Protect yourself from cops...

[Jack Burton]

Terrance Huff and his friend were returning to Ohio after attending a convention in St. Louis. A police officer, Michael Reichert, pulled Huff over to the side of the road. Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff's car with a K-9 dog, then searched Huff's car by hand.

Huff posted to YouTube audio and video footage of the stop. Huff's video raises important questions about law enforcement and the criminal justice system, including the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the drug war, profiling and why it's so difficult to take problematic cops out of the police force.

link >>> Illinois Traffic Stop Of Star Trek Fans Raises Concerns About Drug Searches, Police Dogs, Bad Cops

 

[Phil502]

That was an incredible video, wow, everybody should watch that just to get an idea of what kind of crap can be pulled on them. That guy should definitely get fired.

 

[jgarst]

I wish I had known more about my rights when I was a little younger. Come to tipton and this is how cops treat people on a regular occasion. I have two incidents where I feel my rights were violated but I didn't think there was much I could do about it. Tipton cops well let's say a couple officers treat people this way frequently. And one of their k9 officers does the same kind of coercion to get his dog to act as though it's hit on something. I did once make a formal complaint to the Sherrif and had good results but I wish I had done more.

 

[canav844]

Getting this one officer fired, doesn't solve the larger problem that this article attempt to draw focus on: Laws (with supporting case law) permitting warrantless searches (on the basis of dog indications from officer cues), financial incentives of seizures made from those searches and ambiguous terms of when you are truly free to leave; one may also consider the sub-issues of officer profiling, on out of state and race among other factors. Something that it would be really interesting to see taken to the SCOTUS level.

Animal behaviour: Clever hounds | The Economist

Any “detections” made by the teams thus had to be false. Recorders, who were blind to the study, noted where handlers indicated that their dogs had raised alerts.The findings, which Dr Lit reports in Animal Cognition, reveal that of 144 searches, only 21 were clean (no alerts). All the others raised one alert or more. In total, the teams raised 225 alerts, all of them false.

Illinois State Police Drug Dog Unit Analysis Shows Error Rate Between 28 and 74 Percent

Even giving this dog credit for the cases in which the officer found only residue, over this 11-month period, the dog had about a 28 percent failure rate. Which means that nearly three of the 10 times the dogs alerted provided probable cause for a warrantless search of a motorist's car without a warrant, the motorist was completely innocent. Include the "residue" stops, which didn't produce a large enough quantity of illicit drugs to be measured, and the dog's error rate climbs to 74 percent.

Tribune analysis: Drug-sniffing dogs in traffic stops often wrong - Chicago Tribune

But a Tribune analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia.

For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent.

 

[dlbrown75]

Typical, jack a!*.

 

[kludge]

repost

 

[Birds Away]

That was an incredible video, wow, everybody should watch that just to get an idea of what kind of crap can be pulled on them. That guy should definitely get fired.

He'll more likely get promoted.

 

[indykid]

One more reason the "war on drugs" needs to come to an end. Just like Prohibition stopped the use of alcohol, and did more harm to honest Americans, the War on Drugs has done worse for our rights as Americans with a Constitution that is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, except when ignored for "the public good".

 

[down3green]

.

Wow, that was the most bogus, contrived, and manipulative police performance I've seen so far.


.

 

[Doug]

OK, so what can you do to protect yourself from these cops?

 

[j706]

A classic criminal interdiction stop. FWIW the driver was in fact throwing off a ton of indicators himself. By watching the stop and the driver I would have bet on something being found or the driver being wanted or something. Something there and just not found? Perhaps. The poster of the video did show his ignorance with all of his wild allegations, all of which were wrong BTW.

Worth noting is the officer actually did a quite professional job. This was not his first interdiction stop and I think it is safe to assume he gets a fair amount of criminals off the roads.

 

[down3green]

I think it is safe to assume he gets a fair amount of criminals off the roads.

.

Maybe it is, and he could probably do LOTS better if he went door-to-door and just let himself in.


.

 

[Dashman010]

After review, I think its fair to say that at the point the driver said something to the effect of, "Am I free to go," the rest of the stop after that point was invalid. The passenger may have been nervous, the driver may have been throwing off indicators (and he was -- "there are no drugs to my knowledge in the car"), but that generally isn't enough to extend a standard traffic stop under Terry. THat falls under the "hunch" category, and the stop had simply gone on too long at that point.

 

[IndyDave1776]

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Maybe it is, and he could probably do LOTS better if he went door-to-door and just let himself in.


.

Very well said! If we just scrap those annoying Constitutional rights it would make effective law enforcement so much easier! Then they wouldn't even have to make the effort do defend the dogs' abysmal failure rate and/or handler fraud. In fact, I could go along with outlawing the use of dogs until such a time that the dogs can testify to affirm the need of a warrant and to defend their actions in court.

 

[IndyDave1776]

After review, I think its fair to say that at the point the driver said something to the effect of, "Am I free to go," the rest of the stop after that point was invalid. The passenger may have been nervous, the driver may have been throwing off indicators (and he was -- "there are no drugs to my knowledge in the car"), but that generally isn't enough to extend a standard traffic stop under Terry. THat falls under the "hunch" category, and the stop had simply gone on too long at that point.

Agreed. I find cop superstitions/old wives tales very tiresome, especially when they are being used to step on my rights, or even simply used to justify a cop making a nuisance of himself.

 

[WC Deer Hunter]

You think that's bad you should get pulled into the scale house for commercial vehicles in collinsville. They are 10 times worse and real JBT's!

 

[JRPLANE]

A classic criminal interdiction stop. FWIW the driver was in fact throwing off a ton of indicators himself. By watching the stop and the driver I would have bet on something being found or the driver being wanted or something. Something there and just not found? Perhaps. The poster of the video did show his ignorance with all of his wild allegations, all of which were wrong BTW.

Worth noting is the officer actually did a quite professional job. This was not his first interdiction stop and I think it is safe to assume he gets a fair amount of criminals off the roads.

Must be a cop himself, the video looked fine to me. If I did something wrong arrest me, then search my car! Not the other way around. In this video the guy is found guilty until the cop finds something to prove his case! Looks like the gustopo!

 

[jon5212]

A classic criminal interdiction stop. FWIW the driver was in fact throwing off a ton of indicators himself. By watching the stop and the driver I would have bet on something being found or the driver being wanted or something. Something there and just not found? Perhaps. The poster of the video did show his ignorance with all of his wild allegations, all of which were wrong BTW.

Worth noting is the officer actually did a quite professional job. This was not his first interdiction stop and I think it is safe to assume he gets a fair amount of criminals off the roads.

Professional or not... the driver's rights were violated. When that happens I could give a rat's bunghole whether the officer was polite or not.

 

[IndyDave1776]

You think that's bad you should get pulled into the scale house for commercial vehicles in collinsville. They are 10 times worse and real JBT's!

Is that the one on 70 in the middle of nowhere in Illinois, or a different Collinsville in a different state?

 

[9mmfan]

I believe the only way to change this behavior is from the top down. It would probably be a safe bet that most of these kind of stops happen in Democratic controlled municipalities. Like minded individuals gets hired as chief or elected in a heavily democratic county. That kind of behavior is then, if not directed, at least tolerated.

Just my