Would you let a police officer search your car?

In My Humble Opinion
21

There are definitely episodes of that show where they pull somebody over, search, find nothing, and let them go. But I agree that’s a minority of cases they show. Whereas I agree they must cut out the great majority of boring traffic stops where the cop has no suspicion of anything but a traffic violation and just writes a ticket, or just gives a warning. But the latter is not really relevant to what I said.

To review, the two things I said the show makes look common are

  1. people very seldom refuse searches. I believe this is a largely accurate impression, that when it comes down to it a small % of people have the stones to say ‘no’.
  2. searches often yield contraband. Here it’s more possible that leaving boring cases, of the police searching not just giving traffic tickets, on the cutting room floor gives the wrong impression. But I tend to believe the impression the show gives is still not wildly distorted on this point either. A lot of Americans live in social environments where ignoring certain laws (having at least personal use quantities of illegal drugs especially) is standard operating procedure. It’s not that strange that the police get to be able to fairly accurately recognize such people.*

*with all due disclaimers about assuming individuals are guilty, and leaving fully open the question whether all those things should really be illegal.

22

One should always bear in mind that vehicle searches, consensual or otherwise, can be very destructive. Police will have no hesitation to tear your vehicle apart, shred the upholstery, or commit other similar mayhem if they think that’s what they need to do.

(ETA: Cite: My Driver’s Ed teacher told us that.)

23

This is not a hypothetical to me, as it actually happened. It was in Kansas (I had CA license plates). I refused to give consent to search my car (they pulled me over for driving in the left lane without passing someone-- but I was just avoiding all the trucks that were throwing up water from the road, making it almost impossible to see). The cops then declared that they would bring a contraband sniffing dog, which I wasn’t really in a position to resist. Surprise, surprise, the dog “smelled” something in the truck, and they had me open it. The truck was empty.

The cop tried to “nice cop” chit-chat me the whole time, even offering to buy me some breakfast afterwards (it was very early in the AM). I said thanks, but no thanks, and continued on my way.

The cops had been tailing me for about 30 minutes, btw, and even pulled the sneaky “exit the freeway and then get back on” trick, which I watched in somewhat bemusement in my rear-view mirror. Complete assholes.

24

Yes. I believe there are better ways to fight the good fight then when you are being pulled over.

If you get into a one on one situation with a bad cop, you are not going to win. At least not in the short term.

25

Yes. But I would videotape it.

26

For any folks who said (or thought) “Yes, I have no contraband and nothing to hide,” how about the mechanic that worked on your car last week and lost one of the joints that was in his pocket in your back seat? How about the kid your son gave a ride home to last week whose baggie fell out of his backup and got wedged between the seat cushions?

You could be completely innocent and find yourself hotly saying, “That’s not mine,” and realizing as you say it that this is what everyone says.

Never consent. “I’m sorry, officer, but my privacy is very important to me, so I do not consent to a search.” Smile happily, be friendly, but do not consent. They may search anyway. That’s fine. But f lightning strikes and they find something, your lawyer will thank you, because now they have to prove they had some valid reason to search. When you consent, that protection vanishes; your consent makes their search reasonable.

27

Yeah but in today’s day and age, is it worth a potential beating or shooting by a cop? I don’t trust cops to take being told no very well.

28

A verbal interaction with a cop, like a verbal contract, isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

So a cop asks for consent, and you say “no”. Cop may search your car anyway. What’s to stop him? He’ll tell the judge you consented. You’ll say you didn’t. It’s your word against the cop. Who’s the judge going to believe?

If you have your own body cam, and you have it on your person all all times and you have it running, that changes things. How many people do this?

Do you have a body cam on your lapel at all times?

29

That doesn’t makes sense. The sort of cop who would beat or shoot you for no reason wouldn’t bother asking for your consent.

If a cop needs my consent, the answer is “no”.

30

I think I might say “For what?” Or something of the sort. I try to treat a police officer like another person – like a random cashier or plumber – and am rarely intimidated by them (as a fairly ordinary, slightly odd white person). Maybe I am stupid, but those guys can smell fear. No point setting them off.

31

While driving, my cellphone is in a dash mounted clamp. In seconds I have video running, backed up to the cloud.

As a passenger, my phone is in my pocket or hand. When a friend was rear ended, I started video before getting out of the car. The other driver thought I was taking pictures. I caught him saying things on video that would have helped my friend if the other driver later changed his story.

32

Ever hear of cellphones? Mine can shoot video at 720p.

33

So, from the POV of any police officer interacting with you, being “hostile and aggressive and scary” results in compliance, while being “good-natured, or merely neutral and professional” results in a less cooperative suspect. Thus, you are training the police to be hostile and aggressive and scary.

34

This is exactly why I think the right answer is “no” regardless of if you have something to hide or not, and regardless of if you think they’d plant contraband on you.

One reason I believe abusive cops are so common is because they don’t have experience handling a legitimate refusal. They are used to their requests being responded to like orders. If 99 out of 100 motorists consent to a search, then that 1 who declines will be seen asking for trouble. “No” in and of itself will be treated as probable cause.

35

Look at it this way: If you have nothing to hide, then the officer is going to be wasting his time searching your car. You don’t want the nice police officer to waste his time, do you? Say no so he can get back to looking for the real bad guys quicker.

36

That was my thought. If the cop is an honest cop, neither he nor I have anything to gain from a search. No real harm would be done, but it would be a nuisance and a waste of time for both of us.

37

This strikes me as similar to the logic by which you shouldn’t use a cash back credit card to get 2% when credit card companies are charging merchants 2.5% (just example numbers), because if nobody used credit cards that 2.5% would go way and everyone would pay 2.5% less not 2%. There’s always at least one post like that on every thread about CC’s. But it assumes there’s some big ‘we’ of spontaneous collective action. There isn’t. In the real world I either use the cash back card and get 2% or I don’t and I get nothing, in the majority of places w/ fixed price cash or credit.

In the real world my decision to consent or not to a police search has zero %, to the nearest large number of digits, impact on ‘training’ cops in general. Training cops is not a valid argument about what I individually should do either way.

Note, I’m not saying the actual decision comes out as obviously here as credit card. I actually tend to agree with ‘say no’. However if the cops appear already worked up and one senses ready to violate one’s rights anyway, that would factor in. For one thing as several have pointed out, is an abusive cop going to behave better or worse because you say ‘no’ to a search? But probably in the great majority of cases it is in fact a ‘merely neutral and professional’ cop and if the person actually has the balls to say ‘no’ and stick to it (I still guess the great majority aren’t able to when it comes down to it) then they probably end up proceeding without a search, though perhaps delayed over saying yes. And if dogs are called and there really aren’t drugs, probably in the great majority of cases the dogs won’t respond, it’s just a delay.

The videotaping tangent doesn’t totally clarify it. It has the same issue of how it would help in the near term if it’s really a rogue cop, and even ‘backing up to the cloud’ is only relevant to proving yourself right in the end. It’s not necessarily the answer to inconvenience or even humiliation, or in rare cases worse, in the meantime.

38

My instinctive reaction would be to ask “Why?”

But I’ve never watched “Cops” and I haven’t had much experience with real cops and the way they operate. I’m guessing that there are all sorts of possible reasons a police officer might ask to search my car in a situation like this. Maybe the cop is a bully and was just looking for an excuse to intimidate somebody, preferably somebody from out of town. Maybe there had just been a robbery in the area and the cop suspects I was involved. Maybe the cop has been possessed by an evil being, like in the Stephen King novel Desperation.

But my guess—which is perhaps a naive one—is that the most likely explanation is that the cop was thinking something like, “If he says yes, I might find something, and if he says no, then oh well, it didn’t hurt to ask.” Is this at all a reasonable supposition?

39

I’ve only been asked once for permission to search my car, and I agreed. For a funny reason.

I was driving up 95 from South Carolina in a rental car, and just over the North Carolina border a cop pulls out and follows me for several miles. Finally, the lights come on and he pulls me over. While I’m waiting for him, I take out my license and the rental agreement papers, and oh fuck…my license had expired six months previously. I had no idea and Enterprise didn’t notice either. So now I’m picturing my immediate future with me in the back of the trooper’s Crown Vic and my rental being towed away.

The cop walks up to the passenger side window, leans in and asks for my license and registration. Then he starts with the questions, over and over. Had I been drinking? (it was around noon) Was I high on weed? Why are your eyes red? (I immediately looked in the rear view and they were a little red. Not sure why, but not good.) He keeps repeating the weed question, like I’m going to change my mind. Then he tells me that I was “kinda drifting” in my lane, so he stopped me to make sure I was ok. And then, do you mind if I take a look in the trunk?

While he’s asking me all of these questions, he keeps looking at my license, and then the rental agreement, then back to my license. So I pop the trunk. The only thing in there was my overnight bag. He has a gander, comes back and gives me my papers and tells me to drive safe and have a nice day.

I realized later that he was most likely fishing for drug mules, with I95 being a major corridor for trafficking. I was driving with all the windows open because I don’t like A/C unless the heat is unbearable. According to to my cop cousin, even well-sealed weed can stink up a car, and apparently that’s a “tell” in hot weather. The trooper had to have noticed that my license had expired, but busting me would have tied him up for a couple of hours. Of course, I’m just guessing. I’m not sure my being white was the sole reason, either. The trooper was black, so who knows?

Anyway, that was one long, long, paranoid drive back to New York.

In the future, I’d probably say yes with a rental, but no with my own car.

40

My brother was driving his new Colorado tagged pickup truck on a trip through Indiana. He got pulled over for improper turn signal use. Didn’t have it on long enough when changing lanes on a highway.

So, cop says he smells MJ. My brother does not smoke. Couldn’t if he wanted to, he drives a semi truck for the government. So, random tests. CDL and all that.

Cop makes him wait for the drug dog. Searches the pickup truck. Not sure if a search warrant was involved, but this mess took about 3 hours.

No drugs of course.

So… if you live in a legal MJ state, and cross state lines, your a target.