4th of July DUI Checkpoint - Drug Dogs, Searched without Consent, while Innocent - YouTube
The America we live in. So much for the Bill of Rights.
SOURCE URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-WMn_zHCVo
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The theory and practice of civil liberty is to not cooperate in any way. If you cooperate, it merely gives them a lever to use against them: you opened your window for us, now what's wrong with opening the door.
resist. resist everything.
and yes, it is damn scary - even to watch it happen to a friend.
I know some cops and they are on edge anytime they need to directly encounter anyone. Asking someone to roll down the window so they can speak, or the cop can get a whiff of dope in the cabin or booze on the guys breath, can hardly be considered invasive. The kid had the camera ready and was obviously looking to prove a point prior to the stop. By refusing such a simple request it escalated things causing the cop to wonder what the guy could be hiding.
I am entirely for the Bill of Rights and believe that the government is increasingly overstepping its authority.
Ed, if he were slurring his speech, or smoke was seen in his vehicle though the window, or he was unsteady with his vehicle or his person then yes it would be fine for them to justifiably check him out an search his person. Their transgression was in that they had no reason to bother him at all and chose to only because of the DUI checkpoint was setup.
July 4th weekend is the deadliest time on the road
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-fina...
Au contraire! Get more police off the side of the road wasting innocent peoples time and out looking for the idiots weaving in and out of their lanes. Have them do more police work and less hassling of the innocent. Make their presence known and seen on the highways instead of hiding behind billboards so they can catch you inadvertently speeding five over, or hanging out at the doughnut shop... It is not an either this or nothing choice. How many are out there avoiding detection while so many police are stationed at these particular locales when these officers could be observing and covering more ground?
This may be legal, but it does not respect the intent of the Bill of Rights.
I can tolerate the check lanes if the police can tolerate someone exercising their Constitutional rights like this young man. He was as compliant as the law required and from what I could tell was more respectful of the police than they were of him.
If once they stopped him they had some additional evidence of wrong doing then by all means proceed, but without it they should have let him go on his way.
For what it is worth, that is my 20 cents... inflation you know. :)
Respectfully,
O.A.
Beautifully put - thank you.
Personally checkpoints are a pain in the *ss but I can deal with a five or ten minute delay if it means a danger is going to be taken off the road.
If he had two beers and they smelled alcohol he would have had a breathalyser and been found intoxicated or not - that the intention of the police at a DUI checkpoint, getting drunk drivers off the road. Having been drunk, and knowing far too many drinkers over the years, I recognize that some people don't admit when they are too drunk, buzzed, or stoned to drive. Driving under the influence is illegal. A holiday where drinking is the center point is a justifiable reason for a public safety concern, no?
It's the paradigm that is the problem for some and the issue for us. "Let me go about my life. Please."... So many Americans no longer think along those lines. They are becoming sheep.
This in itself doesn't justify searches. If it did, we'd be better off searching all homes, people, their papers, and effects. I'm sure we catch some serious criminals, ones who were going to commit crimes that would kill or cause permanent damage. If someone shoots up my kids' school, this will be little solace and maybe I'd go crazy wanting a law to search everyone near a school and ban the gun used in the crime. I hope I wouldn't act that way though. I'm willing to accept some risk for liberty.
I'm not saying you would call for such a thing, but you did mention it so there must be some insight into the reason for banning the inanimate object. I confess to having a personal enjoyment from shooting sports, self protection and home defense.
As a Father I must add a lack of understanding why somebody would attack a school with a deadly weapon of any kind, just as I believe that people who are incapable of controlling their actions due to a mental disorder should not be loose let alone have access to firearms. I also cannot understand the push to blame the weapon a crazy person utilized to commit a crime. If we agree that a mentally ill person is not responsible for their actions (and should be locked away for this cause) how is the weapon they select more responsible?
I'm just saying if crime personally affected me, I might not think clearly though the last two paragraphs you said. Maybe I'd rather blame an inanimate object than admit a human being is responsible. When something drastically affects our lives, humans have an urge to want to see some similarly drastic cause. We find it hard to accept random bad luck could have huge negative/positive consequences. I hope I wouldn't fall into these pitfalls.
With the present assault against AR15s there is one side that seems to turn into "Linda Blare" at the sight of a evil black rifle. They are so unhinged that I think THEY should be locked up for our safety. ;^)
Consider this: If the police write a ticket, or impound a vehicle, that's revenue. What pocket does the court system get paid out of? That's right, the same pocket that revenue went into.
There is an interest far beyond keeping people safe on the roads that has a part in driving both checkpoints and speed traps.
Get that camel out of our tent!
One year an old woman was so drunk, she hit a 15 year old local teenager walking on the trail along the road (a few feet beyond the fog line of the road) and dragged her, basically, home with her. She "thought she hit a deer out in the woods". I've lived here 15 years and have never seen a deer. Must have been one of those beer-deer. The girl probably survived a few minutes with her hair wrapped around the woman's drive shaft, and died horribly. Her adult son found the mess in the garage a few days later and turned her in.
The officers ask for the window to go down so they can smell the alcohol on a drinker's breath. It's a pretty tell-tale symptom. The fine print on the driver's license application, does give officers the right to DUI searches in our state, I'm sure in wherever that was too. The kid was kind of being a jerk and what started as a normal operation turned hostile because he made it hostile.
Let's say that "Juan" pulls up to the officer. Juan is not drunk, doesn't smell like alcohol, rolls down his window, but doesn't speak English very well.
Officer asks him if he has been drinking, but Juan doesn't understand the question and hands him his driver's license issued in Sonora, MX. Truck he is driving has California plates.
What should the officer do?
And that fine print about DUI searches still requires probable cause. They can't just search you; their probable cause has to hold up in court. That is why the driver was video-taping the encounter - so that if the police said he was slurring his words so they searched his car, he can prove them wrong. Did you see how everything changed when they found the camera?
I'm sure you can become desensitized to it, just like a smoker can't smell cigarette smoke very well, but trust me, it's pretty potent and noticeable.
You can't tell "how much" someone has had to drink, but you can definitely smell it. My next door neighbor is a pickled old woman that drinks vodka in her coffee every morning, very noticeable. Almost makes my eyes water.
I do have asthma though, so I'm extremely hyper-sensitive to smells of any type, but I can smell a doobie from 3 doors down the street.
"Myth: “Alcohol on the breath” is a reliable sign of alcohol consumption and intoxication.
Fact: Alcohol is actually odorless.... it has no smell. What people perceive as alcohol on the breath is actually the odor of things commonly found in alcoholic beverages. The breath of a person who drinks a non-alcoholic beer will smell the same as that of a person who has consumed an alcoholic beer.
Research using experienced law enforcement officers has found that odor strength estimates are unrelated to blood alcohol concentration (BAC), which ranged in the experiment from zero to .13 (almost twice the legal limit for driving). The estimates made by the officers were no more accurate than random guesses. The researchers concluded that estimates of alcohol on the breath are unreliable. 2"
Again, you can't smell alcohol.
I agree that something has to be done to keep drunk drivers off the road. Just being a jerk and bombing your premise.
Eliminate all automobiles.
Alternatively, eliminate anyone who might drive an automobile at some point in their lives.
I hope the kid, even though I suspect this is some type of training video in retrospect, sues the department for a new paint job or at least a buff and wax.
DUI has been used more than any other cause including the war on drugs to justify whittling away at the 4th and 5th Amendments.
I see operating a motor vehicle differently, you have no "right" to drive a vehicle on public roadways. You have to have insurance, you have to register the vehicle, you need to prove you can comply with the driving laws with a licensing exam. If you want to get hammered and whip donuts in the farmland in back of your house, I don't care and neither will anyone else. Get drunk and take off on the roadways, and its not about "your rights", it becomes about everyone else's rights.
For me, drinking means 4 or 5 out of a six pack over the course of a month and I've even been known to throw out stale booze. I have bottles left over from my college years, and I have a son that just left for college this week. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything in life, so I don't see the argument that others make on this. I don't care if anyone else wants to have a drink, but I also know its not a necessity for happiness or health.
If you want to get drunk off your ass, fine, just don't drive afterwards. Walk home, get a ride, call a cab, whatever.
The kid could have been walking by the checkpoint and then would have been completely within his rights. In most states, the officers can ask for your proof of insurance, driver's license, etc.
The difference is that the court has upheld that "random searches and seizures" are unconstitutional. You can't for example only stop red pickup trucks or only 30 year old male drivers towing a boat home from the lake (as much as I'm fine with that in my area). You can however, stop everyone and verify the requirements to operate a motor vehicle. We do the same thing if you are boarding a plane, we don't single out a few to search, as much as that would make sense to do so, we search everyone. You give up that right to privacy when you agree to the terms on the airline ticket. If you want your privacy, stay at home.
Seems like a little punk of a kid that thought that he was the first one to read the Bill of Rights and with some grandiose narcissistic tendencies, plans on being some grand plaintiff in a SCOTUS case to strike down DUI checkpoints so he and his buddies can get drunk and threaten everyone on the road again.
Your argument is no different than that for gun control (elimination), for control or elimination of speech that might lead to harm, the NSA spying, the NDAA indefinite detention, the Patriot Act, or for Common Core in education. It all boils down to justifications for government intrusion in the lives of individuals.
Like I said, get shift-faced and whip donuts in your own backyard if you want, just don't take it onto the public streets.
And you are very incorrect, we have a VERY high rate of alcohol-related incidents in my neighborhood, we are on a lake that is a recreation area for 2 million people in the greater urban area. On any given weekend, 10,000 boats are pulled to the docks and dropped in the water, and pulled home again on the same stretch of road. Many of those are drunk, many more than you would think, we only need to watch the beer bottles being tossed from the pickups before they reach the checkpoints.
You have every right to do whatever you want, but so does my community have every right to protect ourselves. We have the police intentionally be a little rough with the "visitors". I don't feel sorry for that at all, they can scrounge up their own $900k or so, put their own house on the lake, and drive the boat up to their own dock. Until then, they drive on our roads, and they will do so sober.
Last year, we had a girl ran over while swimming within the markers by some drunk puke driving a speedboat. His prop split her head and neck down to the shoulders.
"Your argument is no different than that for gun control (elimination), for control or elimination of speech that might lead to harm, the NSA spying, the NDAA indefinite detention, the Patriot Act, or for Common Core in education. It all boils down to justifications for government intrusion in the lives of individuals."
I don't think your $900 for your house and property gives you any rights over anything more than your property and home. But you're demanding rights to regulate and control other individuals activities. That's exactly the kind of reasoning that's led to our current loss of liberty.
and it just thrills the heck out of me that someone who makes nasty snap judgements without knowing anything except the 6 1/2 minutes of video is eligible for jury duty.
*shivers*
Your
Premise
"So if you know the probability for something bad/harmful to happen "
An Earthquake. A tornado. A hurricane. These are somethings bad/harmful that "happen".
Having an accident while under the influence isn't something that "happens". It's something that's done. Punish people for having the accident. Trying to prevent the accident erodes the presumption of innocence, and worse, the presumption of competence.
In military basic training, you learn very quickly not to "stand out" and not to "volunteer". I remember on day one, the DI asked if "anyone can swim"... some idiot raised his hand - "Great, you are my Latrine Queen for the Rest of Training" and handed him a broom and a sponge to mop the bathroom and scrub toilets with 3 times a day.
If the kid would have put down the window like the officer requested, and answered whatever questions, he would have been fine.
If the kid was drunk off his ass, and acted like that to get through the checkpoint, would that make it right? Lets say he made it 500 yards down the road and t-boned a family of 4, killed mom & dad and the oldest brother and orphaned a 2 year old. Does that make it better in your eyes? What if it was your family. Would you be happy that your 2 year old is being raised by foster families in exchange for this brat getting 3-5 for vehicular manslaughter pled down?
I say it repeatedly, equal application of the law and protecting the rights of everyone is what sets us apart from the rest of the world.
When I was in Dubai for 6 months, you notice that certain people have "royal family license plates". Around 5,000 of their closest relatives apparently. Those people cannot be stopped by the police, for any reason. Drunk, speeding, driving over someone else's front yard, etc. If they are royals, they are untouchable. People resent that.
As I said, you don't have the same rights operating a motor vehicle on public roadways, we use that tool to set ourselves apart from the animals. I served in more places than I care to count - Thailand, Rwanda, Mogidishu, Kenya, Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai, and with the exception of Christchurch and Antarctica, I was always pretty happy to come home...
Read the writing, don't glance at it and assume it works for you. "Unlawful search or seizure.". What does "Unlawful" mean, it doesn't mean "never". It means with probable cause - the kid gave the officer that by being non-cooperative.
There is no "Right to Privacy" in the Bill of Rights, that is established by congressional acts... most notably HIPAA, and the Privacy Act.
If you pick a fight with a police officer, which the kid did, obviously with intent to do so with the GoPro going, its pretty reasonable that the police are going to defend themselves.
The police can also act very differently, there is a difference between what can be construed as "depriving one of their civil rights" versus what would just be thrown out of court. In all honesty, even if they had legally found some pot or something, it's probably a $100 fine.
As I said elsewhere, there is no "right to drive shitfaced on the public roadways" anywhere in the Constitution. As much as some on here would obviously like that, it doesn't exist.
Am I within my rights to walk up to later and shoot you in the leg to take an eye for an eye? Or am I supposed to be happy that you did your 6 months of time or whatever.
I have my right to life and pursuit of happiness (which would include earning a living).
Which is more important, your right to drive around shit-faced or my right to provide for my family? Did I not have a right to walk along the road?
"Those who will willingly trade a little liberty for a little security, get neither and deserve neither."
I'm assuming you are a youngster that doesn't remember what it looked like in the 70's & 80's before the drunk driving laws came into effect. It was pretty bad.
you'll be easy to corral when the time comes...
And no, I live in the west, a "democrat" here is far more conservative than a republican on the east coast.
Checkpoints stop everyone, which is constitutional. "Random" checks are profiling, which is not.
Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't the law of the land.
Do you have a drinking problem? You seem a little over defensive about a perfectly avoidable crime.
Your promotion of tyranny is without evidence or logic is outrageous. Tyranny is the biggest killer in human history (outside of disease) and you are promoter of tyranny.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyB-SE-...
It's soliciting DUI defense legal services from people that think they have been wrongfully-accused. :) but still blew a 0.20 or something. Legal strategy when the evidence collected is irrefutable... get the evidence tossed out of court from illegal search & seizure.
1.) Every police officer I know has a college degree, and doesn't talk like a hick from the swamp.
2.) Most police officers I know in my federal service experience are vets (veterans' preference in hiring), they are far more professional than that, and have a college degree.
3.) There isn't a badge on that guy, not wearing the head-cover, which is uniform-required, no badge, and wearing a black t-shirt and some glow-in-the-dark highway cone-zone worker type.
My son is a cop, I emailed this to him and he laughed at it, he said it was fake as well, as the procedure was all wrong.
Sorry guys... I'm standing with just saying its staged, made-up, and I'm not getting into it on something that is just fictional. It's like arguing about UN gun treaties & such... yeah, it's a bill in the UN or whatever, but the US has never signed the UN treaty itself to begin with, and any treaty requires a 60-vote in the Senate to ratify. Never happens.
"Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't the law of the land. "
Happy to remind you of that when gun control takes the firearms from your home or tells you to wear a symbol on your chest or insert a microchip into your arm
"He was a lawyer (deliberately) TRYING to test the policemen." If a cop did has he had it would be called entrapment, no?
I'd add, he was seeking his 15 minutes of fame.
The right to travel isn't endangered by a checkpoint for DUI, it slightly slowed (10-15 min) if your sober and revoked if your drunk.
So a checkpoint setup to search for a person suspected of child molestation does not legitimize stopping every car going in and out of town?
Unless I'm wrong, only semantics separates those example from the DUI, no? None of those situation presume you guilty they each only check to see if you are the person they are searching for.
That said, my right to travel would be inconvenienced not interrupted or endangered.
THERE IS A PRINCIPLE HERE.
and discussion of it cannot - honestly and clearly - be based on your particular propensities. If 1 person is interrupted, it's wrong.
Are you really going to say that it's ok for the Feds to round up the [place group name here] because you don't belong to that group and besides, you don't like them???
aaaaarrrrrrrgggggggg
I SUPPORT these checkpoint to find illegal aliens who routinely drive north up I10 and onto I17. Yes, there are that many illegals and in a very real way they are more of a continual threat than drunk drivers.
A further point: you are not inconvenienced by checkpoints and don't consider them to be A BAD Thing. I see them, whether I am stopped or not, as A Bad Thing.
How, in a free society, do we resolve such a difference?
As a minarchist [on my most congenial days], I know that some activities are going to be administrated by what I've started to call "the Public Administrators". Many people will pay for their services. Do the people like me still have to pay? That's unquestionably wrong.
This is the sort of dilemma which is at the heart of every Libertarian/Objectivist/
anarchist/minarchist/etc. debate on how societies should be run.
What's your take on the solution?
regards.
1. outlaw alcohol
2. install breathalysers in all cars, required for ignition
3. make mandatory a breathalyser check before leaving a bar and stepping into a car
4. check people on the road
Other than those I see not equitable solution.
I'll ponder.
The cop kind of did society a favor, the kid learned that being a punk doesn't immediately get you "oh Sir, you are right, just go along your way", but rather "If you have something to hide, you are probably going to act this way".
In fact, usually they are a bunch of slime that were looking for an easy way to make a good living without actually producing anything, or having any particular skills.
I've been sued a few times (in business), I stood up and defended myself each time, never lost I'm happy to say. Every time the lawyer was looking for a settlement, it was never based in fact or causal action.
"It 's a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it. "
Even if the guys were all actors, the questions raised by the video are still valid!
The Founding Fathers learned that too, if they didn't already know before they decided to be "punks" in the eyes of the people in charge.
That will probably make him less likely to contact the police if he sees someone committing a crime, like trying to break into your house.
The use of dogs to justify a search is bogus. Unlike a person, they can't be in legal trouble for falsely accusing someone. Unlike a scientific test, the results can't be independently examined. They're just like allowing an anonymous note as justification for a search-- if we allow that we might as well abandon the whole idea of the Fourth Amendment.
An auto, like a house, is private property. But operating a vehicle on a public road is the difference.
We do live in a society. I, my son (who just started driving) and others who do not drink, have a reasonable expectation of safety from people who make the poor choice to drink to drunkenness and drive, no? The only way I can see around this inconvenience is to have breathalysers installed in everyone's vehicles to prevent them starting up if alcohol is detected. Now that scenario, to me, is a breach of privacy more-so than occasional checkpoints
How is innocent until proven guilty trampled when checkpoints are telegraphed on the web and on TV well before they are established?
The issue isn't texting while driving; it's being distracted while driving.
The problem is that not all drivers are equal, and you, like so many other bureaucratic slavers, want to treat the most able as incompetent as the least able.
In your case it's supposed to be forgivable., because this time it's your ox that got gored.
Distracted Driving (includes texting)
http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/... (3,328 fatalities, 421,000 injuries)
http://www.madd.org/blog/2013/november/2... (9,865 fatalities)