There's always something that happened a week ago: a bank robbery, a murder, a stolen car, a mugging, somebody jaywalked, etc. And gee, wouldn't the police like to get information about the [fill in the convenient excuse].
I really can't say I'm shocked. I wish I could, but I no longer believe that you have rights if you choose to drive your car. The courts allow pretext stops on the most transparent of technicalities. The courts are the only place where anyone thinks that a citizen has a choice when an officer "asks" him to exit the vehicle. The courts tell us that if an officer hands you your license back and immediately starts to question you - you can just drive off and leave him standing on the side of the road. And since Reittinger, the courts I practice in have been of the belief that there have to be two law enforcement officers or my client could not possibly have been intimidated by a single officer with a badge, gun, uniform, and flashing neon lights (at 3 a.m. on a dark, lonely stretch of road).1
The courts allow officers to set up road blocks to shake down citizens about whom the officers have no information (not even reasonable articulable suspicion). First these were allowed under the pretext that they involved traffic safety. Now they are allowed because something happened a week ago.
Not that this will often affect me or thee. I daresay that most of the people reading this don't live in low rent trailer parks or motels in the bad part of town. So police will not be setting up roadblocks outside the one road leading to our subdivisions or apartment complexes. And since the great majority of the effect will fall on lower economic classes it must be valid, right? After all:
"The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."At least it will bring more clients to my door. Good to know the Justices are looking out for me.
1 Mind you, the officer's ability to intimidate someone both as an individual and a representative of a powerful organization is one of his most necessary tools in keeping himself alive at 3 a.m. on that lonely stretch of road when he pulls over a group of young males with a couple sawed off shotguns (actual case). I want the officer to have this at his disposal. I just get plain tired of courts ignoring the fact that it exists when the officer uses it in order to coerce car occupants into allowing a shakedown search without any indication of wrongdoing.
No comments:
Post a Comment