Quote:
Originally Posted by extrashaky
A cop can ask you to open your hood. A cop can ask to come inside your house without a warrant. A cop can ask you to open your trunk or empty your pockets. A cop can ask to search the interior of your car. They can ask you all sorts of things they have no reason to ask.
Whether you're legally required to comply with their requests is a different matter.
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This is not entirely true. In the United States, the officer must have what is known as "probable cause" before conducting any of those activities. What this means is that a reasonable person could infer the possibility of a crime or violation being committed by the suspect from the available evidence that can be seen BY ANYONE passing by. It does not mean (at least in the U.S.) that a police officer has carte blanche to do whatever he wants. The remedy is dismissal of the charges by the judge if the judge determines that there was no probable cause.
The distinction here is that the cop, if this happens more than a few times, will hear about it from HIS boss. Failure to adhere to probable cause can jeopardize other cases that this hypothetical officer has handled and could cause wholesale overturning of all kinds of convictions. For a traffic ticket, nobody really cares except the person who got the ticket. However, if the cop busts in on a drug house without a warrant and without probable cause (i.e., no visible/audible/olfactory evidence of a potential crime being committed) and his action causes the case to be dismissed, he could be fired, probably ought to be fired. These situations are a violation of the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing against
unreasonable search and seizure. No probable cause = unreasonable.
Again, the remedy is dismissal of the charges by the judge. Once the ticket is written, the only way for it to be dismissed is by a judge or jury. If a cop wanted to search my trunk for no reason, and I felt ballsy that day, I would ask for his warrant or for my attorney before consenting. You really can't stop him in the end, but you can help establish a lack of probable cause. Whatever you do, however, be extremely polite!
Now if he has a drug-sniffing dog, you have hooch in the trunk and the dog smells it, then you're screwed. That IS probable cause. But he can't legally search your trunk in the case of a stop for a busted tail light. He can only write you a ticket for a busted tail light legally. Anything else should be dismissed out of hand, but you'll still have to go to court (or just plead guilty and pay the fine).
Regarding things like speeding and loudness, the police officer should have some way of measuring it using a device (radar, dB meter) and follow a prescribed procedure in his determination of the violation. His opinion alone will not stand up in court (unless the judge is his brother-in-law or something). If the cop has good evidence, just plead and pay. If not, then go to court and get it dismissed. The OP has proof that the noise level was acceptable; unless the cop has a good dB meter, knows how to use it, and can demonstrate that you changed the muffler system since the ref took his reading, then you can beat that ticket.