he can’t make an DUI arrest on the bad stop and gives the guy a ride home instead. The guy then walks back to his car, drives it, hits a family head on killing them all but he lives. It later comes out that the police stopped him but couldn’t cite him for DWI because it wasn’t a legal stop. How do we think that’s going to look? Then again if the cop wasn’t doing these stops he may have never known the guy was drunk in the first place. It’s like debating “Back to the Future”.
The OP asks a really good question. Too many have answered based on 1.)old anecdotes that happened before some legal rulings, 2.)laws in other countries, C.) that the stops are permissible because the public likes them.
All of which are irrelevant.
So the officer, when questioned why he stopped the driver, doesn’t mention the gift cards. He tells the truth but maybe not the whole truth. What he testifies to is “During holidays like this, vehicle accident prevention is of prime concern to our department. I made a routine stop with this vehicle as I have many others this week, and throughout the year, and found the driver showed signs of intoxication. I then administered the appropriate tests and my suspicions were confirmed”. And I can’t think of a local judge/magistrate who would question the arrest or find for the defense unless the defense can make a claim of DWB (Driving While Black) or something like that.
People like to think of things as legal or not. It should be that way but it isn’t. The reality for both sides comes down to what can I get away with in court.
In no jurisdiction of the United States may an officer make a “routine” stop without reasonable, articulable suspicion that the driver has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.*
*DUI checkpoints are a different beast and have their own rules. Randomly pulling over motorists because of “vehicle accident prevention” doesn’t qualify. How is the officer preventing accidents by randomly pulling people over anyways?
Sorry but this is all complete nonsense.
Have you ever been to a PC hearing on a DUI case? The best chance a defense attorney has is to get the traffic stop tossed right from the beginning. If officers are stopping people for not breaking the law and then they testify to something else that’s perjury. And cops cannot just stop cars for “accident prevention” and other bullshit.
And yes, a judge would toss a DUI case if there is no legal cause for the stop. Your post seems to say the end justifies the means. The U.S. Constitution says otherwise.
“You appeared to be weaving.”
Weaving? I can’t even knit! 
Did you read the OP? They’re stopping people for not breaking the law. Are you suggesting that they change their story if they find something illegal after they make an illegal stop?
What an illegal, unethical, perjurious cluster fuck that would be. Then we might as well toss the 4th Amendment and let police stop cars for no justified reason.
One of my dad’s favorite stories was about the time he pulled a motorist over for doing everything perfectly. Dad just happened to be driving his patrol car behind this guy, and the guy’s driving was so perfect in every respect that it made my dad suspicious.
So Dad pulled the guy over, walked up to the car, and asked the driver, “Did your driver’s license just expire?”
Dude blushed and said, “Yes! Yesterday! What did I do wrong?!”
Dad said, “You didn’t do anything wrong. You drove perfectly! That made me suspicious. So go renew your license, okay?”
(Granted, take my dad’s cop and Marine Corps stories with a grain of salt)
People who know they have a warrant or a bunch of drugs in the car often do intentionally drive flawlessly. And it is suspicious seeing most of us have bad habits and will screw up eventually when followed long enough. But I can’t put that do on the PC section of an arrest & detention form.
Some years back some defectives on the metro drug unit tried that. They actually testified that the person was driving too well for too many miles so they figured he must have been doing it so he didn’t get stopped with the drugs he had in the trunk which is why they made the stop.
:smack: That case got bounced like a super ball!