Why Bother With Drug-Sniffing Dogs If a Cop's Nose Can Authorize a Search?
Is
a Colorado license plate the new "Legalize It" bumper sticker?
According to a
federal lawsuit filed last week, an Idaho state trooper
stopped a motorist on Interstate 84 near the Oregon border and
searched his Honda Ridgeline truck for marijuana because the
vehicle carried tags from Colorado, which had legalized possession
and cultivation for recreational use the previous November. The
Denver Post
reports that police searched the truck for hours but found
nothing illegal. Although press coverage of the case so far has
focused on the license plate angle, the justification for the
search is at least as troubling as the alleged motivation for the
stop, since it seems to give cops carte blanche to search a vehicle
whenever they claim to smell something funny.
In his complaint, Darien E. Roseen, a 70-year-old retiree who lives in Washington state and has a second home in Colorado, says Idaho Trooper Justin Klitch was parked in the median of I-84, watching eastbound traffic, on the morning of January 25, 2013. "Immediately after Mr. Roseen passed his location," the complaint says, "Trooper Klitch pulled out from the Interstate median, rapidly accelerating to catch up with Mr. Roseen's vehicle." Klitch followed Roseen into a rest stop, where he "activated his overhead lights only after Mr. Roseen had come to a complete stop in the rest area parking space."
At first Klitch did not say why he was detaining
Roseen. Later he claimed that Roseen had failed to signal as he
left the highway (which Roseen denies) and that his tires had
bumped the curb in the rest area as he parked (which Roseen admits
and attributes to snow accumulation that made the curb difficult to
see). Roseen says Klitch accused him of pulling into the rest area
to avoid police contact—strange if true, since by Klitch's account
there was no justification for police contact until Roseen left the
highway.
After claiming that Roseen's eyes looked "glassy," the trooper accused him of carrying contraband and threatened to bring in a drug-detecting dog if Roseen did not consent to a search of his truck. After repeated accusations and requests for permission to search the truck, Roseen said Klitch could look in the trunk, hoping he could get back on the road sooner if he allayed the trooper's suspicions. "When Mr. Roseen opened the trunk compartment, and despite the strong gusts of wind and precipitation that day," the complaint says, "Trooper Klitch claimed he could smell the odor of marijuana." Based on that alleged odor, Klitch proceeded to search the entire truck. He called for assistance from local police, who drove Roseen's truck to the Payette County Sheriff's Sally Port, where the search continued. After thoroughly rifling Roseen's belongings, the cops let him go with a citation for careless/inattentive driving.
FoxRoseen's lawyer
told The Denver Post that Roseen "does not use
marijuana and never has." So where did this mysterious,
search-justifying odor come from? When a police dog alerts to a
vehicle in which no drugs can be found, police
claim the canine's superhuman olfactory sense must have
detected molecules left behind by contraband that used to be in the
vehicle. Are courts prepared to accept similar claims about smells
allegedly detected by mere humans? Maybe a pot smoker gave one of
the presents Roseen was carrying from his daughter's baby shower,
and Klitch smelled the remnants of smoke that had wafted by the
gift as it was wrapped. Or maybe a pot-smoking mechanic worked on
the truck.
Courts are not as skeptical of such claims as fans of the Fourth Amendment might like. The day after Roseen filed his lawsuit, a Virginia judge deemed it "quite believable" that a Norfolk police officer could smell marijuana emanating from a car he was following on city streets, even though the car's windows were closed and even though the car did not in fact contain marijuana. Officer Robert Frenier testified that he pulled the car over solely because of the alleged cannabis odor. A search of the car found a handgun illegally possessed by a passenger with a felony record—but no marijuana. According to The Virginian-Pilot, Frenier said "the driver told police occupants had previously smoked pot in the car."
The newspaper first reported on this practice of sniffing out contraband while driving down the street a couple of years ago. It says police have had mixed success in defending searches based on such remote sensing.
If such unfalsifiable assertions qualify as probable cause for a search, cops do not need to bother with drug-sniffing dogs. They can search any vehicle at will simply by saying they themselves detected a whiff of cannabis.
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With your choice of images, I was expecting some form of alt-text.
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KK posted a good line for the last pic downthread.
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If your car passed through somebody else's puff of smoke, you're now guilty of paraphernalia.
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and that his tires had bumped the curb in the rest area as he parked
Is bumping the curb actually illegal?
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People are ignorant of the traffic regulations, so even it it isn't (but it sounds like something the DMV would write) the cops could claim otherwise and an out-of-stater wouldn't know any different.
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Yeah, traffic regulations are filled with so much bullshit that cops have a pretext to stop anybody.
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By design.
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Really stupid. Maybe they just used it as an indication of "impaired driving", like meandering a little bit. Still stupid.
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That was my assumption.
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Everything is better with a bag of weed
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Sort of on topic: with regard to Arizona's immigration laws, Sean Hannity always made a big point of how the police can't just ask you for immigration status, it needs to be part of another stop. The fact that the police can conjure up a reason to stop anyone at any time, particularly when driving, never entered his tiny little mind. Law and order conservatives do need to get out more often
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Someone needs to SWAT Hannity
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He has nothing to hide, so obviously he has nothing to worry about.
BTW, there's a youtube video of Christopher Hitchens on Hannity, in which Hitchens say (paraphrasing), I get the disturbing impression you've never read anything by someone who disagrees with you.
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I want to sell car "deodorizers" in the shape of a marijuana leaf.
Kickstarter, here we come. -
After repeated accusations and requests for permission to search the truck, Roseen said Klitch could look in the trunk, hoping he could get back on the road sooner if he allayed the trooper's suspicions.
Being held hostage on the side of the road by an armed goon has no effect on whether the search was "voluntary".
"He agreed to it!"
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Considering everything about drugs has to go FULL RETARD, I assume that having a Colorado plate outside of the state will become probable cause to search a car and then that fact will be used as an argument to get rid of legalization.
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They can search any vehicle at will simply by
saying they themselves detected a whiff of cannabisLYING. -
Are we just going to have to require actual warrants for roadside searches? Any excuse to not have them is bullshit since cops can get a warrant faster than they can impound the car or any other bullshit they'd have to go through to search the car without a warrant.
