Wednesday, April 22, 2015

It seldom happens to me...

And I don't do drugs, and I seldom ever carry anything illegal in my car. . But still, I think this is a very good ruling.

Cops can't delay you for a search outside of that  time needed to cite you for a traffic stop:

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her majority opinion that prolonging the traffic stop beyond the time needed to deal with the initial offense was improper, even if only for a few minutes.

Now, I am all for getting drugs off the streets. And I am all for getting scumbags put behind bars. But I am also all for cops having limits on what they can and can't do in searches.

This clarifies things. Better for all of us. Even more so because cops with K-9's often use an "alert" (which is subjective much of the time) as an excuse to search further, even when there isn't any real probable cause for a search.

What this does is make sure that a traffic stop can't become a fishing edition.


(and yes, I do know what I am talking about, as I let the local County, State and many municipal  K-9 officers train at my facility. They admit that they often claim that the dog "Alerted" when it really hasn't, just to justify a more thorough search....and yes, likely the majority of time they have suspicions that are valid....cops aren't stupid. They know. Doesn't change the fact that the searches are illegal, because no Probable Cause.)

2 comments:

CenTexTim said...

The Supremes finally got one right.

Old NFO said...

YEp, that is a good one! And I'm surprised...