Had he not had flock or Vigilant, he would not have stopped her. That’s the probable cause he was missing.

Anything gathered after that is dismissed because of the fruits of the poisonous tree.

6) The dog was going to alert regardless of what was in or not in the car. That's their usual go-to for parallel construction for probable cause when they ping a plate with Flock.

Everything you're describing happened after pulling her over, but they needed a valid reason to pull her over. Flock was supposed to be that reason.

Radar detectors are only illegal on commercial vehicles in Oklahoma. Totally illegal only in the peoples republic of Virginia and DC.

2, 3 and 4 are not illegal or probable cause for arrest. Refusing a search (5) is not even probable cause for arrest.

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.

Radar detectors are not illegal in Oklahoma.

she 'admits to a 2 night stay in california', and that's part of your reasoning for probable cause? I feel like you shouldn't be a police officer, either.

And a very important point is given in the article, yes, here in that case the abuse of power worked because she was doing drug traffic. But, as they said, often such abuse of power are only known for the positive cases that goes to court, and it allows to disclose what is maybe happening also with thousands of innocent people being illegally searched without any probable cause in the first place.

Oh my, I'm surprised by the extent to which this spooked them, enough to issue that statement, as well as what the statement itself says about the character of their intended customers.

It's not luck, it's survivor bias on the reporting.

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.

Well, had the officer not been lucky, he'd've opened the trunk and found nothing. The stop would presumably end there¹, and so too would any discussion of the legality of the stop unless the person whose rights had been violated had the time and resources to pursue the violation "on the principle of the matter"… not something I think most people are going to have the resources to do.

So I wonder if we could be seeing a bit of survivorship bias.

¹though with cops you never know

California plates. I was pulled over and searched years ago in Kansas for the same reason.

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.

Cast a big enough trawl net and you'll catch a fish. No surprise there. But, you'll also destroy the ocean floor and kill dolphins. Many cars are being stopped using Flock every day. And many police officers are engaging in petty corruption, like stalking exes or doing unconstitutional searches.

You can tell 100 people in a day that you pulled them over specifically. And you'd be technically correct. With training to always act as if you're being recorded, it gets a lot easier to say with a straight, serious face.

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.

Thousands of cars scanned? Flock alone (there are other vendors doing the same thing) does more than 20 billion scans per month.

Pounds, not kg. ~kg/2

Anyway, a lot.

My guess? Parallel construction.

>This stop and interrogate shit shouldn't be legal.

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.

Terry v. Ohio is a concrete stop-and-frisk precedent. Driving carries more burden and less rights in the same scenario.

> This stop and interrogate shit shouldn't be legal.

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...

I think the ideal amount of meth in a society is zero. Surely you wouldnt mind consenting to a daily cavity search to accomplish that, now would you? Your not some kind of meth dealer right?

> Right instinct for the criminal

Nothing to do with instinct, just low-hanging fruit from dragnet surveillance

Obviously the ideal amount of meth is zero but there's an equilibrium where getting rid of more meth requires increasingly authoritarian measures which is not acceptable. Of course the most effective ways would be longer societal improvements.

How many people has this cop pulled over under similar pretenses and it went nowhere?

We can stop meth fast by using the electric chair for meth dealers.

Or, legalize it, so there's no incentive for anyone to drive 90 kilos of meth across the country. People don't do meth because they want to, they do it because they feel like there's no other options. If we as a society spent half as much money helping people as we do punishing them, then everyone would be much better off.

If your solution to stopping meth is traffic stops you stumble upon, you are a failed police force and a non-functioning society.

Nothing the cop can do. He was acting against the law from the get-go. Bias against California in Red states like Oklahoma is not a valid basis for police intervention or investigation, no matter how much one dresses it up as "a pattern". The reality is there are thousands of CA plates in any given other state on any given day.

His "intuition" about short trips only happened after the illegal flock search, when he could see the full trip.

> “The Court finds that because the ALPR systems Alaniz used to search Kyle’s historical location information intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of her physical movements, it was a search under the Fourth Amendment. Based on the information in the record, the only reason Alaniz conducted that search was because he saw her license plate was from California. That search was not supported by probable cause, and it was done without a warrant in violation of Kyle’s Fourth Amendment rights.”

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.

There is nothing they could do to make this legal, because the original excuse for looking her up on Flock was that she had California plates.

Driving with California plates isn't probable cause for a search.