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...
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.
Anything gathered after that is dismissed because of the fruits of the poisonous tree.
LPR will scan thousands of cars automatically, but he stated in the footage that he chose her specifically. Why?
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.
So I wonder if we could be seeing a bit of survivorship bias.
¹though with cops you never know
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.
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?
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.
https://www.404media.co/federal-judge-rules-a-flock-search-w...
