In College Station, back when I was going to TAMU, a cop pulled my friend over, I was in the passenger side. He said he smelled weed and needed to search the car. Neither of us had been around weed. He was violating our rights to try and find something he could write a ticket for. You make great points. But there's got to be a middle ground or at least recourse for citizens. Too many bad cops.
The former would be illegal also. You can't hold someone for an indefinite amount of time without a charge. You are giving me two bad choices in a draconian system. It's very simple dude. Any claim of probable cause by an officer has to have an ability for the validity of the claim to be tested in a court of law. If not, then there is no check on that authority. You cannot test the validity of a claim of smell therefore there is no check on that power.
It's in the 4th Amendment. It's already been established that if an LEO has reason to believe a crime is being committed they can act. The standard of probably cause is what is in question not the power to act if there is probable cause. Do you mean "cop should pull someone over for probably DUI"?
It does in practice. If there is no mechanism to test for the validity of a claim of smell by an officer, then there is no check to that power therefore they have carte blanche to violate the 4th amendment with the "I smell..." line.
I agree there is a lot of abuse. That's undeniable. This is one of those throw the baby out with the bath water situations. If the solution is to do away with probable cause based on smell. The answer in regarding to mar1juana searches is to legalize mar1juana. I have to get going. This is an important debate and will check back later.
You got two choices here , comply with the cop is the common sense approach - anything else is either a waste of time or leads to trouble.
I'm speaking of 4th amendment rights and how cops have the ability to circumvent those rights with impunity with a claim that is near impossible to disprove. "Follow the law" isn't an excuse to give law enforcement that power.
So what's your alternative ? You can sit there and wait for a judge to issue a warrant just like they do for DWI cases who refuse to blow / blood draws which takes an hour or two , usually much less (the indefinite I was referring to above) or you can comply and not waste your time or the cops.
I think the cop in the video gave the driver four "last chances" and counted to three at least three times during the two full minutes the guy was filming. I'm not sure what "impunity" means in this context but I'd say the cop was fairly patient for at least two minutes. I'm not trying to defend what came after the camera cuts off (and I'm not sure anyone here knows what happened), but for the two minutes I watched it seemed like the cop wasn't really trying to "circumvent those rights with impunity"
He asked for him to leave the vehicle to search based on smell of weed. Btw they didn't find any weed. The "violate rights with impunity" part comes in where a cop can claim a smell and that claim is untestable. You cannot disprove a cop smelled something therefore they can use that line with impunity. The only avenue I can see were there can be recourse is if a cop has like 10 examples of using the "I smell weed" line and in all those 10 times they found no weed. A defense team can find a pattern and say the officer's claims aren't reliable based on prior history. But that essentially means that we have to give cop about 5-10 freebies (whatever constitutes a pattern) of violating 4th amendment rights. The claim of smell cannot be disproven. Therefore it's an unchecked power of a cop to search a citizen and his or her property for no reason with impunity. I've said this multiple times. You should of read my other posts.
@rocketsjudoka already said it, "The answer in regarding to mar1juana searches is to legalize mar1juana."
No, the answer is to not give powers to cops that have no ability to be checked. Again, you can't check the validity of a claim of smell. You can't disprove a cop smelled weed. Therefore there is no check on that power unless the abuse is so absurd that simple pattern recognition can lessen the credibility of a cop.
he didn't resist at all. He probably didn't break any law. They were fishing. They "smelled" mar1juana, didn't find anything. They didn't remove him for safety, the removed him for fishing reasons. It's all BS and a total abuse.
I've seen differing information on this. Basic gist as I understand it is the officer has to have a legitimate reason to issue such an order. Having expired tags is not such a reason.
No just fire this ****er becausethe culture of policing is obviously out of control. There are no babies or bathwaters. Fire this ****er. Police officers should be held to the same - or higher - standards of other service workers. Period.
Without seeing the more I don't know if Derrick resisted or not. I agree in many cases the LEO use the excuse as smell mar1juana as an excuse and this is probably the case here too. To respond to you and other posters My argument though is to do away with searches based on probable cause, in this case smell, will lead to many problems. I've already stated this would apply to an LEO stopping someone who smells of alcohol but otherwise isn't showing drunkeness. If we say that an LEO can't base probable cause on smell that would mean the LEO couldn't order the driver to take a DUI test. Given that it takes alcohol awhile time to metabolize that could mean allowing someone who is actually impaired to go on driving. The baby is potentially stopping things like intoxicated drivers the bathwater is the abuse of probable cause.
They cannot order you to take a test already. A SFST is a investigative tool, and so is a breathalyzer. They can arrest you and get your blood.
I actually ended up discussing this with some other friends. Here is one of the issues that came up in the discussion. In MN you can refuse to take a field sobriety test. If you do then you get arrested and are subject to a blood test back in jail. One of the ways an LEO determines if someone might be intoxicated is smell. Another issue is that breathalyzer tests don't work on someone high on weed but that is still a DUI so in that case an LEO smelling weed could still arrest someone and they would be subject to a blood test to determine if they are DUI. If we completely throw smell out as a probable cause that would greatly reduce catching people who are intoxicated early but perhaps not yet to the point of serious impairment given the time it takes to metabolize. Waiting until they are passed out at Wendy's drive thru doesn't consider how long they were already driving while impaired. Also how people act to intoxicants isn't always the same and one of the big dangers is "buzzed" driving where a driver might only be marginally impaired yet could still be a danger.
