Exactly how does Officer Bob and his Shepherd Sparky violate my rights?
I get caught speeding…
When they stand next to my truck and they hand me a speeding ticket…I am somehow being violated? I’m being subject to some illegal search? I own the air that drifts from my vehicle?
I don’t get it.
really?? and just where to the FF expound on this? My interpretation of the 4th was another of those “limiting government intrusions into the citizenry” type of thing. not 'cause of potential embarasment, but 'cause of that whole “liberty” kind of stuff, like requiring that the state produce some evidence that a crime has been committed, that I’m likely to have committed that crime before being able to deprive me of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. like the state has limits to prosecute - I have a right to a speedy trial, right against double jeopardy and so on.
Let’s not make the mistake of thinking the trash cases were rightly decided.
I am really torn on the dogs here. There is precedent showing that dogs are not searching when they are used in airports, but that ws because, I thought, courts held ones reasonable expectations of privacy are lower in an airport. I am not sure here (and confess to again not having had time to properly read this) if the dog smelled marijuana smoke or marijuana. Smoke is a much easier case, as it really is similar to the smelling of alcohol on the breath, an the rules have always been different when there is a public safety rationale. Claerly driving while smoking is of a greater magnitude of danger than driving with grass in the trunk.
I am worried about the whole path towards reversal of Katz and a return to the concept that the 4th Amendment applies only to one’s home. This seems to be another brick in that wall.
Will Snopes do?
And when police dog handlers start teaching their dogs the exciting new “bark when I give the hand signal” trick ?
If I, as a cop, bring a trained drug dog up next to your car and he bingos, that is probable cause. It’s an extension of the plain view exception - instead of it being seen, it’s smelled. The dog won’t bingo on the trace amount on money from that distance; it’s got to be a large amount or fresh usage for the dog to detect it from outside the car.
What’s the problem with that?
I understand that. What I’m still shaky on is how bringing a search dog trained to search for something on what amounts to a search doesn’t qualify as a search. I’m not trying to be obtuse (really I’m not). We just seem to be splitting hairs rather finely over this.
Good question. Does the standard change? Can you be made to wait more than 10 or 15 minutes, or does the dog have to be present at the onset of the traffic stop?
Good god, some of you are rediculous. If you’re going to get all paranoid, why should a police officer be able to do anything if he sees an M-60 and a dozen hand grenades in your back seat? There’s no paper trail for his eyeballs.
If some moron is stupid enough to carry illegal substances and let the molecules of said substance flow out of his car into public space then dipshit deserves to be arrested.
isn’t this a variation of the “if you aren’t doing anything illegal, you shouldn’t worry” concept>?
Since in my jurisidiction (and I suspect universally), cops w/dope smelling dogs aren’t doing routine traffic patrol, the issue is at the point when you’ve been stopped, what’s the probable cause to bring in the dope smelling dog? (and make me wait while you do it)
Why don’t you read the post immediately preceding your own and try again?
The question is: trained for what?
If a dog can be trained for reporting a “bingo” in a reliable manner, it can easily be trained to bark on command. As a result, any cop with a dog conceivably has carte blanche to search a car. “Your honor, my dog bingoed.”
cj
I’m not sure I follow you here. Wouldn’t a backseat full of armaments be plainly visible to the officer, and therefore be an obvious probably cause for further search or arrest? I wouldn’t have an issue with that.
I see the dog in this context as an instrument, just like x-ray vision (if such were ever invented), or supersensitive listening devices. Actually, how far are we from police using tiny fiber optic cameras, drilled into a home without anyone’s knowledge? True, you have no legal right to smoke or grow pot in your home, but the notion that dogs and advancing technology may soon give the police Supermanlike powers of detection just doesn’t sit right with me.
If that were to happen, what do think the results would be?
Presumably, this dog and handler would have a very high (comparative) rate of false positives, yes?
So what happens when the defense starts questioning him - after a few such cases - about how accurate his dog is? What happens when he tells the judge at the suppression hearing that his dog alerts frequently but a subsequent search hasn’t revealed contraband?
Yes, but he could just as easily lie about it as he could that the dog detected drugs. It seems rediculous that on one hand the expectation is that the officer will for the most part operate within the bounds of the law but once we bring in the dog he’s going to lie like a rug just because he has a dog. If you don’t trust the police, whether or not he has a dog isn’t going to matter.
I really don’t care if the police have cameras in my house. Sure they’ll watch me do really stupid things, but whatever. However I can understand the right to privacy in that aspect and how others could mind. I find emissions from a car, house or person to be totally different. I, personally, don’t think that someone viewing a different spectrum of light, such as UV, should be held to different standards than someone using the visible spectrum. If he’s got probable cause to look in my windows he should have the same probable cause to see heat emissions or detect gassious emissions.
No, but they ARE supposed to uphold the laws the way the politicians write them, and the way the people want them written. The police aren’t this mystery organization of jackbooted facists, twisting the courts to do their bidding, the police are hamstrung in more cases and ways than you can possibly imagine, this unties their hands just a little bit, nothing more. Further, the courts, if their job is to protect unpopular minorities, are doing a really shitty job overall. (SSM anyone?)
Well, see the judge can throw the cop in the slammer and the cop loses his job, and livelyhood if he or she commits perjury on the stand. I don’t know a working police officer willing to do that for some asshole with a pocketful of Indiana Ditch Weed.
Actually, we’re already there. With a proper warrant, those little fiber optic cameras can be popped into your house without your knowledge.
Your argument here is circular “I know it’s not legal, but i don’t think the police should be able to check for it” the logic is at odds with itself.
No matter how you slice it, the police are on the side of the angels. They’re protecting the law abiding citizenry from the spectre of e-vile drugs and their dangerous side effects, while getting the “bad guys” off the street, for the people paying their salaries, it’s really win-win.
IMO, the ''if you’re not doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about" concept is damn valid. If you’re going 45 MPH in a 45 MPH zone, then you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re going 52 in a 45, you’re asking for a ticket, or at least a stop. if you don’t skirt the law, and don’t stick out too much, and act like an ass, you could be a murderer get away with it.
Can you cite me the case law prior to this that allows police to use something more sensitive than human senses to qualify under the “plain view” exception? Not being snarky; I’m really curious if there is such case law.
And by the time it gets to the point where the defense is questioning the officer, the defendant has been arrested, interrogated, arraigned, possibly jailed without bail, publicly tarred as a druggie and a criminal (because the police don’t arrest innocent people, right? There must be something to that accusation…), subjected to the expense of hiring counsel and generally had his life completely and utterly disrupted.
That’s assuming of course that the judge suppresses the search, but that’s a given because innocent people never get put on trial in America right? And also assuming that he doesn’t get convicted, because cops never lie and innocent defendants never get convicted, right?
And that’s only the defendant whose lawyer gets ahold of the cop after “a few such cases.” That leaves all the previous defendants to whom the cop did the same thing.
Maybe my own experience has soured me, but I have a really serious problem with cops being allowed to say things like “I smell marijuana” or “I smell alcohol” as a pretext for a search when they can’t find anything else to hang PC on, and I don’t like the idea of extending that ability to a canine officer, and I really don’t understand how any reasonable person can say this doesn’t qualify as a “search.”
With out any evidence all this is going to happen? I think you’re going over the top a bit. It’s not like the police arrest people for DUI based solely on the odor of their breath.
Nah, I have to say that one was both logical and reasonable. If you prepare to throw it out and leave it on the curb, you can’t really complain if a cop or a homeless guy takes it off.
First off, that would basically be the writ of death for the cop’s career. Second, they have very regular and standardized training, which the dog goes through regularly. Retraining may not even be an option for the end user by the time it’s all said and done.
Before now? I don’t have any. But then, the Kyllo case was the only real oppposition (though its been long understood that using, say “X-Ray superman vision” wouldn’t fly). Ba-dum-ksssh. No one has any case law either way, AFAIK, though I’m hardly an expert in the use of advanced sensory devices and privacy law.
I believe shotgun mikes are considered a violation, though I’m not too sure.
And the defense is going to know about this how?
They tried to pull that one on me. I hadn’t been drinking and there wasn’t anything illegal in my car, but I certainly didn’t want them tearing my car apart on the side of the road, because even when they didn’t find anything and had no reason to arrest me, I’d still have the problem of my car being a mess, my shit being all over the road, and any damage they did in the process is my problem right?
Nor do I trust that the dog is reacting only to drugs, when it’s just as easy to train a dog to bark or do any other action with a cue that’s not necessarily going to be perceptible to me.
The kind of cop who’d say ‘I smell marijuana’ because I happen to look a certain way seems just as likely to me to say that his dog smelled it.
Can I come live in your world, where everybody is issued rose-colored glasses and there are no cops with any personal bias of any type?
A friend and I were stopped once for doing 45 in a school zone (35mph). Were we stopped for being a long-haired white kid and a big bald black kid in a Corvette? Is it was because my friend was a black guy in a primarily upper middle-class area? I’m not a mind reader so to this day I don’t know. But as my friends Vette just had a new guage cluster put in and calibrated four days previous, the cop wasn’t behind us long enough to pace us anyway, and we were were at a red light when we originally saw the cop (so we weren’t speeding), I know damn well his reason wasn’t what he said.
As for being detained while waiting for a K-9 car to show up, I could be wrong, but I thought that they couldn’t detain you for one second longer then it takes to conclude whatever interaction is happening. I’m thinking that if a cop took 45 minutes to write out a speeding ticket that normally only taks 10, you could make a case that you were unreasonably detained. IANAL, though, so I don’t know if that’s the case or not.
In regards to the decision itself, I too cannot understand how using a tool (animal or technological) to search for something is not search?