A friend at work takes a road trip to California (from Houston) and runs into a road check point along the way. There are two younger guys in the car, both in their upper 20’s, one a cop, one a professional guy. Car is a white 2006 impala, totally stock no stereo, no window tint, no nothing. Both guys have clean records, the car has tags and insurance under the name of the cop, who happens to be a sleeping passenger during this leg of the trip.
They pull up to the road check point and the officer asks for license and insurance. The driver hands them to the cop, and the cop says he is going to need to search their car. At this point rider 2 who is a cop, says they won’t consent to a search respectively. The cop at the check point says they have probable cause, and gets an FBI agent who is also there. They say that since the passenger owns the car, but is not driving it that is suspicious. They search the car and freak out when they find the cop’s (who owns the car) gun. He told them about it when they took their information and has a pistol permit which allows him to carry it. After questioning them about where they are going and why they had to take the gun they open all the luggage and spill it out into the trunk of the car to search through it.
They didn’t get charge with anything and this entire search thing took about 2 hours. He has a slip saying they were searched by homeland security or something weird like that.
This really grinds my gears. I’d feel very violated if this happened to me. Now I don’t know the entire story, maybe they were very rude, maybe not. I fully understand that a cop has a job to do to protect us all, but this would still piss me off. Discuss, as I always thought you had the right to deny a search.
Also sounds like we’re probably missing some of this story because it really shocks me that once the cop passenger flashed his, “I’m a cop too card” they didn’t simply get waved past the checkpoint.
How is another person driving your car (especially on a long road trip), probable cause? Either there is a piece of the story missing somewhere or you should report the cop.
I would have been screwed at this stop, any time an officer asks me why I’m driving somebody else’s car (when the owner is sitting next to me), I tell them it’s because the steering wheel is on this side.
generally speaking, cops do not have the right to search your vehicle unless they have reason to do so. for example, if they see empty beer bottles in the back or if they smell weed or anything like that. you don’t even have to roll your window all the way down if you don’t want to, just say i do not consent to a search if they ask you.
however, cops can always make up reasons for wanting to search your car, and if you act defensive it only gives them more reason to want to find out why exactly you don’t want them sniffing through your shit.
carnut is right, we have no rights. rights are things that every biological human being should have equally, but we gave up our rights the instance we agreed to abide to law and be governed by it. because of this we are only entitled to whatever “rights” we are told that we have, which is most noticeably governed by massive institutions like the government and police force. in our present world we have little to no choice in how we live our lives, the second we are given documents with our name on it like our birth certificate, drivers licence, health card, insurance papers, ownership papers, etc… we have agreed to give up our biological rights and serve as a UNIT in a world that is governed by made up “rules” in order to maintain power to those who lead it and keep everyone else under control of the “law.”
just something to think about if you hadn’t already.
If we have no rights, why was the country founded by drafting a document called The Bill of Rights?
Seriously, enough with the tinfoil hat bullshit. You know how you lose rights? When you roll over and say stupid shit like, “well it’s the FBI so you have no rights” or “big bad government doing this so I give up, I have no rights”.
Try telling those assholes who go around to military funerals and celebrate the deaths of our soldiers you don’t have rights. If the government really could trample our rights as easily as carnut suggests they sure as hell would have put these guys out of business a long time ago.
If, and it’s a BIG if, this went down just as describe your friend should be making noise about this. The ACLU loves hoping on cases like this, as do the big news networks. The rights guaranteed in this country only go away when people choose to give them away freely. They’re Constitutionally guaranteed but only as long as you’re willing to claim them.
Japanese people did have their rights taken away, and that was a tragic mis-use of power, but it was also the fault of the US Citizens of that time for not acting against it. your rights can only be taken when they are not faught for.
BUT why didnt the cop (in the car) say he was a cop? and pull out a badge?!
dont u think they woulda jsut been like “oh… hey there cop budddyyy… have a donut, and heres another gun… theres a minority over thereeee to practice your shot”
LOL
but yah… dont u think he shoulda jsut pulled out the badge and they woulda gone ez
Ugh. It’s comments like this that make me not want to have reasonable debate on here. How can you have reasonable debate with someone who believes the Constitutional rights that every legal decision in the history of this country has been based on only applied to the original men who signed the document?
