Here’s a video of Heroes hassling some motorists using the “I smell pot” excuse. All the Heroes have to do is utter the magic words – and the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause requirement prior to a search evaporates.
Note that there is no objective standard here. All the Hero need do is claim he “smells” the aroma of an arbitrarily illegal substance. Then he can ransack your vehicle and person – and sic a four-pawed Hero on your vehicle, including the filthy animal’s claws – all over your car’s paint.
It’s bad enough that this phony pretext is used to justify ransacking someone’s ride, on the pretext that it’s an “exigent” circumstance…the pigs also apply it to one’s HOME at times. This is why, unless they say that they have a WARRANT (which, again, they usually have to have to enter, save for those “exigencies”, which can and sometimes are CONTRIVED), most attorney advise: if you didn’t call them, then DON’T ANSWER! There’s no law that requires you to answer the door to the police at all. In many cases they’re doing what’s called a “knock and talk”, and they’re trying to get you to say something, or at least open the door and they can see, in “plain view” something incriminating. And at times, if you DO open the door, they will just barge in, and claim you INVITED them in, indeed, many judges, if it comes down to did they have consent to enter and/or search, say that your OPENING THE DOOR is tantamount to invitation to enter the premises and search! The “I smell pot”, of course, like the drug detection dog, is just a ploy to manufacture probable cause.
Hence why, even IF you don’t answer the door, you still record, Record, RECORD this encounter with Law enforcement. Hell, set up tablets, spare cell phones, laptops, etc, and have “cameras rolling”, so if indeed they do barge in, you want video evidence that (1) they broke in, sans warrant or exigent circumstances, and (2) you did NOT consent! Also, please make sure that the video recording app uploads instantly to the Cloud, if you don’ t already have security cams in place. If indeed the cops confiscate or destroy your cameras (or at least put tape or spray paint on the lens), you want the last thing recorded and in the “Cloud” is them doing so!
Massachusetts is much the same, they have to announce the location, time, etc. of the roadblock. You have to be either very unlucky or just plain stupid to get caught up in one. Much the same result too, 500 or 600 cars stopped and inconvenienced, then a big press conference the next day to brag about the one or two arrests they made – usually for warrants or drugs or something totally unrelated to alcohol. But it’s always a success for them, after all, they’re keeping us safe!
Announced where? In the newspapers only people who don’t drive late at night read.
There’s never an announcement of the truck scales checkpoint that mess up my commute. They weigh the trucks _after_ they cross the bridge. Of course it’s more about the pretense of stopping trucks than finding overweight ones.
Yes, the announcements are in papers people don’t read anymore. A local city police department announced one for this weekend. However they don’t say WHERE in the city. It could be anywhere. In the city where cops smash out people’s windows and they beat their own K9. A department that should be prohibited from fishing expeditions like drunk blocks.
And you can’t write tickets for violations they prevented, so that why the scales are after the bridge. It’s not like they care about the bridge, its not like they are bothering with maintaining it. The taxpayers can build a new bridge.
Stay clear of the law in Nebraska if you have Colorado plates!
Somehow my local hero’s were unable to do more then write one ticket at the St. Patrick’s day sobriety checkpoint. They still managed to delay 219 drivers in the process. They only “gave” one driver a breath test, and that person passed. I wonder, hmmmm, if he is the driver that got the ticket.
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/duneland/st-patrick-s-day-sobriety-checkpoint-yields-no-arrests/article_b4c423ac-4c1a-57bb-8c5c-263d6e5f6900.html
Hopefully this no arrests thing is a trend, not a glitch. Hopefully at some point they find its not worth it and quit doing it. They would be quitting for the wrong reason (quitting because its wasting their time, not ours), but as long as this ends is fine with me. Sounds like its Indiana law that they announce beforehand they are doing a road check so it’s “constitutional”. Of course some of the clovers in the comment section on farcebook were saying, get rid of the announcement…………….Wrong answer dumb a$$. Get rid of the dumb roadblock!