Footage of the Flock search that a judge ruled was uncosntitutional

Posted by anigbrowl 3 days ago

Comments

Comment by KT-222 3 days ago

I'm 20 minutes into the bodycam.

1) She has no paperwork for the rental vehicle. physical or email.

2) She has an operating radar detector. (illegal in Oklahoma. I didn't know this was still a thing)

3) She admits to a 2 night stay in California driving from Missouri.

4) She has a lot of luggage for a 2 night trip to California. (Officer's opinion, she doesn't necessarily disagree about the quantity of luggage, but makes an excuse)

5) When the officer tells her his dog is going to search after she refuses consent, she admits to having marijuana which is still illegal in Oklahoma.

To me this is might be probable cause without any Flock information. She admitted to driving a rental car that she has no information on during the 4k mile, 2 night trip to California. She admitted to possessing marijuana. I think this whole scenario goes the same way if Flock cameras didn't exist.

Comment by calyhre 3 days ago

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.

Comment by KT-222 3 days ago

literally from the federal case we are discussing...

"Given Kyle's speed, Alaniz had an objectively reasonably basis to stop the Mazda for violation of 47 O.S. 11-310""

https://imgur.com/a/dVSUhIh

pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.oknd.76...

Comment by tripletao 3 days ago

You are correct that the judge ruled the stop was "justified at its inception"; but the section immediately following your quote is titled

> Alaniz did not Have Reasonable Suspicion to Extend the Traffic Stop.

That's the newsworthy part. For example, Kyle stated that she had the marijuana only after Alaniz detained her so that he could attempt to search the car without her consent. If that detention was illegal then her statement isn't admissible, and that's what the judge ruled here:

> Because the government does not identify any adequate exception to the exclusionary rule, all evidence obtained after Alaniz initiated the ALPR search must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.

ETA: And while the initial stop was lawful, the grandparent comment is probably correct that it wouldn't have happened without Flock. Alaniz performed a Flock search that included "traffic violation" as the reason, but he hadn't yet observed a traffic violation at that time. Based on that ALPR history he correctly suspected drug trafficking, and followed the car until he observed a traffic violation that justified the stop (but not the subsequent fishing expedition).

Comment by fmobus 3 days ago

Forcing police chases and traffic stops for simple things like speeding is so silly. Sane countries just send you the fine per mail.

Comment by thejazzman 3 days ago

If you’re running from simple things the expectation is that you’re guilty of something more complicated.

I don’t personally know anyone who has ever ran from the cops to evade a traffic violation.

Comment by ang_cire 3 days ago

Except that courts have recognized that cops can find a reason to pull anyone over if they want, so minor traffic violations do not create probable cause to extend traffic stops beyond resolving the minor traffic violation. Otherwise there is no actual requirement of probable cause.

Comment by digdigdag 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by piltdownman 3 days ago

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.

Comment by ThunderSizzle 3 days ago

I'm not sure it's legal to do a dog search just because you pulled over a car for a turning light violation.

No one gets pulled over for turning light violations for safety reasons, but that's beside the point. I just hate how many laws we have that are just selectively enforced.

Comment by piltdownman 2 days ago

And that's why they love field sobriety tests on the basis of 'You were unusually slow' or 'You swerved over the line' or 'You were driving an older car in a known drug hotspot' or 'A car matching your description...'.

This quickly escalates to 'Why are you so nervous? You're sweating', 'Your speech patterns and eye dilation gives me probable cause to suspect you', or simply 'What's that I smell?'.

Everybody needs to buy at least one dashcam with motion record, and learn two simple statements:

"I don't answer questions" "Am I being detained"

Even if you're a shark of a criminal attorney, this is literally all you should ever be saying to an American law enforcement official.

Comment by tdeck 3 days ago

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.

Comment by KT-222 3 days ago

I guess you and the federal court in the Tenth Circuit disagree on that...

"Given Kyle's speed, Alaniz had an objectively reasonably basis to stop the Mazda for violation of 47 O.S. 11-310"

https://imgur.com/a/dVSUhIh

Comment by quaffcode 2 days ago

If a cop wants to pull you over, and they follow you for 30 minutes, eventually there will be some small mistake that is technically a moving violation. Following too close is a crime we all commit occasionally.

Comment by The_President 2 days ago

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

Comment by dreamcompiler 3 days ago

Radar detectors are not illegal in Oklahoma.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by Dezvous 3 days ago

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.

Comment by greatgib 3 days ago

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.

Comment by felixgallo 2 days ago

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.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by neom 3 days ago

A Flock spokesperson told 404 Media, “The ruling goes against the overwhelming weight of authority in similar cases across the country, including multiple recent decisions in Oklahoma, and we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned. This ruling is limited to the specific facts of this case. It does not set controlling precedent and does not affect law enforcement agencies’ continued use of these important public safety technologies.”

https://www.404media.co/federal-judge-rules-a-flock-search-w...

Comment by cosmojg 2 days ago

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.

Comment by shermantanktop 3 days ago

I just wonder how this cop got so lucky that he randomly stopped a car with 91kg of meth in it. 91kg!!!

LPR will scan thousands of cars automatically, but he stated in the footage that he chose her specifically. Why?

Comment by marcus_holmes 3 days ago

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.

Comment by deathanatos 3 days ago

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

Comment by mypalmike 3 days ago

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.

Comment by conductr 3 days ago

This nervousness excuse is crap too. This is a natural response towards LEO. Do they not understand what they represent is fear to manu parts of our society?

Imagine your innocent wife, mother, daughter, aunt, coworker, while 1. She’s trying to drive across a large vast section of America. Gets stopped by cops late night in stinky west texas. They remove her from her car , into theirs, for interrogation. Would she be nervous?

Comment by userbinator 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by subscribed 3 days ago

If I can be shot dead for being pulled over for a broken tail light, or for reaching into a pocket for the driving licence the cop just requested me to produce, or being robbed from all my cash and debit cards without reason, or jailed based on the wrongly conducted roadside "drug" analysis of my donut, yeah, I have every right to be nervous.

Cops are definitely not my friend, I fully expect them to lie, fabricate "evidence" and look for any excuse to cause problems, and it's all on them.

Comment by userbinator 2 days ago

100% fabricated bullshit. Good thing we have bodycams to tell the truth.

Comment by subscribed 2 days ago

What is the fabricated bullshit?

All these examples have been widely reported nationwide, some worldwide. No need to even dig through the local reporting.

Are you saying there have been no cases when the "routine" traffic stop resulted in the cop killing an unarmed civilian still sitting in the car?

Or maybe that roadside "drug testers" are solid so when the untrained rookie uses a tiny piece of glazing to "check for drugs", the use is according to the manual and thus gives no false positives? John Oliver has a very good video on that.

Cops are no-ones friend and the multiple examples from the bodycams proved exactly that.

Comment by hamburglar 3 days ago

That’s an absurd statement. I’m an upstanding citizen who’s never been arrested and I’ve gotten extremely nervous every time I have ever been pulled over.

Comment by nkrisc 3 days ago

I don’t need to be fed propaganda, I can watch their own body cam footage myself.

Comment by jojobas 3 days ago

I wonder what you takeaway from store robberies' footage then.

Comment by nkrisc 3 days ago

Unless there are officers present, I don’t see what that has to do with the conduct of police officers.

Comment by jojobas 3 days ago

Do you only derive anything about police officers, from any kind of footage?

I bet you don't watch police bodycam footage where they go about their duties, help people or detain dangerous criminals risking their own lives and limbs.

Comment by nkrisc 3 days ago

I have seen such footage, and I’m glad some officers take their job seriously.

But unless you know a way to tell apart those who abuse their power from those who don’t, I have to consider all officers as antagonistic and potentially dangerous.

You see, if I’m wrong, then I could end up in jail or injured or dead while they get paid leave.

> help people or detain dangerous criminals risking their own lives and limbs.

As we’ve seen them feeling afraid for their life is justification enough to kill you. It makes the risking life and limb part less admirable.

Comment by conductr 2 days ago

Bad cops aren’t necessarily bad on every call or interaction. They pick their moments or sometimes maybe just make bad decisions.

Back to the example at hand, this woman alone in her car at night in a rural/isolated area. This is a comparable situation as a baby gazelle separated from the herd and surrounded by lions. They really have no power to control the situation if the officers want to do whatever they want.

Anecdotally, a story we see on the news often enough to justify the nervousness. I had a distant family member, a step-uncle I think, when I was younger. He was a constable or something. He drove a cop car and had the uniform but my understanding was he just had a desk job. This was late 80s/early 90s, so different tech landscape and basically was no record of his behavior. But I guess after 50+ complaints, there was an investigation and he lost his job. Turned out he would perform traffic stops with his car, to only single female drivers, then would coerce them into a sexual act. Basically, give me a BJ and I won’t give you a ticket. I don’t know if it was fully consensual but I know back then it was just his word versus theirs and only when the volume of complaints was high enough his superiors decided to fire him. No criminal investigation, or I would say nothing more than just quietly letting him go. The family only found out because it ended with a divorce and my aunt and cousins had to live with the fallout from that. I think it was buried from the media but I was young so maybe it was public and I just don’t know. We were in a big city so it wasn’t big enough to be a tv news story.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by Hikikomori 2 days ago

Their boots must be tasty.

Comment by mfru 3 days ago

If you ignore the uncountable amount of incidents where LEOs abuse their power then you could think that, yes.

Otherwise you just know that LEOs are your enemy in more cases than not.

Comment by fmobus 3 days ago

LOL my dude go see if cops in other developed countries kill civilians at the rate US cops do! Germany even has a Wikipedia page for people killed by cops because it's so little.

Sure, part of the reason is German cops have far better training, and are more accountable, but there is also the incredibly sophisticated practice of not requiring a police stop for a simple speeding infraction. You get the fine per mail. That's it.

Comment by goatlover 3 days ago

Certain demographics would call your post a rather privileged one.

Comment by mschuster91 3 days ago

Cops are your enemy, and yes, every single one of them unless they get better training and procedures to effectively yeet out bad apples.

Comment by blincoln 3 days ago

Same for me with Washington plates in Minnesota. It took the police officer several minutes tailing me to think of an excuse to pull me over. It ended up being the parking tag I had hanging from my rear view mirror that necessitated searching my car.

Comment by The_President 2 days ago

To be fair, you're going to be a target with Washington, Oregon, or Colorado plates anywhere in the USA. Best if you fly those tags to have a really nice car.

Comment by jacquesm 3 days ago

Try driving with Canadian plates in Texas... I thought police cars were rare until that trip.

Comment by derac 3 days ago

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.

Comment by me-vs-cat 3 days ago

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.

Comment by Dezvous 2 days ago

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

Comment by GuestFAUniverse 3 days ago

Pounds, not kg. ~kg/2

Anyway, a lot.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by porbelm 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by lazide 3 days ago

My guess? Parallel construction.

Comment by shermantanktop 3 days ago

Sure, but resulting in a weak premise that gets thrown out in court?

Comment by brendoelfrendo 3 days ago

Cops are pretty bad at their jobs.

Comment by metalman 3 days ago

There are an unlimited number of people very willing to manufacture, transport and distribute, meth.The market is vast and none of these people realy gives a damn about anything. Had some tweekers in here a few months ago, giving them loads of scrap and cleaning up, the one guy clearly jhonesing, but relating that 'jail was the best thing that happened to him','saved his life',' pills' rail thin, bug eyed, but smart, gathered up another big load of higher value metals to give him, and texted offer for work, nothing, gone into the void. I could go on, and into the details of hundreds of other encounters from all across north america and beyond, traveling back roads and foot paths , encountering a wide variety of people living on the edge, though the one thing I will say is that the vast majority of the people there were crushed and abused, and what dignity they have is aquired from surviving by there wits alone, further punishment and judgement are mearly details and present circumstaces and in no way address the environment that these people exist in.

Comment by AngryData 3 days ago

Good. This stop and interrogate shit shouldn't be legal. Now they can pull up days of driving history and locations you have been in and everything else on demand and try and bullshit the naive into convictions that they profit off of. It is like pulling up to the border between East and West Germany except they can do it any place any time for practically any reason, as evident by the fact ive multiple times been pulled over for BS reasons myself just so they can run all my shit and try and ask leading questions into violations and crimes.

Comment by avs733 3 days ago

>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.

Comment by Aerroon 3 days ago

There's no punishment for abusing the system like this though. They'll keep trying again and again, just like lawmakers themselves.

"Ah, the law we came up with us unconstitutional and didn't stand up to scrutiny? We'll get em next time!"

Eventually that "next time" does pass and the people doing it will never suffer consewuences for it despite undermining the very institution of representative democracy.

Comment by piltdownman 3 days ago

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

Comment by timcobb 3 days ago

> 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...

Comment by nkrisc 3 days ago

It’s a sad state of affairs when the best advice is “never talk to the police” so they can’t frame you for something.

Comment by AngryData 3 days ago

Yeah but it shouldn't have mattered, cops shouldn't be using random people's naivety as a weapon to extort them for crimes. How many other hundreds or thousands of people were scared and coerced in an attempt to get them to lick boot and potentially admit to crimes?

Comment by mitxela 3 days ago

Many. This is USA SOP for a long time.

Comment by timcobb 3 days ago

Of course, just saying

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by arjie 3 days ago

Right instinct for the criminal, wrong tool to search. You have to let some number of meth dealers kill people. It is the price of a free society. The ideal amount of meth in a society is not zero.

Comment by samrus 3 days ago

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?

Comment by overfeed 3 days ago

> Right instinct for the criminal

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

Comment by privacyishuman 3 days ago

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.

Comment by iamnothere 2 days ago

It is likely a reference to a similar argument about fraud from patio11, somewhat famous on HN: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

Comment by skinfaxi 2 days ago

They are making a statement similar to "the ideal level of fraud is non-zero," making the point you yourself are making to justify it. In an ideal world we all get what we want, in the real world there are tradeoffs.

Comment by skinfaxi 2 days ago

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

Comment by _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

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

Comment by The_President 2 days ago

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

Comment by psadauskas 2 days ago

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.

Comment by swat535 2 days ago

Has legalizing hard drugs ever worked?

Comment by pinkmuffinere 3 days ago

Not a big deal, but I’m surprised there’s no auto-correct-ish behavior in the title submissions for obvious errors? Right now, unconstitutional is (mis)spelled uncosntitutional, swapping the s and the n

Comment by yieldcrv 3 days ago

what would the cop have needed to do differently for this stop and bust to be on firmer constitutional grounds?

Comment by ang_cire 3 days ago

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.

Comment by vkou 3 days ago

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.

Comment by tripletao 3 days ago

> “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.