I'm willing to put up with a little inconvenience and cooperate with the cops in order for them to stop the flow of drugs. I wish you were too.
People that are willing to give up their freedoms for the sake of convenience are usually the ones who complain about their freedoms being taken away.
I’ve always cooperated with an officer when stopped. It’s only when some badge-happy jerk starts throwing his weight around that I take exception. Consider the following example.
A friend in a major metro area started a cycle shop on a shoestring in the 70s and has become very sucessful at it. (Last I heard sales were in the 12-13 million a year range.) He’s a straight shooter guy and as hard working as one could find but has long hair and a beard.
After dropping by his shop one Saturday evening at the 7 P.M closing time he invited me along with a few others to go down the street a 1/4 mile to a club for a few cold ones and to shoot some pool.
This club has a 50/50 mix of scruffy biker types and cowboys but there’s no trouble there. In this incident we were there about an hour before half a dozen cops walked in and started lining all of us biker types up along the wall.
They pulled IDs from all of us, checked us for weapons, and ran a warrant check on everyone in spite of protests from the bar owner. The cops did not say one word to the cowboys in the bar.
As a footnote, no weapons on us and no warrants out followed by the cops leaving and accomplishing nothing other than pxxxxxx everybody off.
Several weeks later a similar incident happened. The shop owner, myself, and a few others were going to go out clubbing and the shop owner wanted to drop by his house and pick up his wife. We were all on Harleys and less than 2 miles from the shop 3 police cruisers swooped out of nowhere and ran us all through the same wringer again. The same results; no weapons, no warrants, and more time wasted standing on the side of the road in an ocean of flashing police lights.
Those incidents I’ve mentioned are not nearly all of them and one even involved a cop my wife called out one night to investigate some vandalism after some drunks broke a few beer bottles on my car.
Yeah well if you’re talking military police that’s a whole lot different than the local sheriff. We were at Bragg for Reserve summer camp and some MP Major stops three of us on the street. All concerned about our hair cuts and told us to go get hair cuts. I thought it was a little extreme for a grown man to worry about how other grown men had their hair cut, particularly since it would be considered short in Minnesota. We just ignored the guy after he let us go figuring we’d be home in a week making more money than him and he’d still be at Bragg worrying about other insignificant stuff.
The first time I went to CA I wasn’t in state more than an hour and a half before a CA trooper whipped a U and tailed me for 10 miles through the desert before pulling me over.
My crime? No front license plate on the car.
This guy could not seem to understand that OK does not issue a front plate; only a rear, which is still the policy today. He was also apparently going to impound my car, visitor or not, but ran into a snag when told that a tow truck from Barstow was going to be at least 3 hours. All while standing there in 100 degree heat.
From the get-go, I had been telling him to contact his dispatcher and have them contact any law enforcement agency in OK and they would verify that front plates were not issued. After a full hour roasting on the side of the road his dispatcher finally affirmed what I had told him and he let me go with a warning.
Don’t be in the state more than 3 days without getting CA plates. Nice attitude towards someone who is only visiting… 
OK4450.
Federal law makes license plates legal in all states. All day everyday. They were just smoking you up there. Evert think about why you can get a rental car in one state and drive in another? Thank overly Burdnesome EXPENSIVE federal regulation. All it really says is each state must recognise the drivers license and vehicle plates of another state. Yup States even have to approve your drivers license from another state on top of the license plates.
Thank overly Burdnesome EXPENSIVE federal regulation.
That’s been the law of the land since the country was founded. Each state must honor the laws of other states. While 200 years ago it didn’t have to deal with license plates…it did have to deal with Slaves and things like different ages when a person can get married. If you lived in a state which allowed slaves and brought that slave to NY (which didn’t allow slaves)…NY had no right taking that slave from you.
Needless to say, I was a bit surprised when the CA trooper walked up to the window and asked if I knew why he pulled me over. When he first went by going the other direction and while pulling a U turn I had glanced down at the speedometer and noted that I had not inadvertently crept over the limit.
The guy was adamant that I was not going to move that car one inch without a plate on the front and the only thing saving me was the fact he didn’t want to wait 3 hours for a tow truck.
Left unsaid was whether he was going to arrest me or leave me on foot out in the Mojave…
@ok4450 I think that one should have generated a citizen letter to the captain or something. Clearly the guy was a little off-maybe why he was assigned to the desert. Some people have just never been anywhere else though and don’t realize there’s a whole world out there. I used to work in the city and live in the country. I always had to remind people that there was life outside the city plus space and cows and everything. I remember after the flood in NO, some folks were bringing a kid up to Minnesota for some R&R for a while. He wanted to know what that thing was out in the field-it was a cow. He’d never seen a cow before. Never been out of the city. Thought milk came from a store.
I hate to come across as anti-cop because I’m not. A friend of the family is a member of the local SWAT team but he had a lengthy history as a U.S. Army Special Forces guy so maybe his discipline is a bit tighter than many.
For some reason or another (looks I assume) has always made me a cop magnet and a fair number of them have chosen to throw their weight around which then sours me probably more than it should.
Usually I’ve just taken my lumps and moved on with life although in retrospect I honestly wished I had filed a lawsuit against the OK City PD for throwing me in jail that night for nothing, and after sticking an open pocketknife in my face with a threat.
(This was in the notorious elevator to booking where it was often said someone entered the elevator in good shape and exited on the 3rd floor badly beaten while “resisting arrest”. Three cops, they’re armed and on duty, the elevator has no cameras inside, and I wasn’t saying anything except “Yes Sir” and “No Sir”.)
I feel it’s easier to get your driver’s license than it is getting a loan for a car.
This isn’t giving up my freedoms. We pay these guys to enforce laws that protect us and our loved ones. They have a tough job. Cooperating with them does not equate to giving up my freedom. Remember that freedom also means I have to right to say “yes”!
Now, if I allowed you guys to badger me into giving the cops a hard time, THEN i’d be giving up my freedom.
This is not a game. If you don’t like the law, you go to the voters and have the law changed. I hope you don’t win. I like laws that protect me.
If you don’t like the law, don’t cry about it. If you don’t like the law: change the law, don’t try to just ignore a law because you don’t like it, then come crying to me because you got caught.
Don't like the law, get it changed.In my case, it’s not about the law or a violation of that law. It’s simply too many cops with an axe to grind.
There was another incident that happened with me that is very close to what the OP’s situation was.
One Sat. afternoon I backed one of my bikes out into the drive to do a little maintenance. This bike had not even been started for 2 weeks. Shortly after starting the job a couple of friends dropped by and we were standing in the drive just talking bikes, nuts and bolts, etc. Some kid on a rice rocket goes flying by on the main street doing about 70 in a 30. Our conversation briefly turned to he’s an accident waiting to happen before getting back to our discussion.
Five minutes later a cop stops at the end of my drive, rolls the window down, and asks who owns the bike in the drive. That would be me I replied.
He stated that someone had called in and reported me as the miscreant who was speeding and that he was going to write me up. This led to my protesting, politely at first, this looming ticket and the cop got surly when I continued to deny being the guilty party. According to the cop, I “matched the description”. Not.
I had long hair, beard, orange Harley, and no helmet; the speeder was a teenager with a helmet, shorts, sneakers, and on a blue Kawasaki or something like that.
About the time he opens the door to get out of his cruiser with ticket book in hand, I leaned over, grabbed both exhaust pipes at the cylinder heads with my bare hands, and sarcastically stated, "do you think I’m stupid enough to do this on a hot engine?"
He hesitated and I dared him to walk over, put a hand on that engine anywhere, and find anything that wasn’t stone cold.
He got back in the car and as he drove off stated that I “better keep it down because he was going to be keeping an eye on me”.
My two witnesses no doubt had an influence on this.
Five minutes later we all walked to the corner and sure enough, there he was half a block down parked under a shade tree; apparently waiting for me to fire it up and leave the drive.
The way I see it with police searches…
If the cop thought I was driving in such a manner or was so suspicious of the way I looked or acted…then he can get a warrant. I’ve NEVER given them probably cause to search my vehicle. They either need probable cause or a warrant. Searching for the sake of searching is WRONG. One of the most basic freedoms our founding fathers thought it was strong enough to put it in the Bill-Of-Rights.
I’ve NEVER EVER had anything in my possession that would have gotten me arrested if they did a search. And since I never had…then WHY do they want to search my vehicle or property.
If a cop wants to search my vehicle…they better get a warrant…or have probable cause. If they don’t have a warrant or probable cause…then WHY do they want/need to search my vehicle?
@MikeInNH raises an interesting point. If an officer suspects you of transporting illegal drugs, that officer can make you wait for them to bring a drug-sniffing dog out to check your car. They don’t need a warrant for that, and if the dog detects drugs, that is probable cause to search the vehicle, and no warrant is needed.
So why would an officer try to bully you into letting him search your car if all he has to do is bring out a drug sniffing dog to check for illegal drugs? Would someone please answer that question for me? If it’s so easy to search for drugs without asking me to waive my 4th Amendment rights, why are you asking me to waive my 4th Amendment rights? There would have to be some ulterior motive. What is it? Does the officer not want to share the collar with the dog (or the dog’s handler)? Does the dog demand union pay?
When you turn the tables, and start asking your own questions, like “If you think there are drugs in my car, why don’t you bring out a drug sniffing dog?” or “Is it legal for you to lie to me?” you get a clear picture of what you’re up against, and it isn’t the noble pursuit of ridding the world of drugs. For a good number of police officers, it’s a power trip.
Let’s face it, a lot of people become police officers for noble reasons, but some do it for the power trip. When you compare the risks to the rewards, there aren’t a lot of good reasons to do what they do for what they get paid. This is why the job attracts some folks who don’t give a damn about doing the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do.
I’ve met a lot of good police officers who treated me with respect, and I’ve met a few that think they can sell ice cubes to Eskimos by sheer force of will. Unfortunately, many of the good ones move on to better jobs, like a cushy job as a campus police officer at a public university where you get all the benefits but much less risk.
If an officer really thinks you are a drug courier, he doesn’t have to violate your rights to bust you. All he has to do is radio for a K-9 unit. Problem solved.
I’ll post 2 more examples and shut up. 
Friend of mine had to see a specialist doctor in Ok City one Saturday and asked me to go along as a driver if the test left him a bit loopy. In a small town on a 4 lane highway while sitting at the light (no traffic around) the local cop pulls up next to us and gave us the eyeball. My friend is clean cut and a professional photgrapher by trade. When the light turned green my friend eased off while the cop just sat there in the roadway. The cop allowed us to get a block down the street and flipped on the lights.
He claimed my friend “passed him on the right” and my friend had to post a cash bond or go to jail.
Even worse, this cop demanded my drivers license even though I was only a passenger in the vehicle. He was also stating that I might have to post a cash bond for being an “Occupant in A Vehicle That Has Committed A Moving Violation”.
I told him he wasn’t getting my license and if he wanted to jail me then have at it. He backed off of this one.
Separate post for the last incident will follow.
Another friend of mine had been invited to a barbecue in Wellington, KS one Sat. evening and was told he could bring some guests if he wanted so he invited me to go along.
Just a few miles north of the OK/KS border a car tucked in about a 100 yards behind us and just hung there. I told my buddy to watch the speed in case it was an unmarked car.
Twenty something miles of this and about 3 or 4 miles outside of Wellington, the car pulled up and flipped on the lights behind the grill. There were 2 county sheriff’s deputies in the car and they took both my license and the license of my friend who was driving. They would not tell us why but told us to follow them to the county courthouse; apparently content to let my buddy drive with no license on his person.
Once there they took us upstairs, literally stood us against the wall, and took mug shots. After that we were fingerprinted and then shown to some chairs in an empty room. Any questions we had about the why in all of this were met with a “Be quiet, you will be told why” comment.
After half an hour they handed our drivers licenses back (along with our wallets which they also took) and told us we were free to go. Still asking what was the reason for all of this they stated that they were looking for “two guys who matched our desription and were going around writing bad checks”.
One of them put his foot in his mouth by stating they were looking for a green Buick; which hardly resembled the maroon Chevy pickup we were in.
Our opinion was that the entire story about bad check writers was total BS anyway and we just turned around and went home as the waste of time and now bad attitude had ruined the thought of a cookout.
while stuck behind him how close were you following?