California Supreme Court Makes It A Bit More Difficult For Cops To Engage In Unconstitutional Stops
Well, things certainly suck for cops looking to hassle minorities and/or engage in roadside fishing expeditions in California. And the cops have no one to blame but themselves.
Five hundred thirty-five agencies conducted a total of 4,575,725 stops from January 1, 2022 to
December 31, 2022.
Black individuals were stopped 131.5 percent more frequently than expected, given their relative proportion of the California population, using a comparison of stop data and residential population data.
A Los Angeles Times investigation found deputies search 85% of bike riders they stop even though they often have no reason to suspect they’ll find something illegal. Most bicyclists were held in the backseat of patrol cars while deputies rummaged through their belongings or checked for arrest warrants.
The Times’ analysis of more than 44,000 bike stops logged by the Sheriff’s Department since 2017 found that 7 of every 10 stops involve Latino cyclists, and bike riders in poorer communities with large nonwhite populations are stopped and searched far more often than those in more affluent, whiter parts of the county.
Redefining “California stop,” millions of stops per year at a time. Cops stop more minorities, find less contraband, continue to harm their relationship with the communities they serve… and then do the same thing again and again, year after year.
Up until recently, anyway. A law that went into effect at the beginning of this year changed some of that bad math. The new law requires officers performing traffic stops to lead with the pretext. In other words, rather than ask the stupid question pretty much every driver has heard at some point in their life (“Do you know why I pulled you over?”), California law enforcement officers must inform drivers why they’ve been pulled over before they get back on their pretext/fishing expedition bullshit.
We’ll see how that has worked out next year when all the traffic stop stats are in. In the meantime, things are getting even better for California residents. The new law says the pretext must, at the very least, be presented to drivers right up front.
This recent California Supreme Court ruling adds even more limits to stops, traffic or otherwise.
On Thursday, the court ruled to restrict the grounds under which police can stop and hold people for questioning. It stems from the case The People vs. Marlon Flores.
“The only thing he did was, he was standing by a car at night in an area that the police deemed to be a high-crime area. And his so-called odd behavior was that he, the police say, he ducked down, trying to tie his shoes. And was seeming to avoid police interaction,” Kim said.
The court ruled that police can’t detain someone on the street just because that person tries to avoid contact with them.
The Cliff Notes version is this: it’s no longer reasonable for officers to portray someone merely avoiding contact with them as “reasonably suspicious” enough to detain them and pester them with further questions.
It’s the right call to make. You know who wants to talk to cops voluntarily? A very small percentage of the population: namely, people reporting crimes and… other cops. That’s about it. I don’t want to talk to cops and I haven’t committed any crimes for pretty much the entirety of my life. Most people don’t want to get hassled either, especially since every stop is just an opportunity for bored/opportunistic officers to find something that might lead to an arrest or, preferably, a sizable seizure of some citizen’s cash.
This decision [PDF] flips the script on pretextual stops, forcing the state’s cops to allow citizens to engage in their own pretexts to avoid having to converse with cops.
In this case, the person subjected to an unlawful stop did nothing more than bend down to tie their shoelaces, which the officers took to mean they were deliberately avoiding a conversation — something they considered to be inherently suspicious behavior.
Officer Guy testified that he detained Flores because he believed Flores acted “suspicious[ly]” by “attempting to conceal himself from the police” and then “pretend[ing] to tie his shoe.” The officer suspected Flores was “loitering for the use or sales of narcotics.” Guy gave no reason why he thought so, other than the area and Flores’s behavior upon seeing the police.
Wrong, says the court, even if Flores ducking down to tie his shoes was nothing more than a ruse meant to avoid having to converse with the officers. (The court also notes that this ducking was momentary and Flores remained in sight for far longer than he remained hidden… so, pretext or not, it wasn’t much of a ruse, ultimately.)
We need not determine the precise moment this detention took place. There is no dispute that Flores was detained before any incriminating evidence was recovered. One fair interpretation of the facts is that Flores initially tried to avoid being seen by the officers. Thereafter, and somewhat inconsistently, he stood and was in view for several seconds. He then failed to acknowledge the officers’ approach, and sought to avoid interacting with them. But as we explain, this behavior, along with Flores’s presence in a high crime area at night, did not provide a particularized and objective basis for suspecting that Flores was doing something illegal.
It is settled that a person may decline to engage in a consensual encounter with police.
The court then goes into more detail as it completely dismantled the bullshit “suspicion” assertions of the involved officers.
The fact that Flores was present in a “known narcotic[s] area[],” where the officer had arrested someone for drug-related crimes the night before, does not tip the scales in favor of detention. Notably, Officer Guy did not see Flores engage in any conduct suggesting he was there to buy or sell drugs or was otherwise involved in illegal conduct. He did not see Flores interact with anyone, or retrieve or hide anything. […] He did not see anyone in the immediate vicinity. No one had called for help or to report a crime in progress. The hour was not particularly late. Although the officer testified that he suspected Flores of “loitering,” he did not see Flores standing in that location for more than a few moments before the officers pulled up in their patrol car.
When Guy approached on foot, he saw Flores moving his hands near his feet. But the officer did not say Flores appeared to hide or discard anything. Rather, he opined that Flores was “pretend[ing] to tie his shoe.” Guy testified that the Nissan was parked at a red curb. But he did not explain how Flores’s presence next to an illegally parked car justified a detention under the totality of the circumstances.
And here’s where the judicial hammer comes down:
Police officers and private individuals may well occupy the same public space and have no particular interaction. They may also engage in consensual encounters. But before an officer can compel compliance with a show of authority, articulable facts must support a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. In the absence of such facts, the person is constitutionally protected and empowered to go on his or her way.
It’s nothing more than an affirmation of Fourth Amendment rights (as well as similar rights enshrined by the California Constitution), but it still needed to be said out loud by a court capable of generating precedent. And it had to be reiterated because police officers simply choose to ignore these long-held rights if they think they can get away with it.
So, what happened here isn’t necessarily on par with the law passed by the California legislature but it still sets limits on police stops: namely, that reasonable suspicion actually has to be reasonable (rather than just vague statements about “it was night” or “I once saw a crime here”) to justify detaining someone, no matter how momentarily.
And even though it’s just an affirmation of earlier rulings and long-held rights, cops are still getting angry about this ruling:
In an email to ABC7 News, Tracy McCray, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association calls this another example of California’s criminal justice system working to protect criminals.
She writes: California’s politicians and courts are making it harder and harder for police officers to do their job to protect the communities we serve. The California Supreme Court just opened a giant loophole that will be used by thousands of drug dealers, gang members, sex traffickers, and burglars who will attempt to use this very subjective standard to get back on the street as soon as possible to victimize the people who live, work and travel here. Observing the actions of those we encounter is a critical part of police work and has never been grounds alone for an arrest. Unfortunately, that will not matter when every public defender and criminal defense attorney in the State rushes to file appeals to get their clients freed because they were ‘just nervous.'”
lol cry more, copper. This isn’t a “loophole.” This just clamps down a bit on law enforcement’s abuse of constitutional rights. But go on with your bad self. If these are the sort of stupid statements you’re willing to send out following a pretty innocuous ruling, I cannot wait to see what you’ll actually try to claim in court.