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Driving Under the Influence laws and issues
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I feel pretty confident that once you've got reasonable suspicion and you've conducted a legal stop, asking for a BAC out of the blue would fall into the same category as asking for a vehicle search out of the blue. You ask, and if the driver gives consent, there's just no Fourth Amendment issue.
You hear about those kinds of cases all the time. Some cop pulls over a guy for a broken taillight, asks to search the car completely out of the blue, driver says ok, cop finds like fifty pounds of cocaine in the trunk, and the whole thing is legal because the stop was legal and the driver consented to the search.
I'll also add that in Vermont, if you are asked to perform a FST, you must comply or your license is automatically suspended. This is the same in many states, actually.
same in NY.
And remember guys, if you ever get into a drunk driving accident, make sure you've got a bottle of booze in your trunk so you can pretend that you were pounding that in the time it took for the cop to arrive.
Not that I'm prepared to do any such thing, but it's the only possible way out of being fucked.
I know I'm going back to the first page here, but I have to agree with this a thousand times. I drove to south west CT (i'm in south east MA) with a friend. We put his GPS on my window, just like normal.
That thing was such a god damn distraction. The colors. The movements. The voice. I kept wanting to look at it and not the road. On top of that, being in my peripheral vision, I kept seeing it out of the corner of my eye and wondering subconciously what it was, since I'm not used to anything being there.
Shit, I see them lit up in other cars at night, and I'm drawn to it like a fly and a flycatcher. I have to look at the glowing object. Same goes for DVD players in other people's cars. I'm just drawn to the glow.
GPS' are a menace.
Aside from not driving drunk in the first place?
No, I don't think it is legal. We had a cop in my office just the other day to ask us this question. He stopped someone for a traffic violation and then asked to search their car. He found a bunch of drugs in the trunk. Problem was he had no reason to ask to search, he just did it to see if they would consent. All the attorneys agreed that that evidence would be suppressed.
obviously, dur.
Believe it or not, I first received that advice from my business law teacher in high school.
If you're without a doubt going to blow over the limit, definitely. There's certainly no upside to doing it.
That tends to hang up a lot of people - and it is all in how you articulate in your report. I get a lot of drug arrests, and a lot of them come from consent. I think i've only lost one case out of about 10 that actually went to trial because the guy/girl will usually plea out.
I never ask to search a car unless I have some some sort of reason to believe there are drugs or some other illegal things going on. Be it their story not adding up, catching them in multiple lies, their behavior during the stop - it's called totality of circumstances. And it all goes in the report. Personally, I never ask to do my FST's out of the blue, and I never ask to search out of the blue. It's always the circumstances leading it up to it. Probably why I rarely lose a case that goes to trial.
I realize that I can beat the rap and not the ride, but I really don't think I'd just agree to let them search my car. I realize the going thought of "it's not a problem if you have nothing to hide", and I have nothing to hide... the only thing I time I have anything remotely of interest in my car is when I'm going to and from the gun range... but I see no reason why I should consent to a search on the side of the road just because some cop's decided I'm going to be his huckleberry. I respect the uniform and the badge, but that doesn't mean I'm a push-over.
Is it legal for me to say, "no, get a warrant" if I don't think the officer has probable cause to search? I do know that saying "no" isn't probable cause. I'm just curious as to how it works in your jurisdiction.
Same thing applies to encounters on the street. I get out of my car and talk to the known dirt bags in my area all the time on a consensual basis. If they tell me to fuck off and keep walking, not much that I can do there. But if they stop and talk to me, and they consent to a search of their persons and I find dope on them...too bad so sad.
People try to fight my consensual encounters a lot in court which is why I record every single encounter I have with my digital recorder. Saved my ass many many times. Nothing brings me more pleasure than them getting on the stand contradicting everything in my report and then I play the recording of our entire encounter. The look on their face....priceless.
Exactly.
How long have you been in law enforcement?
Two years now