
Federal cops gets pulled over by TN cops, car illegally searched - jseliger
http://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/i-40-search-raises-new-policing-for-profit-questions
======
rdtsc
This has been known for a many years and many people who have been searched
figured it out. Dogs are a key element in letting them rob people on the side
of the road. We hear those K-9 are treated as officers, someone shoots one,
and the sentence for that is usually pretty harsh. It takes years and many
tens of thousands of dollars to train them. But they are worth their weight in
gold. They are the the magic voodoo doll that hacks the 4th Amendment. You say
'no', but, the puppy says 'yes' and there go your rights. It is pretty magic.

What is interesting here is that person who was searched got to present his
story to the news and it was published as is.

\---

"NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Ronnie, "You are convinced that they cued
that dog to hit?"

"Yes, 100 percent," he said. "There is no doubt they cued that dog."

\---

Usually traditional media takes the side of the cops. At best, they would make
the cops' version sound just as plausible as that of victim of the robbery
(hrm ... I mean, the person who was detained).

So, of course, what makes this story, is the occupation of one of passengers
-- he is both a cop and a veteran. That is front and center in the article. It
is emphasized mutiple times, even in the HN title. We don't want the audience
to forget that and think he is just a regular janitor or plumber here! I
believe that says a lot about the beliefs that go around -- that cops are
somehow more honest, and noble (and so are the troops). This aspect, is just
as interesting to look at as the story itself. In order to stop this behavior,
it is important to change that attitude, first, and then it would be possible
to talk about fixing the laws that allow this to happen.

~~~
mikestew
_Dogs are a key element in letting them rob people on the side of the road._

Ya know, after I had written my parallel comment and gave it some thought
later, I concluded that it's all just bullshit. The dog didn't alert by
sitting, and the officer didn't cue him. They were going to search the car
regardless.

 _You say 'no', but, the puppy says 'yes' and there go your rights. It is
pretty magic._

Here's where I disagree with you (but only in the details). The dog didn't say
anything. I mean, I've seen dogs sniff for drugs (and find them). I've watched
amateur Noseworks competitors ( _slightly_ related to the training sniffing
dogs). No dog "alerts" by sitting, at least none I've ever seen. Dogs sit all
the time, it would be a stupid cue. That dog could have just stood there and
ripped the meanest fart you ever smelled, and the thieves (pardon: cops) would
have said that the dog "alerted". "Yup, smells like he found something!"

As you point out, the dog is a prop, a talisman. That car was getting
searched, full stop. They just needed a "get out of the 4th amendment free"
card in the shape of a German Shepherd. They might as well train gerbils for
that. They fit in your pocket, cost less to feed, and with a little propaganda
we can all be led to believe they work just as well as dogs (and they probably
will if you're just looking for false positives).

(And to be clear, I'm not saying you can't train a dog to sniff for drugs or
bombs. Obviously they can be trained for this, and to a high degree of
reliability. They can, however, also be trained to bark, dig, or whine on
command, whether they smell drugs or not.)

~~~
rdtsc
> As you point out, the dog is a prop, a talisman. > Here's where I disagree
> with you (but only in the details).

Oh I agree, the dog saying 'yes' was meant to be the officer using the dog to
note on paper that 'dog said yes'.

As you said, in case of this group, they didn't have to pretend much at all. I
imagine others would actually have a functional, probably somewhat non-obvious
alerting signal. But this groups was getting good results without trying much.

I think they probably learned their lesson from this -- spend more time
training the dog to actually alert and figure out how to make it do it
reliably and out of the sight of the camera.

~~~
mark-r
How do you reach the conclusion that they've learned any lesson from this?
Have the officers been reprimanded in any way?

If this couple had any amount of cash on them, it would have been confiscated
as "drug money". Good luck getting it back, even in the absence of any
evidence. That's why these tactics are tolerated, it's a source of income for
the department. Who cares if a few innocent out-of-staters are taken advantage
of?

The whole situation just makes me sick, and I'm continually surprised that it
hasn't been ruled unconstitutional.

~~~
rand334
Police don't get reprimanded in America. They just get paid vacation at worst.
Shoot a handcuffed guy in the back of your squad car? "Oh, he must have had a
gun we just didn't find when we searched him." Right. Right.

~~~
Vivtek
"Enjoy your two-week paid fishing trip."

------
mikestew
"If you look in slow-motion, the dog passes an open window on the passenger
side with no alert. The handler then leads the dog around the front. Then, on
the driver's side, he turns his body around and gestures toward the window.
Suddenly, the dog sits. That's the alert."

As I've always suspected. I could take just about any random dog from your
local animal shelter and train them to do that in about 20 minutes (look up
"clicker training Zach" on YouTube, watch what he can teach in half that
time). And point at the window is the cue? Amateur hour. Given the amount of
time given to train a K-9 unit, I could come up with something much more
subtle, and I only train dogs as an amateur volunteer, not a professional K-9
trainer.

Alternatively, many dogs that I've trained long-term will default to "sit"
when they can't figure out what you want. Could have been that the dog didn't
know what "point at window" means, but the mutt knows it means _something_.
Doggy runs through his mental database, comes with no match for "point at
window", defaults to "sit".

TL;DR: the more time I spend training dogs, the more I'm convinced that drug
dogs are about as reliable as polygraphs, if not worse because the handler can
game it.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I've seen that. We did some obedience competition with one of our dogs. If she
didn't understand a command, she'd cycle through the first three things she
learned (sit, down, roll over) until stopped :-)

~~~
tonyarkles
Glad to see that our dog isn't too weird with that behaviour! When she doesn't
know what to do, she cycles between sitting and laying down, pretty rapidly.
Great entertainment!

------
emcrazyone
I'm a little surprised that Ronnie even engaged in an apparent argument or
conversation with the cop. A very good friend of mine who is an attorney and
has given me the following advice which I give to an officer anytime I'm
stopped. It goes like this:

Officer, please understand - after I identify myself with my name and date of
birth (and proof of insurance if I am driving a motor vehicle) I am refusing
to answer any questions until I have a reasonable opportunity to consult with
my attorney. I refuse to take any field sobriety tests including: reciting
letters and counting numbers, letting you look into my eyes with or without
your flashlight, or any other physical tests performed outside my vehicle
until I consult with my attorney. I refuse to get out of my car unless you
order me to do so. However, I still refuse all field sobriety tests. I will
show you my hands at all times so that your safety will not become an issue.

I refuse to consent to the search of my vehicle, my person, my belongings, or
any premises with which I have an expectation of privacy, including my
residence, hotel room or any other rented room without the reasonable
opportunity to consult my attorney. If you have probable cause to search you
do not need my consent anyway.

If I am not under arrest but you are going to issue a traffic citation please
do so immediately so that I may go about my business. If I am not under arrest
and no citation is going to be issued please tell me if I am free to leave so
that I may go about my business without further interference with my liberty.

If I am under arrest, please tell me immediately so that I can cooperate by
submitting to your authority because I do not wish to resist or obstruct your
official duties.

If I am under arrest I wish to invoke all my rights under Miranda. I want my
attorney. I won't answer any questions, perform any field sobriety tests or
consent to any search without a reasonable opportunity to obtain the advice of
my attorney.

Then I shut up!

~~~
sparky_z
I've heard other lawyers give this advice. It may or may not be good advice,
depending on circumstances, but I'm a little suspicious of the lawyer's
motive. It sounds designed to ensure that every single traffic stop, no matter
how benign, results in billable hours.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, I'm suspicious too. The more I read about life in the US, the more I
think the law system there is ripe for disruption. Lawyers are the middlemen,
introducing _huge_ inefficiencies and taking enormous rents out. Somebody
needs to cut them out.

~~~
gamblor956
Lawyers are not middlemen between people and the law. Lawyers are the experts
who know the law and make interactions with the law more efficient.

Context-relevant example: a person dealing with a DUI stop might spend months
of their own time fighting the DUI in court without a lawyer--days wasted just
trying to figure out what to do. But with a lawyer, most DUI cases are wrapped
up in about a day or two!

If your time is truly worthless, go ahead and try to play at the law yourself.
But if your time, and your freedom, has any value, pay the expert to do it for
you.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You're proving my point for me. They're the middlemen who over the last few
decades managed to make themselves indispensable. The law is that complicated
for a reason, and it's not just because humans are messy.

Speaking about your example - somehow, many otherwise civilized countries
manage to handle DUI cases without lawyers getting involved.

~~~
brbsix
Common law is not so messy. Unfortunately we live in a world of victimless
crimes, with a system of law that is like it's own universe, always expanding,
and of unknowable vastness. So arcane that it requires temples upon temples of
seers to interpret it. It's ripe for disruption alright, but probably not by
market forces in a peaceful fashion.

------
danso
The submitted story has a confusing timestamp. It's dated January 2016, but
there's a line that says " _(Story originally created Nov. 10, 2014)_ "...I
suspect it's a problem with the news site's CMS (which is probably shit, a
situation most news sites have to deal with)...they probably created a new URL
to package this story in their larger ongoing investigation.

In 2014, Radley Balko blogged about this incident:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
watch/wp/2014/11/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
watch/wp/2014/11/12/policing-for-profit-in-tennessee/)

Obviously doesn't change the impact or interest in the story (if anything,
goes to show how much interesting news you can forget about or not know about
when it was originally published), but the submitted title needs a "(2014)" in
it. I was interested if this story went anywhere, but a Google search for
Ronnie Hankins name didn't turn up much.

------
mindslight
If police departments were responsible for paying for the collateral damage
they create and even deliberately exacerbate (time wasted, damage to the car,
and emotional distress from assault), this problem would fix itself overnight.

"Probable cause" is not a justification for evading responsibility to their
victims.

~~~
prawn
Not sure that's the solution as they'd probably then be paralysed to inaction
in valid cases too.

~~~
mindslight
The case can't be too valid if the police aren't confident the person is
guilty. It sounds exactly like more detective work would be advised, to avoid
harming innocent people.

But yes obviously it would be less efficient to fund the true cost of
policing, rather than leaving it the reverse lottery we have now. But not
doing so is essentially a violation of due process, as the victims are
extrajudicially punished based on mere suspicion.

~~~
tajen
Innocent suspect indemnisation might lead to every pull-over resulting in a
charge.

~~~
mindslight
Time wasted in court and lawyer fees would be added to the list of damages
when the victim is finally found innocent. The police and the prosecutor might
argue over which one is responsible, but I'm sure after the first few cases of
malicious persecution they'll have it figured out.

------
rubberstamp
Again, why is there a loop hole for illegal search and seizure?

There have been lots of news coverage on illegal search and seizure for last
couple of years, but it still happens very frequently.

How can it be solved? May be a new constitutional right should made it to law
that guarantees a no fuss recourse path for every law if you believe you have
been wronged.

Without people actively participating in democracy, its going to rot.

~~~
clarkmoody
> May be a new constitutional right...

The Constitution enumerates only specific rights to the federal government.
All other rights are retained by the states and by the people (10th
Amendment). Not to mention that the 4th Amendment most specifically addresses
the issue of unlawful search, and which the courts -- as an apparatus of the
state -- have mutilated beyond recognition to the benefit of the state.

Most citizens are completely unaware of the multitude of rights possessed by
the people and assume that the government has to tell them what rights they
have. That way is serfdom.

Then again, with one semester of government class in 12 years of compulsory
state-controlled education -- and that taught by a coach half the time -- it's
no wonder that we allow the state and its officers to walk all over us.

~~~
winter_blue
We need constitutional limitations on state power.

The U.S. constitution[1] must be amended to enumerate and accord the states a
limited specific set of rights, and all other rights must be reserved for the
people.

[1] Alternatively, individual state constitutions could be amended to have an
enumerate powers clause added to them -- but I doubt those deep red Republican
"conservative" and "small government" states would want to limit the power of
the state to abuse marginalized groups. Conservative hypocrisy is unnerving.

~~~
bobmno
Lol, and progs are any better?

~~~
winter_blue
Progressives are indeed better in this case.

Even though they are not big supporters of limited small government (which I
favor), at least they are not actively trying to suppress black people and
other non-white minorities -- instead they're fighting for their rights.

To me, justice is more important than small government.

------
tobyhinloopen
I read these kind of articles for years now. Why isn't there anything done
about this? The Police in the US is just corrupt and must be dealt with.

I would love the visit the US sometimes, but stories like this just make me
feel like the US is just a very dangerous place to be. Not because of the
people with guns, but because of the police that is as corrupt as any 3rd
world country's police.

~~~
pjc50
I say this as a non-American, but there seem to be two Americas.

The first one is the Norman Rockwell vision of plenty and freedom. It really
is like that - for some people, mostly white (or at least not black), in some
places. Given how big America is, that means there are tens of millions of
people who never see the bad side. Or when they do, assume that those involved
deserved it.

The other side of the coin is for the people who end up on the wrong side of
the internal colonialism. There's a lot of brutality there, but (like with
many 3rd world or marginal countries) it's avoidable as a tourist.

The one thing you do have to make sure as a tourist is not to get in trouble
with the border check agents.

~~~
vinbreau
I have a friend, ex-military, very clean cut, pretty 'normal' guy. His brother
is a cop. We both grew up in the same rural area. I used to be a punk kid,
crazy hair and clothes, but a good kid, definitely not a criminal. I was
constantly harassed by police, even had to file charges once against a cop who
assaulted me on private property at my father's place of employment. My view
of the cops is very different from him. He gets absolutely offended if I talk
bad about cops. He really sees them as noble people with only a few bad
apples. He says people like me just like to talk up the bad cops to make the
rest look bad. Or it was my own fault for being so outside societal norms that
of course I would be the target of constant suspicion.

------
jmiwhite
Confusing title - to add some clarification from the article:

> He's a federal police officer at the Marine Corps Air Station-Miramar in San
> Diego.

Ronnie, the male passenger is employed as a Federal police officer, but his
wife (driving) does not have her employment specified, nor are they driving an
official vehicle or on Federal business. He also sounds more worried about
losing his job than having his employer go to bat for him:

> "It makes me angry that someone would attack my character because not only
> do they attack my character, but that could cost me my job," Ronnie said.

~~~
meric
If there were two tiers of citizenship - the police and the non-police - and
the former has an implicit right to confiscate assets from the latter, of
course anyone would worry about losing their police job.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Even off duty cops (from different jurisdictions) aren't immune.

~~~
newjersey
>> Watts is also off the road, but by her own choosing. She remains with the
Florida Highway Patrol but no longer looks for speeders because she is afraid
her fellow officers would no longer back her up in an emergency.

[http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/11/26/fhp-trooper-donna-
watts...](http://miami.cbslocal.com/2013/11/26/fhp-trooper-donna-watts-last-
stand/)

even on duty officers doing their jobs aren't immune... if you don't follow
the blue code of silence, the blue code will stalk you.

~~~
kls
Miami PD is one of the most corrupt departments in FL. My wife was harassed
and ticketed by a fat cop who got out of the car smoking a cigar and stunk of
alcohol with gold chains around his neck.

Earlier she had pulled into a parking garage that was mislabeled and scrapped
the roof of the truck. The attendant called their boss who called their
insurance, who said to get a police report and they would cover it. She got a
ticket for reckless driving. Thankfully the attendant stayed on the scene the
whole time, because my wife got the sense that the cop was alluding to her
negotiating her way out of such a hefty ticket.

Fortunately my wife's friend (who we where visiting) is very good friends with
the chief of the Hollywood PD and made a call, who then made a call to Miami
PD, long story short a supervisor came out, ripped up the ticket apologized to
my wife, wrote the police report about the garage and left, but before he did
he told her it would be best if this where the end of the incident. Nothing
was ever said or done about the other officer.

~~~
triplesec
I'm glad your wife beat that corruption, but sad that it took more corruption
to do it: connections. This doesn't help the 99.9% other people.

~~~
kls
Agreed it is a shame that one has to have connections to avoid transgressions
that should not happen in the first place. I was thankful for those
connections at the time but very uneasy about the whole situation. The lesson
learned is that we avoid Miami, which is difficult given that we live in the
Florida Keys and it sits directly in our path to the mainland.

------
stordoff
> [We] took the dashcam video to a nationally respected respected expert

Redundancy aside, this seems like a pointless thing to include in the article
if you don't even name the field in which he is an expert.

~~~
anon4
Sounds like he's an expert on respect.

------
socrates1998
What I don't get is why isn't the dog "search" considered a search?

I mean, if you don't concede to a search and they don't have probably cause,
how can they have a dog then search your car?

It seems like having a dog search and smell around your car would constitute a
search by every legal definition?

And this would be a breach of your rights against illegal search?

What am I missing?

~~~
ssanders82
It's the same as if the cop looked through the window and saw a baggie full of
weed on the dashboard. Anything which is exposed (sights/sounds/smells) to the
outside world isn't considered a search.

------
slaxman
As someone from a developing country, it really shocks me to read stuff like
this about the US. Mainly because we kind of look up to their justice system
to be better than ours. Yes, there are police harassments in my country as
well. But it's not this bad. And apparently what they did is legal, which is
really shocking.

~~~
goodcanadian
I am virtually certain that it is illegal on a lot of counts, but that
circumstances and the law make it very difficult to fight in an effective
manner.

------
geggam
What amazes me is how people are putting up with this. Why arent we putting
the highway robbers ( police ) in prison and having emergency elections for
new sheriffs so they can deputize honest people ?

~~~
mahyarm
You start getting special police attention if you try to start a political
movement against them.

Most people don't have the time and inclination to do so, and the ones that do
are often incoherent or do things that shoot themselves in the foot, like the
people who blocked the SF bay bridge on MLK day.

------
blin17
I hear of a lot of startups working on image detection and sound detection,
but I'm wondering why there isn't anything done for scent detection. Maybe A2D
for scent doesn't really exist yet, but it would limit the need for drug
sniffing dogs

~~~
chriskanan
I did some work during my PhD on recognizing scenes from electronic-nose data.
The problem is more on the hardware side of things than the algorithm side of
things. Today's electronic noses are still pretty large devices in which a
sample needs to be placed within the device. Unless the state-of-the-art has
advanced significantly in the past 3 years, none of them are like wielding an
artificial nose on a stick that you can just wave around sniffing things.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Can confirm.

I was "digitally sniffed" for explosives once at an airport in Florida about 3
years ago.

They took a piece of what looked like tissue (probably an odorless control)
and rubbed it inside my backpack.

They then placed that "tissue" into a very large machine (half the size of the
man performing the procedure) which I assume smelled it for explosives.

After standing there for about 30 seconds staring at the machine, I was told I
was free to proceed into the secure waiting area.

~~~
mahyarm
Those are things similar to a mass spectrograms. The tissue picks up
particles, and is then analyzed by the machine to create a mass spectrogram of
the napkin. If it contains masses similar to explosive powder residues, then
you're in trouble.

------
bigbugbag
Isn't that a known fact that US police train their k-9 to false alert to get
probable cause for a search ?

There's this video by Ex narcotic police officer Barry Cooper that features a
segment on k9 false alerts:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-mU77Pie44&t=23m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-mU77Pie44&t=23m30s)

~~~
ceejayoz
It's very possible many of these cops have no clue they've subtly trained the
dog to alert.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans)

------
ipsin
Is there anything in the article to support the claim in the title, that the
car was "illegally searched"?

As much as it galls me, my understanding is that this kind of thing is
procedurally legal. Drug dogs can "alert" based on nonsense, and that forms
the pretense for a legal search. The Supreme Court seems willing to say "you
can't be held waiting for a drug dog" (Rodriguez v. U.S.), but doesn't seem to
be willing to adjudicate the accuracy of those dogs.

My personal belief is that they should be banned, unless we're willing to hold
them to a _very high accuracy rate_. Like, if consequences of a false alert
are "career-ending", and not just "Tuesday afternoon".

But as much as I hate this, describing it as "illegal" seems inaccurate.

------
greenleafjacob
Can't wait to see these officers hailed into court on a 1983 action.

~~~
stonogo
Won't happen. Rural cops are entirely autocratic.

------
mmaunder
Yet another reason it's a great idea to get your own dash cam if you're doing
long road trips.

------
addicted
"So why not say yes?"

This is how the article frames the situation, somehow insinuating that the
default is to let the cops violate your privacy.

However, the law is very clear on this aspect. The default is No. The cops
have to find a valid reason to be able to search. There is absolutely no
reason why a citizen should allow for a search, and doing so can only hurt,
not help, them.

~~~
mattdeboard
Pretty sure the article wasn't insinuating anything like that. It was just a
journalist asking an obvious question so the interviewee explains their
thought process in more detail.

------
metasean
>(Story originally created Nov. 10, 2014)

>Posted: 12:20 AM, Jan 18, 2016

>Updated: 4 hours ago

Does anybody know what the update was?

------
brbsix

      First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
      Because I was not a Socialist.
      Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
      Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
      Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
      Because I was not a Jew.
      Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
    

Sort of difficult to empathize with a federal police officer ever-so slightly
maligned by the application of a terribly unjust national drug policy. Too
little, too late.

------
kelvin0
Bandit de grand chemin (highway robbery):
[https://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https](https://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https):
//fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandit_de_grand_chemin&prev=search

"Under the old regime the offense was punished with the torture of the wheel"

------
sheraz
This makes me think there should be an app / GPS plugin that will alert all
drivers which stretches of highway are prone to this type of search. Then it
would automatically reroute as if that stretch were under construction.

------
Pxtl
Simple solution: track the accuracy rate of drug dogs. If a drug dog has a
false positive rate of over 50%, then it can't really be callse "probable
cause" can it? Probably not, more like.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Your simple solution has already been tried in Florida v. Harris. The actual
false positive rate was ~80%, but the court still found that it could be used
as probable cause.

------
vetler
What was the turning point when cops became the bad guys in the US?

~~~
tyingq
The turning point is probably not that their behavior changed, but that it
began to be exposed. First, when video cameras became easily attainable by
regular people (Rodney King), then later, when almost everyone starting
carrying a video camera (smart phones).

------
SixSigma
> "You felt violated?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked.

> "Yeah, I felt violated. He didn't want to hear it."

Objection your honour, leading the witness.

------
karmakaze
> He believes the dog may have inadvertently been cued to hit on their car.

How do they explain how the dog was 'inadvertently trained'?

------
joesmo
This is what happens when you let dogs make legal decisions. Thank you Supreme
Court.

------
cmurf
Police as the highwayman.

------
kordless
I had this exact same thing happen to me coming into Oklahoma from Texas,
while I was living in Dallas for a few years. I'm actually from Oklahoma, so I
was going back to my Dad's at the time so I could renew my license plates.

One thing I will note is that I won't allow someone to tell me they think I am
lying, if I'm not lying. I don't have to rationalize with someone who blames
and speak for others. The best possible thing to do is get of of the car and
lock it behind you and stuff your keys in your pants the absolute second you
are stopped. When they start blaming and speaking for you, tell them they are
doing so and you won't allow it. You can then keep your mouth shut until the
officer makes a choice between hauling you in and towing the car, or letting
you go.

Nobody has to make things "right" when there's nothing wrong to begin with.

By keeping the amount of stuff you say to one of these jackasses, and what
they have access to, greatly limits their ability to fuck with you.

~~~
mapt
"and stuff your keys in your pants"

"He was reaching for a gun!"

