Probable Cause

 Any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no
 statement to the police under any circumstances.

--Justice Robert Jackson

I'm not sure what other people call them.  I call them guides:  people willing to drive faster than you, perhaps because they accept more risk, or they are locals and have more situational awareness.  Naturally I have no issues swallowing my pride and moving out of the way so they can take the lead and I can trail a half mile back, hoping that any law enforcement officers will pick on the first guy.  All of this is occurring at exactly the speed limit, of course.

Anyway today, I discovered a flaw in this system, when the guide is willing to go...significantly faster than you were expecting.  So much faster that catching up to them requires speeds you might not risk even with a guide in front (again, this is happening at or below the speed limits).  So just imagine what could happen were you to try and catch up to a guide, but you are too far behind to realize they have slowed down just behind a police car.

In other news, I got my second ticket today.  He accused me of going 93 mph.  However, the ticket is not the interesting part.  The interesting part is what happened between the time I was pulled over and the time I was handed the ticket.

When I pulled over, I decided not to be a dick with the 1" window thing, because, since the cop was moving, I figured he didn't have evidence and it was worth playing nice.  Unfortunately, when he asked where I was going, and I said "East" and glared at him, he told me to get out of my car and come sit in his car.  The cop talked about how a lot of drugs are coming out of Washington now, and...I have Washington plates!  He continued pressing me for more information.  I told him that I wasn't going to answer any of his questions, and I didn't consent to any searches or seizures.  Just like the internet videos said to.

Unfortunately, real life is very different from theoretical courtrooms.  The officer spent roughly forever summoning a second officer and a K-9 unit.  Now, I've never had drugs in or near my car, but for some reason when the drug sniffing dog ran straight up to my car and indicated, I wasn't surprised.  I couldn't see what the K-9 officer was doing;  I don't know if he gave the dog a hand signal to indicate or not.  So then they took all my shit out of my car and started going through it.

So, for those of you who care, this is where the whole "rights" thing breaks down:  drug sniffing dogs apparently alert at anything, and that's all they need for Probable Cause.  They are like 4 legged, barking Probable Cause factories.

And this is where I broke my own personal rules, because they obviously found a lockbox containing some rather important personal documents, and I, picturing those documents catching fire as they cut the box open, elected to tell them where they could find the key.

As I watched them I tried to steel myself for whatever could happen.  Sure, I was technically innocent since I did not (and have never) possess any drugs.  However, as John T. Williams can tell you, bullets still kill you if you're innocent.  And though being shot in the back was [hopefully] not likely, there was nothing I could do to stop them from planting drugs in the car in order to save themselves from embarrassment, and I'm pretty sure we were within 100 miles of the border so they probably could have anally raped me.

However, none of that happened.   They didn't even take my car apart or rip up the upholstery like they did to that black guy from colorado.  The K-9 officer tried to give me a good cop talk about how the other cop was a nice guy and this all could have gone differently.  He also decided to explain that--surprise--these dogs generate a lot of false positives.  I directly insinuated that the false positives called into question the validity of the probable cause generated by those dogs, and he became visibly annoyed.  There was also a lot of talk about all these drugs coming out of washington, and how they didn't profile me based on my washington plate, or based on the fact that I invoked my 4th and 5th amendment rights...it was some kind of other set of things that gave the first cop reasonable suspicion to order a drug sniffing dog.

I think I learned a lot from this incident.  No, I did not learn some gay lesson about being more cooperative with cops.  Fuck those cunts.  I will seek to establish a more nuanced method of asserting my rights.  Honestly, every time I read another news article about some guy getting pulled over and having his car ripped open or whatever, I keep thinking "if only I had been there, I would have not said anything except for 'I dont consent to any searches or seizures' and I would have won the encounter!"  It turns out, I was wrong about that, because I finally had my shot at it and I fared not much better than the colorado guy.  So I feel like I can relax while reading those articles, instead of trying to be an armchair lawyer to a news story.


Obviously I spent the rest of the night thinking about this incident.  So far my best ideas are:

1) get a solid block of steel (or titanium?  tungsten??) and put a fake lock hole into it, so the next time this happens, they will have a hell of a time attempting to cut it open.

2) Sue them for an illegal search.  I'm not actually certain that is a real thing.  I do know that illegal searches aid the defense in court and can cause all evidence gained by and after the illegal search to be thrown out.  However, that doesn't mean the police have civil liability if they perform one.  Still, you could probably sue them for profiling.  I suppose it won't hurt to ask a lawyer about it.

The downside of suing them, though, is this:  the only reason I am not dead, or in jail, is because at least two of those cops were honest.  They didn't handcuff me and choke me, or shoot me in the back, or plant weed in the car and pretend to find it.  They apparently honestly thought a drug runner would carry drugs in a fucking Subaru WRX with a Washington plate and drive 93 miles an hour (their words; not mine).  That notion is actually so ridiculous I almost laughed in the cops face when I realized he thought I was carrying drugs (if I ever decide to be a drug smuggler, I am going to use drones).  Anyway.  The point is I am alive and safe because of honest cops, and if I sue the department in an effort to stop them from profiling Washington drivers, I am concerned that I would be harming the wrong people.  Then again, thinking "I'm not going to answer your questions" gives you Reasonable Suspicion is pretty shitty.

So...in conclusion, fuck cops.