As others have said, legally speaking they didn’t do anything wrong unless they made you wait a long time for the dog. I think they have like 10 or 15 minutes on that, but I’m not totally sure. There was some court ruling on that. It’s basically the amount of time it takes them to write you a ticket or something like that.
Sounds like you handled it well though. I would ask “Am I being detained or am I free to go?” when they wanted to bring in the dog. Otherwise you seem to have calmly asserted your rights and pissed them off the minimum amount possible in so doing.
I honestly think the first cop was decent as far as cops go. He specifically told the 2nd cop that my license came back clean with no points or whatever. I think he felt sorry and let me go without a ticket.
Good for you for refusing. Fucking dinks. They try to use that " you looked nervous" line all the time as some sort of justification to violate your rights. Yeah, I’m nervous because you ■■■■■ murder people with impunity.
I got illegally searched right out of high school knowing my rights. My lawyer fucking sucked and the cop lied on the stand and said he saw my weed baggie pop out of the seat when he moved the seat back to get in the car. The seat was already as back as far as it could go almost in a big coupe. Charge stood. I got to bust the shitty lawyer out of a poker tournament several years later. That was pretty awesome.
Pretty much lol cops and I certainly don’t think you’re obliged to do anything, but if there’s anything you could do that makes their lives more difficult and makes them uncomfortable then that’s a good thing. Whether or not someone is arrested is kind of a fuzzy concept and perhaps the amount of time they made you wait could be construed as an arrest and therefore a false arrest.
The thing that I have volunteered with the DSA Mutual Aid group for is brake light fixing. They have these times when people can come by and get lights fixed for free partially to just help people with stuff like that but also because that is often a pretext to pull someone over and just investigate them.
Not only that, but I fit every single stereotype that would make the cops like me. I drive a pick up truck, have a shaved head, and have fishing/camping gear clearly in sight at a State Park.
My buddy got pulled over with me in the car about a decade ago. Cop pulled the old “you look nervous line” and kept asking over and over if we were transporting weapons.
He asked me for my ID and I asked why. He immediately ordered me to get out of the car. I get out and I’m standing at the back of the car and I put like two fingers in my front jeans pocket and he freaks out and almost draws his gun. I then told him that he looked nervous, which he didn’t find funny. He asked for my ID again and says he will arrest me if I don’t give it to him. I give it to him. He asks me when the last time I was arrested was and I told him about a DUI.
He goes away to his squad car and then comes back and asks why I didn’t tell him about a possession of marijuana charge I got arrested for. I told him because you asked for the last time I was arrested and not the second last time I was arrested. He calls me a punk.
He then wants to search the car and my buddy refuses. They finally let us go like 90 minutes later. We would probably be dead if we weren’t lily white and totally sober.
In my opinion the least discussed major problem in this area is that cops not only lie with impunity, they are literally always taken at their word by the judiciary. Police testimony is almost always accepted without scrutiny by judges even when it is obvious to anyone with a pulse they’re straight up lying. Almost all case law in this area has been made on the backs of lying police officers.
Yep, it’s well known and even goes by the name “testilying.”
Overall, I think the discussion and points raised in this thread have been good, but I thought I’d raise one thing.
Talking about specifics of legal rights and statutes is not super helpful without reference to the specific jurisdiction (mainly state) that the incident took place in.
The US constitution sets kind of a “floor” for your rights, such as those related to search and seizure, etc., but individual states’ constitutions may provide more protections over and above that. (For example, DUI checkpoints are “constitutional” under the US constitution, but not allowed in some other states, including Washington, because of additional privacy rights in their constitutions.)
Source: Not a lawyer, but a legal/civil-rights hobbyist, and two of my college buddies went on to law school and became public defenders who did a ton of these kind of cases.
