First, can someone outline the difference between long detentions (restrained, transported to a building for hours and hours) and arrests? I've never seen a non-arrest police detention in the US that lasted past the scene. Transport always first means arrest. Can they just "detain" you for... ever?
Then: the directly-related issue that has been raised (google it, many, many articles detailing this) is that it seems no one, at the time or afterwards, is able to challenge or even discern the basis for arrest, or even if the arresting officer indeed has jurisdiction, authority, or is a law enforcement officer.
The Federal officers/agents involved in these are not identified even by agency much less individually, as well as not revealing to the arrestee or anyone else who they are or what the charge is, on paper or verbally. So there's no clear way to follow up on anything much less be sure you are being arrested on legal authority at the time.
We're used to seeing a police car, a guy with a name tag, patch for agency, in big cities other marks for which division/precinct. Paperwork is done. But if none of that, then are we allowed (legally: swear I am on topic) to challenge the arrest (on any part of it), at any time?
If so, how?
There are substantial differences between an investigative detention and an arrest. Some legal authors like to present the question as binary - a person is either under arrest, or they are free to leave. The case law really doesn't support that conclusion, but rather presents three cases: 1) A person is free to leave, 2) A person is detained and not free to leave, but is not under arrest, or 3) A person is under arrest.
The big distinction is when does an investigative detention become an arrest. To make an investigative detention, an officer must have
reasonable suspicion that the detainee is involved in illegal activity. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than is
probable cause. The investigative detention authority was first recognized by the Supreme Court in Terry v Ohio. You'll commonly see these referred to a "Terry Detentions" or Terry Stops." Subsequent case law has held that the period of detention may not exceed the purpose of the detention, and that the officer must diligently pursue the investigation without a break. Most of the cases involved detentions ranging from eight minutes to two hours. If the results of the investigation provide probable cause for an arrest, and the officer has statutory authority to make the arrest, an arrest can be made. If the investigation fails to provide probable cause, then the subject must be released.
There are two good teaching cases, that both came down from the Supreme Court during the Ferguson riots. Both dealt with traffic stops, and brief investigative detentions under very similar conditions, and the court came to opposite decisions:
In Rodriguez v U.S. the defendant was stopped for traffic violations. The officer formed a suspicion that there were drugs in the vehicle and requested a drug detection dog to the scene. The officer completed the traffic citation and the detained the defendant for eight minutes until the drug dog arrived. The drug dog alerted on the vehicle (providing probable cause for the search) and the defendant's dope was recovered. The court held that there was no investigative activity occurring during those eight minutes and therefore there was no basis to detain the defendant and the recovery of the dope was the product of an illegal detention.
In U.S. v Sharpe, the defendant was observed by a DEA agent driving a truck, and with another car that appeared to be travelling in concert with the truck. The agent requested assistance from local LEOs who initially stopped the car, and who located and stopped the truck some distance away. The DEA agent first contacted the driver of the car, conducted his field investigation without interruption and subsequently arrested the driver for possession of a couple bales of marijuana. The agent then immediately proceeded to the location of the truck stop, arriving about 40 minutes after the stop. He conducted a field investigation at that scene and recovered a bunch of bales of marijuana from the truck. The Supreme Court upheld the resulting search and detention.
The key distinction between Rodriguez and Sharpe is that an eight minute detention with no investigative work being done was bad, and that a 40 minute detention during an uninterrupted investigation was good.
There is a lot of case law in the area. I've found this article to give a pretty good summary:
https://casetext.com/analysis/searc...longed-duration-or-improper-nature-of-seizure
