Weapons cache found in traffic stop

[AndyC]

edit - Already answered

 

[nico]

Yeah, erratic driving. Something that can't be proven like a tail light being out. I'd love to see the video on that one.

So, it's okay if the cop pulls you over for a license plate screw being loose and then all of a sudden wants to search the vehicle? Since you've got nothing to hide?

What if they were, you know, actually driving erratically? Then would it be OK? Is it really that far fetched to believe that a car full of guys who just stole 29 guns from someone's house might be driving unusually fast and/or weaving in and out of traffic? Furthermore, is it that far fetched to believe that, maybe, when those guys are pulled over with those 29 guns in their trunk, they might act in a way that would make a cop suspicious and willing to take the time to call in a dog?

I got searched because I had a plastic spoon wrapper on the floor, and Mr. Officer claimed it was a blunt wrapper. So what? I can't smoke cigars? It was either let him search my car, or wait for the drug dog for an hour in 90* heat without AC. Which, if I wasn't speeding, I would have made him sit around, but I wanted a break on the ticket.

So, you gave up your rights for your convenience, and it's the cop's fault? My dad had a cop pull that crap once, and when it was clear to him that my dad was not going to consent (he threatened that it'd take a couple hours to get the dog there), he backed down. If you're really that concerned with your rights, you shouldn't give them up so easily. I can say, with absolute certainty, that I will never consent to having my car searched during a traffic stop. If a cop has a good enough reason to search my car, he/she won't need to ask my permission.

The few of us still left in the courtroom all laughed out loud. (for those of you that are familiar with PG, it was the notoriously funny judge Vincent Femia)

Judge Femia did a talk at my high school (had to be 6 or 7 years ago). All of the students loved him, but a few of the teachers/administrators were upset that he said "hell," "damn," and "sh*t" a few times during the course of his talk (as if a bunch of high school students had never heard those words before )

 

[DRZinn]

So, you gave up your rights for your convenience, and it's the cop's fault?

He was in a situation of having to decide which of his rights to give up. It was either the right of privacy or the right of movement. The option not to have any rights violated vanished when the officer asked to search the car based on a clear plastic wrapper.

 

[nico]

I'm not saying I don't fault the cop for the situation. Asking a person to search their car just for the heck of it is BS and shouldn't be tolerated by departments or the public. But, I think consenting to fishing expeditions does nothing more than encourage them. If every cop with an inflated sense of self importance (which constitute a minority) knew that they wouldn't get consent to search anyone's car, they'd stop asking. Also, I put higher priority on my right to privacy than my right to movement.

 

[JohnBT]

Like the man said, tell them no and call the bluff.

And anyway, I thought driving on a public road was a privilege, not a right.

John

 

[DRZinn]

Also, I put higher priority on my right to privacy than my right to movement.

So do I, usually, but it's not hard to imagine a situation when getting where I'm going would be more important to me than not getting searched.

I thought driving on a public road was a privilege, not a right.

That holds water only to the extent that it's possible to get somewhere without driving on a public road.

 

[iiibdsiil]

So in MY situation, the presence of a clear wrapper is enough for either a search or to hold me until a dog gets there?

All of a sudden I'm not allowed to leave garbage on the floor of my car? Even if it was a "blunt wrapper," am I supposed to be subjected to this every time I get pulled over? Is being a cigar smoker enough for this? I was speeding! I always use "Yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am" when talking to ANY of my elders, and you better believe that I was using it when I was going to receive a ticket. I'm college educated, white (Am I allowed to throw that in there?), pretty well versed, no criminal history, and a habitual speeder. I think between my conversation with the LEO and his little computer in the car, he would be able to figure these things out. I'm not saying that people such as myself don't do drugs, steal things, etc, but I feel that if they wanted to waste peoples time searching vehicles, I could find them a few better people to search, and a real reason to pull them over.


Don't worry guys, I realize the cop is always right, and what he pulled me over for is always legitimate. And him wanting to search my vehicle is always legitimate.

 

[iiibdsiil]

Oh, and excuse me for not wanting to sit in my car in 90* heat and 80% humidity while I wait for the dog to show up. He told me to take the keys out of the ignition and then he put them on my roof. Should I have asked him for them back?

Or better yet! I could have consented to him patting me down and placing me in the back of his car. It's okay, it's for the officers safety.

 

[Prince Yamato]

"Of course I don't know all of the folks who live here, but that's kind of excessive," said Tina Herring, a Linden Lane neighbor.

If I were her neighbor I'd tell her to go "F" herself and then I'd put up an 8 foot tall wooden fence around my yard. It's none of your business what your neighbor does. Maybe my neighbor likes to collect guns, great. Maybe my neighbor likes to sit in the middle of his living room and crap in his cat's litter box... more power to him, none of my business. Everyone has an opinion, but people need to learn when to mind their own business.

 

[Coronach]

Coronoch, Jeff Whilte, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. What is your experience with dogs and trigger rates? Are they really that sensitive? How often do you have a dog alert and not find anything, and what happens to the citizen who experiences such a situation?

I have seen "false positives", defined as the dog alerts on the car but no drugs were found. I don't know how many, but it has been several.

Now, before we all spin off into tinfoil hat nuttery, lets take a look at what those cases were.

One case was exceptional. I'll deal with that in a moment.

Several of the cases were so utterly obvious that the alert was good that it was not funny. As in, I could smell marijuana coming from the car, so I'm not startled at all that Fido could. The only reason I called the dog was that I wanted the K-9's assistance in locating the stash in the car...but there was no stash (that, or they hid it exceptionally well). They had probably been doing what the denizens of my patrol area do...rolling down the road, smoking a joint. A short while later they get picked up, having already smoked their stash. That's still a good alert, in my book, even if drugs were not found.

The remainder of the cases (save the one) were ones where the dog alerted on the car, there was no obvious odor of anything, and no drugs were found.

Oh my. Rights violations! Police State!

Au contraire. In every one of those instances (save one), the driver or occupant of the car had an extensive criminal history, to include possession and/or trafficking in drugs. Now...could they have turned their life around and been on their way back from church when I stopped them, and our dog is defective? Sure. But a more plausible explanaition is that they were rolling dirty earlier in the day and were clean now...but the car still smelled like coke, heroin or pot.

There was one time we got a hit and no drugs and the driver seemed completely clean. Turns out he had let a friend borrow the car earlier in the day. To do what? I don't remember, nothing incriminating or suspicious-sounding...but the dog sure liked that completely empty center console. What happened to the guy? He was removed from his car (Pennsylvania v Mimms), placed in a cruiser, informed of what was going on, and cut loose with our apologies as soon as we turned up nothing. His total delay was, I believe, ten minutes. He didn't even get a traffic ticket (he ran a red light).

The K-9 units keep track of their stats, btw. That information is admissable in court, I do believe, and if a dog starts developing a record of being unreliable (as would happen very quickly if K-9 handlers were cueing their dogs when to alert) his subsequent alerts will end up being suppressed (and anything found will as well). In other words; cheating won't pay, no matter what the cop-haters say.

Finally, I'm sadly amused by the general tone of this thread. The police got a stolen gun collection back, though solid police work. But hey, they must have violated this poor criminal's rights to do it...I mean, we had the buzz words in there "K-9", "Drugs", "Traffic Violation". So, let's gripe at the cops. Some of you people are something else.

Mike

 

[Jeff White]

I've seen K9 hits where nothing was found. Like I said in my earlier post, I've seen the dog hit on a car and all we managed to find were a few seeds in the carpet. That doesn't mean the dope wasn't there earlier. Some of those people smoke so much dope in their car that you could get a hit just about any time.

I've seen the K9 show up after a consent search where nothing was found, hit on a location in the car and point the hiding place out to us.

I've seen a K9 hit on the seat, been unable to find anything stuffed down in the seat and then we find the dope on the person who was sitting in the seat.

There are a many good arrests made from traffic stops. It's called criminal patrol. Any officer who's even a little bit effective knows who the bad guys are where he works. So the idea is to use the vehicle code as a reason to make contact with the bad guy. There are plenty of little nitnoid violations in every states vehicle code. You don't have to invent a reason to make those stops. Fortunately for everyone, the criminal element drives around in vehicles that usually have a couple equipment violations anyone could spot. If it's not an equipment violation, it's loud sound systems or driving habits (spinning tires etc.). So when you combine a known bad guy, with the rolling wreck or he drives like an idiot to show off for his friends, he's just inviting you to talk to him.

Assisted the ISP one night on the interstate, a trooper had stopped a guy heading South on I57 with about 24 pounds of marijuana in two Marshall Fields shopping bags on the seat of his pickup. What did he get stopped for? 82 in a 55. That dope was so fresh you could smell it walking up to the vehicle you didn't need a K9.

Timothy McVeigh was arrested out of a traffic stop contact. This gun collection was recovered from a traffic stop contact. I really don't know what some of you guys want except maybe for the police not to take any proactive action.

Jeff

 

[Socrates]

I thought drug dogs could also be trained to detect explosives, and gun powder, or, firearms?

S

 

[hoji]

Coronarch,
Just in case you have forgotten, the "smell" of marijuana is not enough to search in most cases.




http://www.icle.org/michlaw/oview.cfm?caseid=11345211

 

[JohnBT]

Did you misread the ruling you cited?

"As explained below, we overrule Taylor, and hold that the smell of marijuana alone by a person qualified to know the odor may establish probable cause to search a motor vehicle, pursuant to the motor vehicle exception to the warrant requirement."

 

[Coronach]

I didn't say that it was. I merely stated that I could smell pot, so I'm not startled by the fact that a dog, with a sense of smell that is something on the order of 24,000 times better than mine, could do as well.

Caselaw regarding smell alone of burned marijuana is somehwhat in flux, especially at the state level.

Mike

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Only on some place like THR would gun owners whine about the recovery of GUNS stolen from a fellow gun owner, suggesting that the recovery was done completely illegally, based on a very brief news story.

It is a sad day when gun owners complain about the recovery of stolen guns.

 

[Flyboy]

Coronach, thanks for the info. I didn't realize that the units kept stats on their dogs, or that they are subpoenable (is that a word? I like it, so I'm going to use it ). That's good info, and a good sign that things are being handled honestly. I've heard stories of false-positive rates in the neighborhood of 1-in-3 or 1-in-4, so it's good to find out I can get real data. Actually, I don't doubt those numbers, but I'd imagine they probably include cases like you describe (nothing found because they just finished smoking it), so that's a meaningful positive.

That said, I wonder: what do you do in those cases? If there's nothing there, I would assume you can't charge them with posession. Do you arrest them and have them take a drug test, or let them go?

 

[ilbob]

I really don't know what some of you guys want except maybe for the police not to take any proactive action.

If by "proactive" you mean warrantless searches, I might well not want any proactive LE.

But this kind of thing is not a LE problem. It is a political problem. We have so many laws that ban everything from cold medicine to nuclear weapons that basically anyone can be in violation of some moronic law.

we ought to have a law that says for every new provision put into effect they have to get rid of ten old ones.

 

[Jeff White]

If by "proactive" you mean warrantless searches, I might well not want any proactive LE.

So you'd throw out all the court rulings on what constitutes probable cause, seaches incident to arrest, inventory searches and searches done with the consent of the suspect, and require a warrant in all of those instances?

You need to define what you mean by a warrantless search.

Are you even aware that a November 2003 Illinois Supreme Court ruling restricted consent searches during traffic stops? Since that ruling an officer had to be able to articulate why there was reasonable suspicion to expand a traffic enforcement action into a criminal investigation. I'm sure the ruling was aimed at the ISP's Valkyrie units. But it's law now in Illinois that you can't just ask for consent to search, you have to have an reason you can articulate as to what made you suspect there was other criminal activity involved.

Jeff

 

[ilbob]

So you'd throw out all the court rulings on what constitutes probable cause, seaches incident to arrest, inventory searches and searches done with the consent of the suspect, and require a warrant in all of those instances?

I think it is time to seriously consider doing so.

In these days of computers in every police car, no reason a LEO cannot "articulate" his thinking before the search and get an online response from the on call magistrate before making the search.

 

[Art Eatman]

Re "residual": In the heyday of drug importation through Florida, it was stated that EVERY $100 bill in the banks of Miami, Florida, would have a drug dog giving his signal.

Then they added $50s.

Unless the bills were fresh from the U.S. Mint.

People handle drugs, to check for purity. They then handle the money. The money goes where money goes, and some of it gets into a bank--where it then contaminates adjacent bills.

24,000:1 is a pretty sensitive nose. Little physical evidence is needed.

Art

 

[ilbob]

So many people have this feeling the police are Darth Vader's stormtroopers, blindly following the orders of the evil emperor

Perhaps there is a reason for that.

Consider a typical swat team crashing down someone's door in the middle of the night. There is a distinct resemblance to storm troopers in appearance, demeanor, and behavior.

 

[Old Dog]

What a fascinating, amusing yet somewhat annoying thread this has turned into ...

Many cops pull stuff out of their butts when they can tell something is up. Just because they find something doesn't make it right.

Sigh. Let's all restrict cops from using their intuition honed by years of experience on the streets. Police officers must not be allowed to exercise intelligence, act on their experience or follow common sense while on shift. Only private citizens must be allowed to use intuition or "follow hunches" while working at their employment. Sheesh.

Frankly, the fact that this thread devolved into a discussion on how traffic stops violate citizens' rights when it really should be about stupid media reporting, good police work, and ridiculous witness statements tends to demonstrate how so many THR members can endlessly argue almost any situation out of both sides of their mouths ...

Now comes the poster relating traffic stops to middle-of-the-night SWAT actions .... Good golly.

 

[Robo_Railer]

I was really surprised (NOT!) to read that some criminals go around smoking pot while they're driving. Gee, yathink that might be a good reason to call it dope?

I thought drug dogs could also be trained to detect explosives, and gun powder, or, firearms?

No, it's either/or. Drug dogs usually try to "dig out" whatever they smell, bomb dogs do a "sit response," so as not to trigger an IED or whatever it might be. Then ya got your accelerant-detection dogs, etc., etc.

Consider a typical swat team crashing down someone's door in the middle of the night. There is a distinct resemblance to storm troopers in appearance, demeanor, and behavior.

And if said "behavior" keeps Mr. Methlab (who has firearms stashed all over the house) from offering any resistance and getting himself shot, is that a bad thing? "Hello? Police, search warrant. Just toss the drugs out this window, into this trash bag, and we'll call it good. Oh, and you being a convicted felon and all, you probably shouldn't be having any guns in there, either, especially any sawed-off shotguns or anything converted to full-auto. Okay? Hello? Are you listening? (Probably can't hear us over the sound of all those toilets flushing.)"
As long as the entry team had the right address when they broke down the door, and all the Good Guys get to go home after the evidence is bagged and tagged, and no innocent parties get hurt (the cops didn't put those little kids in that crack house, BTW), I really don't give a rodent's rump who wants ro whine about "storm troopers" afterward.

If anyone enjoys a job where you may be required to make a split-second decision that others will have all the time in the world to analyze before they tell you how wrong you were for what you did, then go into law enforcement. A couple of people here sound like cop-haters. I'm just glad they're such a small minority. For the other readers, as Frank and Ed used to say (well, Frank did; Ed was the quiet type), "[And] thank you for your support."

 

[lamazza]

Still, the number of SHOES in the victims' home worried some neighbors.

"Of course I don't know all of the folks who live here, but that's kind of excessive," said Tina Herring, an avid SHOE COLEECTOR