A female passenger in an SUV was shot in the jaw Sunday when a gun inside the vehicle discharged accidentally. According to Miami’s Channel 10 News, the woman was part of a group of people on their way to a shooting range. The Florida Highway Patrol said that the incident took place on the…
Careful Now
When U.S. Border Patrol agent Brandon Carrier spotted a white
SUV on a New York road he says he became suspicious because the
driver ;had both hands on
the wheel. As he followed the vehicle, he noted that the driver
always drove under the speed limit, did not pass slower cars and,
when the road widened to four lanes, moved into the right-hand lane
allowing faster vehicles to pass by. That led him to pull it over
and call for a drug dog. Agents found a tire full of marijuana. But
a judge threw out charges against the vehicle’s two occupants.
Judge Kathleen Martin Rogers ruled that careful driving does not
create a reasonable suspicion that someone is committing a
crime. … Read More
California police use rubber bullets and cherry-picker to remove tree sitters
Police officers used rubber bullets and a cherry-picker to remove protesters from tall pine trees in northern California on Tuesday. Dozens California Highway Patrol officers clad in visored helmets and armed with batons removed the activists from their protest spot near Highway 101. The…
Judges Rule on Police Practices Along the Canada-New York Border: No Unreasonable Searches, No Unreasonable Stops
A U.S. district judge ruled on Friday that cops
in Niagara County, New York were wrong to detain a couple for hours
for having windows tinted beyond what’s allowed in the state (it
was a permissible tint in Tennessee, where the car was registered)
and that, further, from the
Newspaper:
“Given that material issues of fact exist as to whether
the continued detention of plaintiffs was constitutionally
permissible, a reasonable fact-finder could find that it was
objectively unreasonable for the officers to conclude that removal
of plaintiffs to a border facility, a further search and x-ray of
their car without their consent, and their continued detention for
an unspecified amount of time, did not violate plaintiffs’
constitutional rights,” Judge [Richard] Arcara ruled.
The couple says in the lawsuit they were stopped because they
were black.
Meanwhile, a county judge in St. Lawrence, New York
earlier ruled the Border Patrol
could not stop somebody just for driving carefully, even if a
subsequent search turned up drugs. From the
Newspaper:
Agent [Brandon] Carrier became suspicious and about an
hour into the stop a drug dog was called to the scene, and a tire
filled with marijuana was found in the trunk. This evidence,
however, was thrown out because the traffic stop itself was deemed
invalid and the Border Patrol had no business stopping them.
“The court believes that Officer Carrier decided to follow the
white SUV and do a radio run because the driver appeared nervous,”
Judge [Kathleen] Rogers ruled. “Her actions were completely
consistent with a person who was not engaged in any criminal
activity. There was no basis to believe that a vehicle with a NYS
license plate and registration had crossed the border or was
engaged in any way with smuggling persons or contraband across the
border.”
Agent Carrier testified that he also became suspicious when he
learned the car was registered to someone with the common Indian
name of Deer.
“A vehicle stop must be valid at its inception: it cannot be
bootstrapped into reasonable suspicion by mounting concerns over
diverging explanations from the vehicle occupants as to their
intended destination,” Judge Rogers ruled. “His candid testimony
that the occupants looked like Mohawks and that one had what
Carrier believed is a Mohawk name, and that the car was listed for
an address near the Mohawk Indian reservation bordered on improper
racial profiling.”
It may have turned out differently in the agent had said his dog
alerted him from the beginning, based on
the recent unanimous Supreme Court ruling that a dog’s ok was
enough to warrant a search by police. … Read More
Easter Bunny Pulled Over for Helmet Law Violation
Gets away with warning, though, in the true Easter spirit of
charity and forgiveness,
reports
CBS Los Angeles:
Brian Pennings, a public information officer for the CHP in East
County, told CBSLA that an officer was on routine patrol on
Interstate 8 when he observed a man dressed up as a giant rabbit on
a motorcycle traveling down the highway near San Diego.
Pennings said the officer proceeded to make a traffic stop after
noticing the bunny wasn’t wearing a helmet. Also, he said, the
costume posed a safety concern as it was a visual impairment.
Pennings said the man told the officer he was headed to a
charity event. He was given a verbal warning but was not issued a
citation…
Florida state trooper fired after speeding lawmaker complains of lowball citation
Trooper Charles Swindle, a six-year veteran of the Florida Highway Patrol, said he was cutting Rep. Charles McBurney “a break” by falsely giving him a $10 dollar ticket for not having proof of car insurance instead of a $250 ticket for speeding.Mcburney had reportedly been clocked going 87 in a 70 mph zone last November, and was given the $10 ticket without being asked to show proof of insurance. “I’m cutting you a break on this one,” Swindle told the lawmaker, The Miami Herald cites an internal report as saying. Swindle checked with his superior, Sgt. Gary Dawson, who approved and said: “We ain’t gettin’ no pay raises anyways.” The report also quotes Swindle as telling the sergeant: “I’m going to write (McBurney) a warning and be nice; I’m going to stroke him ’cause I didn’t see his insurance card. I’ll give him that ticket, warning for speed.” McBurney, who denies he was ever speeding, later complained to Colonel David Brierton of the Florida Highway Patrol that Swindle had falsely cited him. Brierton ordered the investigation which resulted in Swindle’s dismissal. Dawson is on leave and informed his superiors he plans to retire. McBurney, whose car was marked with a special tag that identified him as a legislator, was adamant that he did not want special treatment.”I didn’t think that what he did was proper,” McBurney said. “I didn’t think that was the way he should have acted towards me, or anyone else for that matter. I felt obligated to write the letter. My concern was, if he did that to me, he would do that to anybody.” Earlier this week, Swindle announced he is appealing his March 15 firing, saying the state highway patrol has an unwritten policy of not fining lawmakers who set the patrol’s budget, a claim which the agency strongly denies.”That’s horse hockey,” The Tampa Bay Times cites Julie Jones, executive director of the Highway Patrol’s parent agency, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, as saying. ”There is no policy that says we give anybody a free pass because they’re elected officials. The agency is compiling records to show nearly a dozen lawmakers have been cited for speeding or other moving violations in recent months.” But Swindle’s lawyer, Sidney Matthew, said the situation “stinks.” “Florida Highway Patrol can’t have it both ways, with a policy of discretion to cut breaks to legislators who are speeding and then turn around and fire them.” Incidentally, McBurne was not the only lawmaker Swindle pulled over that day. The trooper also stopped Rep. Mike Clelland who was coincidentally going 87 mph in a 70 mph zone. Swindle similarly let Clelland off the hook with two citations, one for having no proof of insurance and the other for not having car registration. He said he was cutting Clelland a break, “from one firefighter to another,” after noticing the senator had a firefighter sticker on his windshield.“I didn’t ask him to give me any break,” Clelland said. “I remember him saying, ‘You’re the second legislator I’ve pulled over today.’” … Read More
Cop-killer tied to “sovereign citizen” movement
A 36-year-old software engineer who shot and killed a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer last fall was bipolar and held antigovernment “sovereign citizen” views, an investigation by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office has concluded.Christopher Lacy’s ideological ties to the sovereign citizen movement, whose adherents generally believe they are immune to federal tax and many criminal laws, were documented with more than 100 interviews and search warrants. But the seven-month investigation failed to determine why he shot CHP Trooper Kenyon Youngstrom on Sept. 4.The trooper was fatally shot at close range moments after stopping Lacy’s vehicle, which had an “obstructed license plate” as it traveled on busy Interstate 680 near Alamo, Calif., the sheriff’s office said in a just-released summary statement. That was only the latest murder of a law enforcement official during a traffic stop by a sovereign citizen, most of whom believe the government has no right to regulate their driving. On May 20, 2010, two West Memphis, Ark., police officers were slain by a father-son team of sovereigns during a routine traffic stop.Continue Reading… … Read More
