lemaymiami
Member
Thanks to all for their responses (and I'll just bet there were many who wanted to chime in since on the street "rules" get a bit flexible..).
Here's a real life case from the seventies - that I lost in court based on the search... I observed a young man in a convenience store at night from my patrol car. In the fashion at that time he was carrying a "man's purse" one of those small leather bags that some carried.. As I watched he abruptly ran from the store, jumped in his car and went tearing down the road... Looked like a possible robbery or attempted robbery so I caught up to him and did a vehicle stop... Before approaching I'd requested someone go by the store and find out whether a crime had occurred there. When I approached his car (this was in the "bad old days" when we were not very safety conscious...) and asked for his driver's license he opened that purse and I could clearly see that it contained a double edged dagger - clearly an illegal weapon - if carried concealed... When the store was checked it was found that no crime had occurred (except for the concealed weapon the young man had with him when he was inside the store...) so I still placed him in custody for the concealed weapon (only a misdemeanor charge here in Florida) - and it all went to court about two or three months later...
When it came in front of the judge the defense attorney moved to suppress the dagger based on lack of probable cause to stop or to search... even though no search had occurred.... In that era the courts were bending over backward to protect everyone's rights and of course my case was tossed...
Some years later my young officers doing very similar pro-active policing took cases like this to court and got convictions.... So, as I mentioned before rulings evolve over time from one end of the spectrum to the other... at least that was my direct observation over a twenty two year span... Lord only knows where we're headed today on this sort of stuff....
Here's a real life case from the seventies - that I lost in court based on the search... I observed a young man in a convenience store at night from my patrol car. In the fashion at that time he was carrying a "man's purse" one of those small leather bags that some carried.. As I watched he abruptly ran from the store, jumped in his car and went tearing down the road... Looked like a possible robbery or attempted robbery so I caught up to him and did a vehicle stop... Before approaching I'd requested someone go by the store and find out whether a crime had occurred there. When I approached his car (this was in the "bad old days" when we were not very safety conscious...) and asked for his driver's license he opened that purse and I could clearly see that it contained a double edged dagger - clearly an illegal weapon - if carried concealed... When the store was checked it was found that no crime had occurred (except for the concealed weapon the young man had with him when he was inside the store...) so I still placed him in custody for the concealed weapon (only a misdemeanor charge here in Florida) - and it all went to court about two or three months later...
When it came in front of the judge the defense attorney moved to suppress the dagger based on lack of probable cause to stop or to search... even though no search had occurred.... In that era the courts were bending over backward to protect everyone's rights and of course my case was tossed...
Some years later my young officers doing very similar pro-active policing took cases like this to court and got convictions.... So, as I mentioned before rulings evolve over time from one end of the spectrum to the other... at least that was my direct observation over a twenty two year span... Lord only knows where we're headed today on this sort of stuff....