Broader search rules for the police ...
 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,145262,00.html

Just what we needed, now everyone can expect a drug dog to circle your car anytime your pulled over. Everyone passing by will assume your guilty, at least until everyone experiences it themselves and realizes they are being harassed. This is ridiculous, how many more liberties are we going to lose before people say this is enough? This is fuckin' nuts, as taxpayers we are forced to subsidize this kinda shit. I'm sick of losing common civil liberties because common joe schmoo down the street wants to smoke a hooter or two in the evenings. I don't smoke, don't give a shit if someone does and I sure as hell don't want to be harassed when I'm pulled over for speeding.

I don't see the problem. If you've got a roach in the ashtray and the cop can see it from outside the car, it's in plain view and you're fucked. If you've got a pound of grass in the trunk and a K9 can smell it from outside, what makes you think you have the right to not have the air particles eminating from your car be sniffed? Now if they opened the car up and let the dog sniff around inside without consent, a warrent or probable cause, then that'd be bad. But the air outside your vehicle is not private property.

I agree. We are allowing too many of our freedoms to be taken away. I imagine it's only a matter of time before someone starts marketing a spray for your car that will give the dogs sneezing fits or something.

I recall a few years ago in Seattle the police set up drunk driving road blocks and stopped every 4th car or so for breathalyzer testing. The court said it was OK as long as they didn't discriminate.

I spray my car down with a mixture of ammonia and Cayanne pepper once or twice a month for precisely this purpose. I've got nothing in there, but if they wanna go through my stuff, they're gonna need a warrant. None of this "Well, the dog just happened to be there..." bullshit. For the Plain Sight Rule to apply, the evidence in question has to be visible to the naked human eye. Dogs don't count.

Great, so now a dog's reaction will give a cop permission to search your private property. What's next? Asking "Is this guy carrying anything illegal?" and shaking a magic 8-ball? I have no problem with the use of dogs to help locate hidden drugs once a warrant is already obtained through probable cause, but the idea that their reaction can be used as evidence to get a search warrant is rather scary.

I guess I can now expect to have my car torn apart if I happen to get pulled over on the way home from the grocery store with steak in my trunk.

irseg;
That's what my noxious little cocktail is for. Any K-9 that gets a whiff of that stuff is gonna react allright, but he's not gonna act like he found drugs! He's gonna act like he just snorted Cajun Cat-piss! After that, they can search my car if they get a warrant; I have no objections to obeying the law. But they've gotta obey it too.

This surprises me from you Dunedan!

I thought you would have supported increased powers for the police.


Here's a thought for all you conservatives (especially those that support Bush and his war on terror).

Dogs are also used for detecting explosives. Is that acceptable?



Mr Mephisto

As a means to help search for explosives due to probable cause or after a warrant has been obtained? Absolutely.

But to use a dog hopping around and barking as justification to obtain a warrant when no other credible evidence exists? Fuck no!

Even if the car was full of Chinese and Iraqi guys, crossing the Mexican border and heading to Boston?

I smell double-standards.


Mr Mephisto

Nope. I support -decreased- Police powers. The Police in my country routinely violate our Constituton with searches like this, and they need to be help accountable for it. If the Police want to search my vehicle ( or anyone elses ) they need a Warrant unless there is evidence of a crime in plain sight. Period. I don't care if the car is full of Iraqis wearing Usama bin-Laden T-shirts, the cops need a Warrant.

I tend to agree. Border crossings & customs need special powers but random stops are going to be bad in a few years as technology allows full cavity searches from afar. It'll be interesting to see how much people are willing to put up with.

An aroma that happens to waft over to a dog's nose is not your personal property. If a dog smells something while it's on the highway outside your car, that's not an invasion of your rights. This was a 6-2 Supreme Court decision and the justice who wrote the opinion in the case is arguably the most liberal member of the court. I'm as liberal as they come, but the Constitution doesn't give you any right to hide your personal odors from dogs.

Without a Warrant, yes it does. A drug-dog is a tool, nothing more. Without a Warrant, that tool may not be lawfully used. Unless evidence of criminal activity is visible to the naked eye ( in which case the evidence may be confiscated and the suspect arrested without a warrant ) a Warrant must be obtained for any search, by any means, to pass Constitutional muster, the opinions of Statist judges notwithstanding.

Whether you agree with the search dogs or not, it is not the choice of the search dogs to be there. Yet you shove amonia and cayenne pepper up their nose as though they themselves have decided to violate your rights. At best, that's a stupid move. And really, it's animal cruelty.

Shakran:
This concoction causes no damage or even serious pain; it just really, REALLY stinks and makes your nose run. I had a friend who worked in a kennel for over a year, and they'd spray this mixture on their gloves to keep certain dogs from biting them. After a short time, humans can't smell it, but dogs can, and they do NOT like it. It is not, however, terribly painful. Now, if the dog got a noseful of the stuff before it dried, yeah, that'd be MAJORLY cruel, and I would never do something like that. This stuff, OTOH, is just unpleasant.

It is commpn practice to have the dogs sniff around your car while you are lawfully seized for a traffic violation. There's a certain amount of time the cops have to get the dog to your car, about 20 minutes.

They can't hold you while they wait for a dog to arrive to sniff your car, but if they have a dog with them or one gets there while the cop is still writing you the ticket it is perfectly legal for the dog to sniff around your car.

^ As noted in the Decision.

Seems pretty lame, techincally it wasn't even a search. Who knows Souter's dissent is pretty legit. I'm not that worried, hope it was just a minor occurance, this supreme court hasn't been that overbearing to the point where I would start worrying just yet.

Hopefully he is truthful and not alone on the bench in his closing paragragh.

Here's my question.

If the police officer somehow happened to be the one who smelled the drugs, would it be a legal search then? I'm a little shaky on the law for probable cause, but if that would be legal, why wouldn't using a dog be legal? It's simply an officer with a better nose.

Police officers are allowed something known as "plain view" (I think that's what it's called). At any rate it is a procedure regulated to the senses; most importantly sight, smell, and sound. If I cop pulls you over and smells some dank, he would have probable cause to execute a search, within reason. I can't hash out the specifics, but even if they have probable cause to search the interior of the car, I do believe places like the trunk are protected, again unless the search warrants differently.

The reason the supreme court rejects the notion of dogs as a legal means of a search can be read in the dissenting decision http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...0&invol=03-923 (or at least the dissenting opinions).

Hey, how about this: the drug war is a waste of fucking money, and apparently time, as we are now arguing about whether it's Constitutional to allow a dog to sniff your car for drugs. I'd really rather the government focus on violent crime than drug crime, personally.

HERE HERE!!!!

Right on!!

You nailed it!

My government embarasses me to no end. Regardless of what the supreme court decides or the constitution allows, law enforcement will violate it. PERIOD. This is what they do, invent violations and file false police reports to substantiate their illegal activities. So if your vehicle is searched illegally the cop WILL LIE and invent a legal reason for hte search.

-bear

Maybe it's the the practicality of my personality but I dont see this happening much.

They will have a dog at EVERY occurance of pulling someone over? There isnt a single county in the country that has this many drug dogs. They're expensive, and they tire quickly. They may have it a couple times, I dont carry anything so I'm not worried, but it's not like they dont have the dogs sniff the outside before this ruling. Outside your car is like watching a person's house. They dont go inside but whatever is viewable is fair game.

90%+ of all money holds traces of drugs so anyone carrying cash is now subject to have their car fully searched.

I think everyone is missing the big picture here. This guy had drugs and the system worked. Now if they guy was sueing because of the search that turned up nothing that would be different. But in this case this guy doesn't have a leg to stand on.

But that is just my opinnion and I'll openly admit that my opinion probably doesn't line up with the law in this case.

As much as I'd like to support the police, I have to agree with you. Hell I haven't smoked pot in 35 years or so since I was in college but we should be able to traverse the highways with some expectation of privacy.

I have no idea why the folks from my generation are so gung ho on drug enforcement. A great many of us smoked dope in the 60's and 70's and we know it did not harm us in any big way. Most of the problems were caused by the beer drinkers.

Perhaps if we were getting bombed big time by terrorists and the dogs were going after explosives I might reconsider. But probably not even then without probable cause.

i find it difficult not to link this decision to the notion dear to the administration and its "war on terror" rhetoric of potential crime--you can be held if you are understood to have within you the possibility of committing x.
once there, you get into other problems of stretching (shall we say) probable cause into things like "driving while black"

within this general social/legal game, it is hard to fault people for pushing at the limits of the rules within which they operate. they just follow the logic of their situation (looped through ambient politics, of course)--so the problems do not lay with particular actions, but with the framework itself: in this case, the ridiculous "war on drugs"--and on this, i agree entirely with kadath, above.