Police can't drag out traffic stops so they can bring in a drug dog
image credit gerdaus.com
Police may not drag out a traffic stop just to give a drug dog extra time to sniff a vehicle. The Court found that it was unlawful for cops to detain drivers for the sole purpose of conducting a "sniff" test after the traffic stop was completed.
The real reason police want to detain people without 'probable cause' is money.
Supreme Court's decision:
"We hold that a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution's shield against unreasonable seizures," Justice Ruth Ginsburg wrote for the 6 to 3 majority. "A seizure justified only by a police-observed traffic violation, therefore, becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete the mission of issuing a ticket for the violation."
“A traffic stop becomes unlawful if prolonged beyond the time in fact needed to complete all traffic-based inquiries,” Ginsberg said.
While “an officer…may conduct certain unrelated checks during an otherwise lawful traffic stop,” Ginsburg held, “a dog sniff, unlike the routine measures just mentioned, is not an ordinary incident of a traffic stop.”
Judges agreed that Dennys Rodriguez was held too long at the side of a Nebraska highway when his Mercury Mountaineer was stopped for allegedly swerving around midnight on March 27, 2012.
FYI, he swerved to avoid a pothole!
Police are trained by DHS to come up with a 'hunch' [excuse] that a person is up to no good.
As Valley police officer Morgan Struble questioned Rodgiguez, he developed a hunch that the man was up to something. Officer Struble wrote a warning citation and asked if his drug dog could sniff the vehicle. Rodriguez said "no" about 19 minutes into the stop.
Even though he had received the warning citation, Rodriguez was not free to go. He was made to wait about five minutes for a drug dog to arrive and sniff his car. After a few minutes, the dog detected a bag of methamphetamine. Rodriguez was placed under arrest. The question for the high court was whether this eight minute delay for a drug sniff violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“We can’t keep bending the Fourth Amendment to the resources of law enforcement,” Sotomayor stated. “It’s purely to help the police get more criminals, yes. But then the Fourth Amendment becomes a useless piece of paper.”
"The reasonableness of a seizure, however, depends on what the police in fact do," Justice Ginsburg wrote. "The critical question, then, is not whether the dog sniff occurs before or after the officer issues a ticket... but whether conducting the sniff prolongs -- i.e., adds time to -- the stop."
The ruling purposefully avoids the revenue-generation aspect of modern day policing. The ruling does however green light 'Policing For Profit' or the entire justice system would grind to a halt.
Click here to see how police nationwide have been turned into revenue police.
A D.C. judge is advising citizens to refuse 'VOLUNTARY' police searches based on an officers hunch you might have drugs or a weapon:
"I do not wish to have an encounter with the police right now. Am I free to leave?” So advises Judge Janice Rogers Brown. “Our jurisprudence perpetuates a fiction of voluntary consent where none exists,” she wrote.
Confronted by police officers in tactical gear who might use a refusal or other reaction as justification to conduct a search anyway, Brown said, the person being questioned in fact had little choice about whether to comply. Police will “have a tough time ignoring it if somebody says that in the future,” said federal public defender A. J. Kramer, referring to the script Brown provided.
The Metropolitan Police Department’s Gun Recovery Unit are allowed to approach people on the street to ask if they are carrying contraband and if they would consent to a search.