imported post
fuel_hauler@live.com wrote:
Yes it was I had nothing to hide. and if I would have said no all they would have done is tell me they have reasonable cause. So I signed their little piece of paper and away they went. looking for what ever they thought I was carrying.
There are people who were arrested, went to jail, and/or had their vehicle confiscated because they ‘had nothing to hide’ and allowed a search. Are you intimately familiar with the manufacture of meth? Like me, you’re probably not. I would never allow a search because I have no idea what seemingly innocent household items are used in making meth. In your particular case, one small zip-lock baggy, like the kind screws or nuts come in, is all the police need to charge you with distributing those prescription drugs.
It’s not so farfetched either. There was a story a while back about a woman driving through some southeastern state and she was stopped like you were. The police searched her car and discovered that an access cover to reach the gas-tank connections was missing. The mechanic who had fixed her car had inadvertently left the cover-plate off. The police determined that she
could have been using that compartment to hide narcotics and they not only arrested her, but they confiscated her car!
Ask yourself,
why are the police doing the search? Is it to help you in some way? NO. He’s not going to say, “Hey bud, your seatbelt is a bit frayed down here behind the seat, you might want to get that looked at.” The
only reason he is asking your permission to search is because he’s hoping to get lucky and find something to arrest you for! WHY WOULD YOU OFFER TO ASSIST HIM? If he finds something and you are arrested, you cannot tell the judge, “I had no idea, I was just trying to be helpful!” It will not get you off because that’s what the real drug pushers say. Even if the judge decides the evidence is hokey, you will have spent a lot of money, risked your employment, and taken years off your life from the stress. It’s always important to understand the motivation; his is NOT to help you but to make an arrest. He doesn’t get a favorable performance report for the number of people he’s helped; he gets it for making arrests. That’s the metric. That’s the number he and his supervisors are looking for.
In your case, he stopped you for 59 in a 55, which was a pretext. Something about you or your car fit a profile. Out of state plates maybe? When he ordered you out of the car you should have gotten out and closed the door behind you, locking it if you can. The only area he’s legally allowed to search without your consent is anything in ‘plain view’. That means anything he can see looking through the windows if you managed to get the door shut. Unless you’re a super clean freak, there’s no telling what might have fallen down between or behind the seats. I recently found a small baggy on the floor under the passenger seat in my car, it had some hardware (little nuts and bolts) from something I’d installed inside the car. That alone is no big deal, but if he can make the nexus to something else, like in your case the prescription drugs, that’s all he needs to arrest you and because it involves ‘drugs’ the police department gets to keep your car. They’ll auction it off to buy brighter flashlights or little mirrors to make it easier to sting the next guy.
