this wasn't legal, was it?

Factual Questions
21

California laws are just like Bear relates for Florida. In California no one can be ‘detained’ without charges or transported from the location where they were detained (there are exceptions like taking a juvenile back home).

Apparently PA got the cops no one could train correctly. But why don’t you let it go jb? We have already established that it wasn’t right according to contemporary standards.

It’s too late to change it now. Become an attorney, go into politics and enact laws requiring better training for the police there. Or change the laws that allow this sort of behavior.

22

Get a lawyer. Now.

Your best guess will NEVER get you anywhere in a court of law.

Hubby was a prosecutor, they do not mess around.

23

noo no no. this happened in nov of last year. i had neither the resources nor the passion to fight this out, having been bitch-slapped around once too many by the man.

i had only been arrested once in freshman year for dui, which i deserved utterly. the police officers who handled that acted professional to the utmost. i thank jehovah that nbody was injured, let alone killed. my car got stuck under a guardrail.

since then i have really kept my eye out for doing stupid stupid stuff. i won’t drive under the influence, and i am very uncomfortable if anybody else is. that’s one of the reasons i had agreed to go to tom jones, cuz i knew for a fact that the driver was cool.

i’ve already paid all the fines for this latter dumb-cop fiasco. like $400 and suspension of license, but not before being jerked to and fro by the media, pa court system. i made a grand total of 6 (count 'em, SIX!) appearances in front of the bench just to get this straightened out. my court notices didn’t come until after my dates had passed (and were postmarked accordingly, but the judge didn’t believe me) so a warrant was taken out for my arrest. we have something called ARD which is a plea out thang, and i told the court officer that i had already been in ARD and that i was pretty sure i couldn’t go in again, but she said she checked and i was going in. when i showed up for that court date, the judge yelled at me and said i couldn’t be in ard,

etc.

i feel like kafka in that clash song. klashka?

so anyway, it’s too late to do anything. i just wanted confirmation that drunken monkeys could have handled this case better than retardo ewok et al.

ooh ooh ooh! i just remember some other wacky misadventure anecdotes.

officer montgomery looks at the driven. let’s say his name is Straub. REtardo is filling out the citation. “What’s your ethnikkity?” “Pardon?” Montgomery actually pronounced it ethnikkity.

“Uh, Jamaican, Thai, Native American, and Irish American.” Blank stare from the 'tardo. “Yeah, but what would you call yourself?” “Jamaican, Thai, native American, and Irish american…” When we looked at the citation the next day, he had checked off ‘hispanic’.

Later, we’re still sitting in the station. Straub and Daniel (the othe rpassenger) are both sitting next to one another. I’m by myself. I’ve got these neato handcuffs without a wire, just a hinge between cuffs. I am swallowing lots of air, in the vain hope that the air would absorb some alcohol and i could burp my self towards sobriety. always the theoretical scientist.

Straub asks montgomery for a pen. He gives one over. “What’s your badge number, sir?” asks Straub? “It’ll be on the citation.” “Can i at least get your name?” “It’ll be on the citation.”

a little while after, the cuffs come off. Daniel takes the pen and starts writing the word “REVENGE” very large on his left forearm.

the cops had stolen daniel’s cigarettes.

24

GGGRrrrrrrrrRRRR! I just looked at my mail today, and lo and behold, ANOTHER f-ing letter from the district court. even though i sent them their money a month ago, they saw fit to charge me again for the same crime, for a different amount (less, i might add), and take out yet ANOTHER warrant!

is this instant karma? why did it show up when i decided to get cheeky? I HATE JUDGE STEPHANIE FUCKING KLEIN! Write her letters telling her how much i hate her, please, c/o [address removed]

[Edited by manhattan on 07-26-2000 at 06:34 PM]

25

jb_farley: I tolarate a certain amount of ranting in this forum, but that post is way over the line. Knock it off.

Additionally, you posted an address alleging to belong to a judge. Don’t do that for purposes of furthering your rant.

Perhaps next time, I’ll drop her a line with a link to the thread. Got it? I am not fooling around here.

26

There it goes again… The Man is bringing you down JB! Fight the power my brother.

The Man… Manhattan. Coincidence??

27

Ease up, there Bear.

Manhattan’s right.

Averye0

28

Exactly what I said. If your are 'detained", you are ‘arrested’ (The Supremes went on a rant about there is no real difference a while ago), but NOT “under arrest for a crime”. Ie, once you are ‘detained’, if the police ask you questions, your Miranda rights come in place. But if you are just bopping down the sreet, and a cop says, “Hey, nice day, killed anyone?” and then you break down and confess the mass murder, sorry, no miranda. But if those handcuffs are on, and they have NOT Mirandized you, and they ask a question, your answer is NOT admissable against you. The Presiding Judge and the DA made this clear when we were asking about it when I was on the Grand Jury. Again, any form of detention is A FORM of arrest.

And, again, JB, go see the ACLU, or contact the Civil grand Jury, if there is one. What can it hurt?

29

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Danielinthewolvesden *
**

whoda thought diana ross qould get so worked up about the law?

anyway, first off apologies and thanks to Manhattan. Kids, if there’s one thing you learn from this (no, it’s not don’t post drunk) let it be JB CAN BE A REAL HORSES ASS AT TIMES. for those who may have missed the address the first time, here it is again.

Judge Les Notubejujt
County Courthouse
Boy JBsdumb, Yeahillhavetoagreewithyouthere 294stupidstupid5

i’m just incensed that this is a moneymaking operation with little or no disregard for justice. the fact that the judge and officers obviously regarded themselves as on the moral high ground ticked me off even further.

jb

(counting to 10 and rereading post before clicking submit)

30

that should obviously say ‘regard’, not disregard. and i proofread it, too.

soo stupid.

31

Averye0, here is a link for you. I want you to go study these things called ‘jokes’. They are a strange new phenomenon and appear quite frequently on the SDMB. Good luck… http://www.jokes.com/

32

It amazes me that so many little legends and half-truths survive and propagate when it comes to the law.

There are three levels of encounters between citizens and law enforcement: consensual, <i>Terry</i>, and arrest.

A consensual encounter needs absolutely no justification. An officer is free to approach anyone and ask them questions for any reason, as long as the person is free to disregard the questions and go about his business.

A <i>Terry</i> stop must be predicated on “reasonable suspicion.” This is less stringent than probable cause, but is something more than an inchoate, unspecified hunch. A Terry stop involves a brief detention, and may include a pat-down search of outer garments for the officer’s protection.

An arrest must be predicated on probable cause.

As to the facts you relate:

The officer was perfectly entitled to initiate a traffic stop for the failed tailight. This is true even if it’s a pretext for some other reason. As long as the stop is objectively reasonable, the courts will not inquire further.

Once stopped, the officer cannot escalate the encounter beyond its inital bounds, unless there is a further reasonable, articulable suspicion to do so.

It is of no moment that the car was borrowed, by the way; the law forbids anyone from operating a vehicle without tailights. You might get a dismissal from a judge, but it certainly provides probable cause for the stop.

Once stopped, the officer detected an odor of alcohol. The officer can certainly say that each of you looked under 21 - since you all were, he’s safe in saying that. This provided his reasonable, articulable suspicion to investigate further. Assuming there is a Pennsylvania law that allows breathalyzer tests as evidence of possession of alcohol by minors, the results gave him probable cause to arrest you.

So, to answer your questions: “we were only breathalyzed because he had been pulled over. as soon as his thang was over with, we shoulda been free to go. does being a passenger in a car somehow waive some rights?”

Yes, it does, but that doesn’t come into play here. You were breathalyzed because you looked under 21, which, combined with the odor of alcohol, gave the officer reasonable and articulable suspicion that you were minors in possession of alcohol.

“and he breathalyzed us without proof that we were under 21, and then used a .10 result as justification for searching us. can he search without consent in that situation? he also searched the car w/o consent.”

He doesn’t need proof - just reasonable, articulable suspicion. Once you blew 0.10, he had probable cause to arrest you. At that point, he is permitted, without your consent, to search you incident to arrest, as well as to search the area within your immediate reach and control.

I’m sorry you feel “…jerked around by the fucking suburban law system because of this,” but since your conduct was, in fact, illegal, I guess I’m a little curious why you’re indignant. The purpose of the “fucking suburban law system,” after all, is to enforce the fucking suburban laws. If you do not wish to be jerked around thereby, one good approach is to not break the fucking law.

  • Rick
33

One comment in all of this that upset me is how upset you were that 7 cops were there to handle 3 of you.

Put yourself in thier shoes. 3 presumed drunk kids WITH needles and now presumably high is a very high risk situation in my book.

The police show EXCESSIVE force. Mind you… SHOW… to remove any question of flight or fight from suspects. There are three of you and three cops, you guys might actually think you have a chance to fight your way out. 7 cops made it safer for everyone.

CandyMan

34

candyman,

oh very true. i was not upset or indignant (how dare they think i might assault them!). more amused by the sheer number, like when too many clowns climb out of a car. there were four cop cars before Retardo even approached our car.

more over kill than anything else, especially since it was such a smellhole of a town where the main function of the police is to make money, not really serve and protect.
bricker, first of all when i read what i wrote in your quote, i realize how utterly witless all the swearing makes me seem. that being said, you took the quote out of context. true, i am mad that i got arrested (or non-arrested, or whateva). however, the jerking around refers to the fact that the county courthouse has been completely unable to either give me a fair or speedy trial. which is even worse, because throughout i have wanted to plead guilty and get it over with. but the people in that courthouse seem to take immense pleasure in not doing their jobs correctly.

the most recent court date i had, i called the day before to confirm. after waiting on the phone for five minutes, i was told yes, john farley, ARD, tomorrow at 10:30. when i showed up the next day, the judge chewed me out for showing up when i didn’t need to (not for missing another date, or handling myself unprofessionally, but for being in the courthouse when i didn’t have a date). another time, i showed up (again after having called before to confirm, this time a week before) and waited and waited for her to hear my case. i sat there for an hour, and finally when she called me up to the front from her docket, she told me that this was NOT the day for ARD people to show up. that was the day before.

by being jerked around, i mean that i have had to take a total of three days off (6 half-days), which if you do the math adds 50% to the amount of money i’m losing. and the judge treats most who i see before her bench in a very supercilious demeaning manner (e.g., the envelopes postmarked AFTER the court date that they were to have notified me of- she asked why i didn’t show up, and i told her because i didn’t get the letters until last week. i showed her the postmarks, and she looked down her nose at me and said, “Well, Mr. Farley, i don’t know what postal system you are using, but i have never had any problems with it”, to which Retardo let out a sub-genius guffaw.

i’m not that mad that i got arrested. whenever i break the law, i understand that there will be repurcussions, either legal or otherwise. i may bitch and moan that it’s stupid to get arrested, but in my heart and head i know it’s a consequence. but if THEY aren’t following the law, i get bitter. as you pointed out, they were. that answers my question (see thread title). but flagrant jerking around is not excusable. and i have a damn good right to be bitter about it.

ciao,

jb

35

BRICKER – Heh, heh, heh. You said “inchoate.” :wink:

JBFARLEY –

Man, I wish you had a police force like that, because you sound like you really deserve it. Then you could cut your own self out of your burning car after you wreck it; chase down the armed guy that burglarizes your house all by yourself; and somehow revenge yourself from beyond the grave, a la Ghost, after somebody sticks a knife in your heart.

I don’t know what’s up with your court system or the judge, but you have little basis to bitch and moan about the cops, who had every right to stop you for an offense you admit you were guilty of. Why don’t you try following the law and then see how much trouble you have with them?

I’m not sure what you were charged with, but if it was MIP (“Minor In Possession”) or some equally minor charge, you’re not entitled to a trial by jury anyway.

36

Jodi,

I’m not sure why you are being so needlessly argumentative. I’m going to ignore the obviously hyperbolic example you brought up (a knife in my heart?). The fact remains that many police departments around the country use traffic stops as their number one moneymaker. It seems to follow that a lot of the laws which support them are, by definition, unjust. Don’t follow my reasoning here? By unjust i don’t mean unfair. I simply mean not in the best interests of justice.

As for “following the law”, see the above. It is (in my opinion) a travesty that a registered voter who is assumed to be able to handle every other kind of responsibility (short of renting a car) should be imprisoned and/or fined camel-loads of money for imbibing aqua vitae. And i sincerely doubt that you (or anyone for that matter) has led a perfect little pristine life and not ever broken a law.

my complaints are that the punishment in no way fits the crime, a crime that stands on very specious legal legs, and that i have not been able to resolve this issue after 8 months of pleading guilty.

as for the jury crack, i don’t remember anywhere bringing up jury trials, or my dissatisfaction with not having a trial decided by my peers. i just want the goddamn thing done and over with.

37

Fifteen years ago my brother, a friend and I were just finished off a sixpack in the playground of a tony suburban Philadelphia elementary school one beautiful summer night when we were approached by a township policeman. I was 20, my brother and the other guy were both 19 and we were all cited for underage drinking. The cop made us pour out the beers and sent us on our way. A week later we all paid $65 fines.

I think that one of the reasons the police may have seemed so gung-ho, is that in Media (as with many of Philadelphia suburbs), property values are high, which means that the police have lots of money. So they are in abundance, have great equipment, are well trained, but don’t really have much to do. So when they get the opportunity, they take it.

I think you probably were pulled over for DWB. The evidence is the plethora of extra vehicles. The Media Police would not have used 7 cops to pull over a Lexus for a broken tail light, after all.

Also, of the reality police shows that are on television have, I think, made cops believe that the best way to handle situations is with intimidation. Obviously things have changed considerably in 15 years.