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So you think that there’s mass outrage about the Whren decision? It’s been 15 years, and the lack of commotion is deafening.

Here’s the thing: Whren didn’t expand the power of local police, it strictly limited when and how they could conduct warrantless searches, and have the fruits of those searches admitted into evidence at a criminal trial. It’s not that long, and worth reading, which is why i gave the link in the previous post.

But, here’s a serious question for you. If you don’t like the Whren standard, what, in your view should the standard be? If an officer conducts a traffic stop and sees a bag of meth in plain view, what should then happen? Send the guy on his merry way? Get a warrant to retrieve the dope? Repeal the drug laws so this doesn’t even come up? Seriously, if Whren is bad, how should we demand that the police do business. After all, almost all law enforcement is handled at the local level in this country, and there’s nothing stopping the people of any given county from placing a more restrictive standard than Whren on their own police forces.

So, what would that standard look like?

I see it as a matter of intent, if the stop was intended to issue a fix-it ticket for a tail light and the officer sees evidence of a crime in the process of issuing that $10 fix-it ticket, fair game.

If the officer intends to use the broken tail light as an excuse search the driver and tear into every compartment of the car looking for contraband, that’s another thing.

Of course proving intent can be...tricky...but isn’t that the whole basis of hate crime legislation?

(And yes, I’ve gotten fix-it tickets)

(Oh, and did I happen to mention that we had to register my roommate’s truck in my name? It seems he has the misfortune of sharing an uncommon last name with another guy in this county whose hobby is beating up cops. They’d run the plate, see red, boil over, and stop him and approach guns drawn with backup screaming in code 3, about once a month or so. They haven’t stopped him since.)

So you think that there’s mass outrage about the Whren decision? It’s been 15 years, and the lack of commotion is deafening.

For the moment most police do not abuse this, no abuse, no one cares.

The police in Deming and Lordsburg seem to be abusing it to an absurd level.

There MUST be push-back to insure this does not become the norm.