1) She has no paperwork for the rental vehicle. physical or email.
2) She has an operating radar detector. (illegal in Oklahoma. I didn't know this was still a thing)
3) She admits to a 2 night stay in California driving from Missouri.
4) She has a lot of luggage for a 2 night trip to California. (Officer's opinion, she doesn't necessarily disagree about the quantity of luggage, but makes an excuse)
5) When the officer tells her his dog is going to search after she refuses consent, she admits to having marijuana which is still illegal in Oklahoma.
To me this is might be probable cause without any Flock information. She admitted to driving a rental car that she has no information on during the 4k mile, 2 night trip to California. She admitted to possessing marijuana. I think this whole scenario goes the same way if Flock cameras didn't exist.
Anything gathered after that is dismissed because of the fruits of the poisonous tree.
"Given Kyle's speed, Alaniz had an objectively reasonably basis to stop the Mazda for violation of 47 O.S. 11-310""
pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.oknd.76...
No one gets pulled over for turning light violations for safety reasons, but that's beside the point. I just hate how many laws we have that are just selectively enforced.
"Given Kyle's speed, Alaniz had an objectively reasonably basis to stop the Mazda for violation of 47 O.S. 11-310"
1 is likely probable cause for arrest, sure. Admitting to having marijuana in the vehicle (5) gives them probable cause to search the vehicle. But probable cause to search the individual's travel history over the last month? No, that requires a warrant.
https://www.404media.co/federal-judge-rules-a-flock-search-w...
LPR will scan thousands of cars automatically, but he stated in the footage that he chose her specifically. Why?
I've started to call nonsense like this 'illegal but allowed by courts'
We can all read the constitution and our laws. We've been told the legal system tells us what they mean, but increasingly, the explanations we are provided and the decisions that are made seem at odds with the basic. Things like parallel construction, the good faith exception, and pretextual stops makes a mockery of people's rights and the ability of the justice system to even evaluate police conduct.
Theres a spectrum in here between soverign citizens and serious citizen pushback on legal overreach...but its a spectrum increasingly worth reflecting on. Obviously this is US specific.
"Ah, the law we came up with us unconstitutional and didn't stand up to scrutiny? We'll get em next time!"
Eventually that "next time" does pass and the people doing it will never suffer consewuences for it despite undermining the very institution of representative democracy.
fwiw she didn't have to answer any questions, he would have had to work a lot harder to establish fake probable cause if she hadn't talked...
Nothing to do with instinct, just low-hanging fruit from dragnet surveillance
His "intuition" about short trips only happened after the illegal flock search, when he could see the full trip.
If the cop had obtained a warrant before searching ALPR data, then the search would have been legal under this judge's standard. But the cop (a) didn't obtain that warrant, (b) probably couldn't have obtained it quickly enough to decide whether to follow her until she committed a traffic violation, and (c) probably couldn't have at all since he didn't have probable cause. The question of what level of ALPR search requires a warrant is evolving rapidly now, in response to both case law and new legislation (e.g. Connecticut SB397).
Kyle also disputes whether the ALPR search found anything that justified the detention. If the ALPR search was itself illegal then that's irrelevant though.
Driving with California plates isn't probable cause for a search.
He probably pulls 20-100 [0] people over every day. All of those checks are unconstitutional. Once every 1-100 days one of them has something worth going to court over. Most of those will be plea-bargained and never reach a judge. If it's sufficiently serious, though, it's worth the fight in court. So the judge will only see the really serious cases.
And we're only seeing the reporting because the judge did something unusual and ruled the entire operation unconstitutional.
So it's not "wow! those cops really know their business; they pulled over the one person carrying meth!". It's "wow! out of thousands of illegal, unconsitutional, vehicle stops, one person got taken to court and put in front of a judge, and that case was thrown out"
[0] I have no idea on actual numbers. The point still holds.
So I wonder if we could be seeing a bit of survivorship bias.
¹though with cops you never know
In this case, the Flock data then showed a bunch of recent interstate travel, which cops consider to be probable cause. They know it’s not legally probable cause though, so they pointed to her “nervousness” (aka not consenting to search).
The real question is how many times the same cop pulled over people who he searched and found nothing. Certainly nonzero.
Imagine your innocent wife, mother, daughter, aunt, coworker, while 1. She’s trying to drive across a large vast section of America. Gets stopped by cops late night in stinky west texas. They remove her from her car , into theirs, for interrogation. Would she be nervous?
It just doesn't necessarily mean anything, instead of hiding a secret reason -- which is what a statement like that is often intended do: make someone feel anxious, nervous, and vulnerable.
Anyway, a lot.
This quickly escalates to 'Why are you so nervous? You're sweating', 'Your speech patterns and eye dilation gives me probable cause to suspect you', or simply 'What's that I smell?'.
Everybody needs to buy at least one dashcam with motion record, and learn two simple statements:
"I don't answer questions" "Am I being detained"
Even if you're a shark of a criminal attorney, this is literally all you should ever be saying to an American law enforcement official.
> Alaniz did not Have Reasonable Suspicion to Extend the Traffic Stop.
That's the newsworthy part. For example, Kyle stated that she had the marijuana only after Alaniz detained her so that he could attempt to search the car without her consent. If that detention was illegal then her statement isn't admissible, and that's what the judge ruled here:
> Because the government does not identify any adequate exception to the exclusionary rule, all evidence obtained after Alaniz initiated the ALPR search must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.
ETA: And while the initial stop was lawful, the grandparent comment is probably correct that it wouldn't have happened without Flock. Alaniz performed a Flock search that included "traffic violation" as the reason, but he hadn't yet observed a traffic violation at that time. Based on that ALPR history he correctly suspected drug trafficking, and followed the car until he observed a traffic violation that justified the stop (but not the subsequent fishing expedition).
I don’t personally know anyone who has ever ran from the cops to evade a traffic violation.
