Missouri: Police Roadblock Harassment Caught on Tape.

TheNewspaper.com ^ | 12/30/2006 | Brett Darrow

[The KG9 Kid]

Missouri: Police Roadblock Harassment Caught on Tape
St. Louis County, Missouri threaten to arrest a teenager for refusing to discuss his personal travel plans.

A teenager harassed by police in St. Louis, Missouri caught the incident on tape. Brett Darrow, 19, had his video camera rolling last month as he drove his 1997 Maxima, minding his own business. He approached a drunk driving roadblock where he was stopped, detained and threatened with arrest when he declined to enter a conversation with a police officer about his personal travel habits. Now Darrow is considering filing suit against St. Louis County Police.

"I'm scared to drive for fear of being stopped at another checkpoint and arrested while doing nothing illegal," Darrow told TheNewspaper. "We're now guilty until we prove ourselves innocent to these checkpoint officers."

On that late November night, videotape confirms that Darrow had been ordered out of his vehicle after telling a policeman, "I don't wish to discuss my personal life with you, officer." Another officer attempted to move Darrow's car until he realized, "I can't drive stick!" The officer took the opportunity to undertake a thorough search of the interior without probable cause. He found nothing.

When Darrow asked why he was being detained, an officer explained, "If you don't stop running your mouth, we're going to find a reason to lock you up tonight."

The threats ended when Darrow informed officers that they were being recorded. After speaking to a supervisor Darrow was finally released.

"These roadblocks have gotten out of hand," Darrow told TheNewspaper. "If we don't do something about them now, it'll be too late."

A full video of the incident is available here. A transcript is provided below as the audio is at times very faint.

[School of Rational Thought]

"Yeah, I always take a video camera rolling with me every time I drive. (/sarc) "

You must be cop? Let's get this point straight - cops videotape encounters with the public (as they were also in this case they claimed) because they are good.

The public videotapes their encounters with the cops because they are bad.

Is that right?

[sam_paine]

Now we have far too many Freepers that are a bunch of weepy hand-wringy ninnies who think that the Hubble Space Telescope should have been employed to search for the comically-inept James Kim family, welcome police abuse from our blue-uniformed overlords, and dismiss all attempts at rectifying government fraud, cronyism, and monumental waste by quoting something from their bible about 'rendering unto Caesar' and how these earthly things are not of His kingdom so who gives a crap if the country goes to shit because it will just help us die faster so we can go to everlasting paradise with Jesus.

Probably why JimRob doesn't post anymore. I wouldn't even recognize my own creation if I were him, either.

Wow.

Yer a brave fella!

(IB4TZ! Don't tug on superman/Jim's cape. etc. LOL!)

[RobRoy]

I am really not a hardass. I am just assertive. If I know I have done nothing wrong, I don't even see them as police officers. I see them as equal citizens.


I think they sense this.

[Fierce Allegiance]

ROFL!!!

You must walk around with a bottle of astroglide for any time you deal with cops.

[Mr J]

It's a law of nature that predators target the weak.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Officer #1: Where you headed tonight?
Fester: Are you writing a book? Why not leave that part out and make it a mystery?

[Fierce Allegiance]

Yeah, he planned this from the get-go. And here I thought the little darling got his head stomped in or something. What a yawner.

I'm very surprised he didn't get his head stomped in. Maybe because the supervisor was there. The real scum cops don't generally make supervisor position, nor do they want it because there is less opportunity to beat people up with little or no reason.

[TexasTransplant]

>>>>>>"I just don't know how this place has changed as much as it has in the years since I first joined. I barely recognize the place compared to how it was then. Back during Clinton I's years in office, our mission was to 'roll back a half century of government abuse' and lift the weight of the crushing force of government pressing down upon us and holding bureacratic tyrants accountable. Anyone else remember those days?"<<<<<<

Mrs Cravitz has NOT left the building!

TT

[RobRoy]

All of those talk about "reasonable grounds". So, refusing to answer a personal question is suddenly "reasonable grounds". Is refusing to let him sleep with your girlfriend in the passenger side also "reasonable grounds"? After all, that is VERY uncooperative.

[School of Rational Thought]

LOL that tag line.


I may have to borrow it. ;-)

[Doohickey]

The intent is to get you talking so they can gin up probable cause to give you a breathalizer either though your mannerisms or (preferably) by smelling alcohol on your breath. Happens to me once or twice every year on my boat (I guess I look like a punk or a drunk).

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

Seems they also caught cops threating to kill someone. Twice. Oops.

!!!!!!

[Fierce Allegiance]

I cut the cops some slack here.

I would cut them as much slack as the law allowed, but it's the cops who violated the law here!

[meyer]

Could we have a little setup here?

Why not? The cops do it all the time. In fact, the attempted drawing of a civilian into a potentially self-incriminating conversation is in itself a setup.

[sam_paine]

I see them as equal citizens. I think they sense this.

You do understand that we're in violent agreement, don't you!?

What I'm concerned about is the flip side. The same cop that "senses" that you are an equal, can 'sense' when they are intimidating a 'non-cop' and will take advantage of the weaker citizens.

If we're going to have cameras looking at us from the traffic light, and from the squad-car dashboard, then 19-yr old kids should have them too, so that everyone stays on an even-keel----instead of just the toughs having rights.

[sam_paine]

You spent? I served....

Thank you for your service, Tex. I was a bit disgusted by his post myself. I add your name alongside BeHoldaPaleHorse in my previous post.

YOU understand what service means and why you served.

[School of Rational Thought]

Way off the points the kid made. Stay with the discussion.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

man, you're really stretching it.......

ping me if this ever goes to civil court, wouldja?

[B Knotts]

My thoughts on this are well expressed by Justice Thomas in his dissent in Indianapolis v. Edmond:

Taken together, our decisions in Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U. S. 444 (1990), and United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543 (1976), stand for the proposition that suspicionless roadblock seizures are constitutionally permissible if conducted according to a plan that limits the discretion of the officers conducting the stops. I am not convinced that Sitz and Martinez-Fuerte were correctly decided. Indeed, I rather doubt that the Framers of the Fourth Amendment would have considered "reasonable" a program of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of wrongdoing.

[eastforker]

I will not join a cop in casual conversation if he is on official duty and he has detained me for any reason, because anything you say, in casual conversation , no matter what, can be used against you,in a court of law, for any reason whatsoever. I have been a passenger in a vehicle stopped for speeding and asked if I had a drivers licence for ID. Told them I was not driving and didn't need a license to ride. Then was asked if I had ID period and told them I didn't need ID to move about in this country. You see, the cop never asked me to show him an ID, only asked if I had one. If you ever listen closely how cops construct their questions, they play on the stupidity of the person being asked." You have an ID? Sure, here."