cannabisnews.com: Just Say No





Just Say No
Posted by FoM on January 11, 2002 at 08:10:25 PT
By Jacob Sullum
Source: Reason Magazine
Years ago I wrote a story about a crackdown on marijuana growers in which state and federal agents knocked on the doors of people who had purchased indoor gardening equipment. Since they didn't have enough evidence for search warrants, they had to ask for permission to look around.To my amazement, the operation resulted in hundreds of arrests for marijuana cultivation. I found it hard to understand why someone with a closet or a basement full of contraband would consent to a search when he could avoid arrest simply by saying no.
Eventually I realized that the pot growers who let the cops in must have believed they had no other choice. They probably assumed they'd already been caught and that failing to cooperate would only make matters worse.Even people with perfectly legal horticultural hobbies worried about the consequences of resisting men with badges and guns. "I had the impression that if I made them get a warrant," an orchid grower told me, "they would tear the house apart."If people in their own homes can be intimidated into allowing searches by displays of authority, imagine how travelers must feel when confronted by armed government agents within the close confines of a bus. That's the question posed by a case the U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear.In a random drug sweep on February 4, 1999, three police officers boarded a Greyhound bus that had stopped in Tallahassee on the way from Ft. Lauderdale to Detroit. Two officers went to the back of the bus and slowly walked forward, asking passengers about their itineraries and luggage. A third kneeled in the driver's seat, facing the passengers.Approaching Christopher Drayton and Clifton Brown Jr., who were sitting next to each other a few rows from the rear, one officer held up his badge and quietly identified himself as an investigator with the Tallahassee Police Department. "We're conducting bus interdiction, attempting to deter drugs and illegal weapons being transported on the bus," he explained. "Do you have any bags on the bus?"Drayton and Brown both pointed to a green bag in the luggage rack. "Do you mind if I check it?" the officer asked. "Go ahead," Brown replied.The police found no contraband in the bag, but the officer later said he was suspicious because both men were wearing baggy pants and heavy jackets despite the warm weather. He also said they seemed "overly cooperative."The officer asked if he could pat Brown down, and Brown agreed. Discovering "hard objects which were inconsistent with human anatomy" on Brown's thighs, the police arrested him, put him in handcuffs, and took him off the bus. Then the officer turned to Drayton and asked, "Mind if I check you?" It's hard enough to believe that Brown knew he was perfectly free to send the police on their way but nevertheless consented to a pat-down search, despite the fact that he had 483 grams of cocaine in his underwear. It's simply inconceivable that Drayton, who was carrying 295 grams, could see his buddy hauled off in handcuffs and still make the same mistake. No one capable of dressing himself--not to mention incorporating bags of cocaine into his outfit--is that stupid. But according to the police, that's what happened.A far more plausible explanation is that Brown and Drayton felt compelled to cooperate under the circumstances. Most people probably would, unless they were told they had a right to say no. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit therefore concluded that the Tallahassee police had violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures."According to the Supreme Court, the key issue in cases involving warrantless "consent" searches is "whether a reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers' requests or otherwise terminate the encounter....'Consent' that is the product of official intimidation or harassment is not consent at all. Citizens do not forfeit their constitutional rights when they are coerced to comply with a request that they would prefer to refuse."The officer who patted down Brown and Drayton said he had searched about 800 buses in the previous year. In what must have amounted to thousands of encounters with innocent citizens, only half a dozen passengers had declined to cooperate. It seems unlikely that they were the only ones who preferred not to have police officers rummage through their bags or feel their thighs. Jacob Sullum's weekly column is distributed by Creators Syndicate. If you'd like to see it in your local newspaper, write or call the editorial page editor.Note: In drug searches on the bus, is "consent" copspeak for "coercion"?Source: Reason Magazine (US) Author: Jacob SullumPublished: January 11, 2002Copyright: 2002 The Reason Foundation Email: letters reason.com Website: http://www.reason.com/ Related Articles:Justices To Address Limits of Bus Searches http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11692.shtmlSupreme Court To Decide if Suspects Have Rights http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11688.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by Tim Stone on January 11, 2002 at 17:10:54 PT
Like it Makes Any Difference
"According to the Supreme Court, the key issue in cases involving warrantless "consent"
      searches is "whether a reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers' requests or
      otherwise terminate the encounter....'Consent' that is the product of official intimidation
      or harassment is not consent at all. Citizens do not forfeit their constitutional rights when
      they are coerced to comply with a request that they would prefer to refuse."-------Huh? If this Supreme Court ruling were in fact the Law of the Land, if law enforcement officers were actually compelled to abide by this stated standard, much of the documented cop overreach horror stories would never have been allowed to happen. But the horror stories did happen, and still do. Clearly the LEOs are disregarding it. And since LEOs are disciplined, top-down organizations, the LEOs are disregarding it because they can get away with it, with a wink and a nod from their superiors, and all too often, the courts. I don't think citizens waiving their rights has so much to do with citizen ignorance of the law as citizen gut survival instinct when confronted with a gun and a badge that is professionally skilled in coercion. So I'm not sure where the usually reliable Mr. Sullum is going with this essay. It's not ignorance of the law, it's fear of cops well accustomed to too long a leash that causes even innocent and well-informed citizens to knuckle under to blatant LEO 4th Amendment violations. The Supreme Court standard quoted is clearly farcical, having nothing to do with the Real World of actual cop actions and citizen "rights."
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Comment #2 posted by observer on January 11, 2002 at 10:44:33 PT
re: website
see:ACLU Action Alert: Stop Police Abuse!
http://www.aclu.org/action/police107.htmlPolice Complaint Center
http://www.policeabuse.com/GloboCopWatch: Send your Reports of Police Abuse 
http://mediafilter.org/globocop/
search: report police abuse
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Comment #1 posted by markjc on January 11, 2002 at 08:20:33 PT:
website
someone should set up a website where every time something like this happens to someone, if they get the officers badge number, name and what city the department is, they can send it in to the website and post it for everyone to see. Then the police officers might think twice about destroying the constitution.
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