since9
Campaign Veteran
Article.
As the author of the following, I am posting it here FIRST so as to avoid any conflict with copyright:
As the author of the following, I am posting it here FIRST so as to avoid any conflict with copyright:
Our Founding Fathers knew full well an over-reaching government would spell the doom of our newly established freedoms. Most of the amendments in the Bill of Rights were created to protect our freedoms, and concepts like "RAS" (reasonable articulable suspicion) and "PC" (probably cause) are based on our Constitutional rights and freedoms.
If the officer detected no signs of alcohol use, then he had no legal justification to administer a test for alcohol. If he'd done so without RAS, he'd have violated the driver's protection against "unreasonable search and seizure" granted to all of us by the Fourth Amendment.
Allowing our government to erode our protections would be a stupid and dangerous course of action.
If the store owner is miffed, too bad! The driver was properly cited for recklessness, and the owner can take the driver to civil court to recover the damages.