Archive for January 27th, 2009
Supreme Court upholds traffic stop search
Calling the intrusion “minimal,” the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld the ability of police to pat down the passenger of a vehicle stopped for unrelated reasons - and, by extension, the ability to charge that person with illegal possession of a gun.
In a unanimous decision involving a Tucson arrest, the justices acknowledged that, in a lawful traffic stop, there is reason to believe the driver has committed an offense. Similarly, they said, there generally is no reason to stop or detain the passengers.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court, said officers may act if there is a “reasonable suspicion” they may be armed and dangerous.
She said there is a possibility of violence if those in the vehicle - including passengers - are concerned that the stop will lead to uncovering evidence of something more serious than the traffic violation. And Ginsburg said since the vehicle is already stopped, along with its passengers, the additional intrusion on the passenger is minimal.
Monday’s ruling, however, does not end the matter. The justices said that Edith Cunningham, a Pima County public defender handling the case for Lemon M. Johnson, will still get a chance to prove that Oro Valley police officer Maria Trevizo lacked that “reasonable suspicion” necessary to search him in the first place.
According to court records, Trevizo was on patrol in 2002 with two other officers in a midtown Tucson neighborhood.
Trevizo testified that the area is associated with the Crips gang and that gang members usually wear blue. She also said that “gang members will often, in general, possess firearms.”
They stopped a vehicle because a check of the license plate showed a violation of Arizona’s mandatory auto insurance laws.
There was no specific reason to suspect criminal activity.
The vehicle had a driver, someone in the passenger seat and Johnson in the back.
Trevizo said she noticed Johnson was wearing clothing, including a blue bandanna, she considered consistent with Crips membership. He also had a police scanner in his jacket pocket, something she said was unusual unless someone were going to commit a crime or evade police.
When she questioned Johnson he provided his name and date of birth and that he lived in Eloy, which Trevizo said she knew was home of a Crips gang. Johnson also told the officer he had been in prison for burglary and been out for about a year.
Saying she wanted to get intelligence about the gang, she asked him to get out of the vehicle so she could question him separately. When he got out she patted him down and found a gun, resulting in his arrest.
The state Court of Appeals said the pat-down - and subsequent arrest - were illegal because Trevizo admitted she asked him to get out of the car not for public safety purposes but to question him about gang activity. That decision was upheld without comment by the state Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court thought otherwise. Ginsburg said the fact remains that the vehicle was lawfully stopped. And that stop, she said, included all the occupants.
“The temporary seizure of driver and passengers ordinarily continues, and remains reasonable, for the duration of the stop,” she wrote. Ginsburg said that stop normally ends when officers have no need to control the scene and tell the driver and passengers they are free to leave.
But she said as long as the vehicle is lawfully stopped, police can question all the occupants about other matters.
“An officer’s inquiries into matters unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop … do not convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, so long as those inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.”
Cunningham said the high court ruling was “narrow,” dealing only with what police can do when they have reasonable cause to search someone. She said nothing in the ruling undermines her contention that, despite the clothing and the scanner, Trevizo never had cause to suspect her client was a danger or doing anything wrong.
Communities could designate gang-free zones under Utah Senate bill
Author: goldironCommunities could designate gang-free zones under Utah Senate bill
The state Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would allow local officials to create gang-free zones.
Senate Bill 16 would let communities fine gang members $100 each if three or more of them are found in a gang-free zone and refuse to leave.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Jon Greiner, R-Ogden, was approved 26-1. It was defeated last year because many lawmakers feared it was unconstitutional, but Greiner says he has made some changes so it complies with the law.
According to the bill, some officers would receive extra training in identifying gang members. In addition to using a gang registry, Greiner says officers would also use things like tattoos and “hip-hop clothing” to identify gang members.
Some groups are still concerned the bill might not be constitutional because they fear it could be used for racial profiling. However, Greiner said the bill mirrors laws on the books in nine other states. So far, he said there have been no problems or court challenges.
“This is probably the hardest way to solve this problem,” Greiner said. “There are many other ways to get things done.”
The bill was originally drafted after a 2007 fatal shooting in Ogden, where Greiner is the police chief. City officials said large groups of gang members frequented the area where the shooting happened and the out-of-state corporate landowners did not act to get them off the property.
Ogden passed an ordinance that same year that prohibited
gangs from loitering, but city leaders say it’s been ineffective because it depends on residents to testify against gang members and many people are reluctant to do that.
Greiner’s bill seeks to address that problem by giving police the ability to cite gang members.
The bill will get one more formal reading in the Senate before it is heard in the House.
On the Net:
Senate Bill 16: http://le.utah.gov/˜2009/htmdoc/sbillhtm/SB0016.htm
Arizona: History Underscores Unpopularity of Photo Radar
Arizona community voted 2-1 against photo radar in 1991, the only ballot test of voter sentiment in the state.
As Arizona lawmakers move closer to approval of legislation that would ban the use of photo radar on state highways, the private companies that operate automated ticketing programs are taking the offensive. Last week, American Traffic Solutions (ATS) commissioned Public Opinion Strategies to poll 500 Arizona voters and generate a survey of the public’s attitude toward photo radar. The company found 63 percent of those selected for interview supported the use of speed cameras on freeways.
If Arizona’s political history serves as a guide, however, one may find that this support does not materialize at the ballot box. Eighteen years ago, the group Citizens Against Speed Traps formed in Peoria to battle a then-new program that mailed automated speeding tickets on the streets of the Phoenix suburb. The group succeeded in gathering enough signatures on a petition that, less than a year after the cameras were first activated, voters were given the choice of whether to accept or reject photo radar. Fast forward to the present where the group CameraFraud.com sprung up from the Phoenix suburbs to circulate a petition seeking a public vote to ban speed cameras, this time on a statewide basis, less than a year after the devices were installed on freeways throughout Arizona. On March 19, 1991, the claims of Peoria officials that the program was popular turned out to be unfounded — photo ticketing lost in the referendum by a two-to-one margin.
“It was the worst boondoggle the city ever went into,” Peoria Police Lieutenant Jim Flonacher told the Anchorage Daily News in 1996. “Our citizens were literally up in arms. We were expecting Bastille Day at any moment.”
Flonacher admitted to the paper that despite the claims made at the time, the devices did nothing to cut accidents in Peoria. Traffic Monitoring Technologies (TMT), which is now American Traffic Solutions (ATS), kept a significant percentage of each dollar it collected from the automated ticketing program. It lobbied hard to save Peoria’s cameras through the group People for Community Safety. This lobbying effort fell flat after photo radar opponents obtained correspondence between the camera company and Peoria officials regarding the city’s decision to place the public safety systems on quiet residential streets and school zones.
“This device, when relegated to roadways with only six to eight vehicles per hour, is a clear misuse of the TMT photo radar system,” TMT President James Tuton wrote in a January 9, 1991 letter to Peoria City Attorney Steve Kemp. “It is no longer being deployed in this way and clearly (we) never anticipated that the unit would be used exclusively on residential roadways where it is incapable of financially supporting the program.”
Tuton, currently the CEO of ATS, also complained that the city was using signs to give motorists advanced warning that speed cameras were in use.
“This is ridiculous,” Tuton wrote. “Warning for what? Is this law enforcement or some kind of joke?”
The rejection of photo radar by voters in Peoria was soon followed by votes to remove cameras in Batavia, Illinois and Anchorage, Alaska. Last year, Cincinnati, Ohio voted to reject red light cameras and in a 2006 referendum on speed cameras, Steubenville, Ohio voted three-to-one against. If photo radar has never won in a public referendum, one might ask why the ATS polling data suggest public support for the program.
“We do more than simply monitor public opinion,” the Public Opinion Strategies website explains. “We develop messages that defend our client’s interests while impacting complex public policy issues.”
goldiron