Posted on 11/06/2013 5:03:10 PM PST by mandaladon
A man in New Mexico was pulled over by police for a minor traffic violation. When officers said a K-9 unit sniffed drugs on the driver’s seat, the officers forced the man to undergo invasive medical procedures, including an anal exam.
It may sound nearly identical to David Eckert’s nightmarish story as reported by TheBlaze Tuesday, but this is an entirely different incident.
It does, however, involve the same uncertified drug-sniffing dog in New Mexico. The dog’s name is Leo.
Police in Lordsburg, N.M., pulled over Timothy Young for allegedly turning without using his blinker, according to police reports. Though it is unclear why, the officers with the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department suspected the driver of possessing drugs, KOB-TV reported.
The incident occurred Oct. 13, 2012, according to the timestamp on the police car’s dashcam video. Just like in Eckert’s case, Leo the K-9 alerted officers to possible drugs on Young’s seat, the report said.
Armed with what police said was probable cause and a search warrant, officers took Young to the Gila Medical Center in Silver City, N.M. The name of the hospital may sound familiar because it’s the exact same hospital Eckert was taken for the invasive hunt for drugs in his body that lasted more than 12 hours.
Young was then reportedly subjected to X-rays and an anal exam. They found no drugs.
Young, just like Eckert, says he did not consent to any of the procedures, which were performed in a county not covered by the search warrant obtained by police.
The similarities between the two cases go on and on. Now, KOB-TV is reporting that Leo the K-9 “seems to get it wrong pretty often.” As it turns out, the K-9 is not even currently certified in the state of New Mexico.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
For some reason he objected to that. I think I might have hurt his feelings.
I am not automatically swallowing anything. I have a little insight to this mess.
Here’s the link for case lookups in NM for those who want to research:
https://caselookup.nmcourts.gov/caselookup/app
I can assure you that you have neither the intelligence or means.
There's no question that we've seen some outrageous examples of prosecurtorial overreach in different jurisdictions -- the Zimmerman case and the Duke Lacrosse cases leap immediately to mind. Not sure if that's the case here or not.
As to the initial traffic stop, it's almost a given that it was a "pretext stop" resulting from some sort of narco investigation/enforcment action. The thing is, SCOTUS looked at that very issue in 1996, and ruled (unanimously -- how often does that happen?) in Whren v. US that using a traffic violation as a pretext does not violate the 4th amendment.
LOL indeed. But a ploy? Always the snark, which makes it so difficult to have a grownup conversation on these threads. It’s already been mentioned, but the city and county are not going to try their case in the media, because that is a bad legal strategy, and their lawyers won’t let them forget it. Plaintiff doesn’t have the same problem, since he’s not trying to win a lawsuit, he’s out to get a settlement.
You’ve dismissed that, but, well, that’s why.
Having said that, my puzzlement is always the rabid disdain for applying even the tiniest bit of skepticism to the plaintiff’s claims. FR did yoeman’s work when the media carried the water for Ben Crump’s outlandish lies about George Zimmerman. Posters here weren’t having it, and dug in and pretty much figured out that GZ was being railroaded. So, in that case, we took the plaintiff’s lawyer’s word, and the media’s slavish repetition of same with a grain of salt.
But the Libertarian screw turns when a plaintiff accuses a local police or sheriff’s department of “violatin’ mah rights” (oh, and pay me lots of money). Now we get to listen to a chorus uncritical opprobrium directed at some sadsack local copper trying to take the local dope dealer to jail.
So, to reiterate, I have no idea from the article linked here whether this has any merit or is a bunch of nonsense, or if the truth lies somewhere in between. If you have some additional intel that would shed some light, I for one would like to see it. If not, that’s cool too. But at some point it would be refreshing to see something other than the usual Libertarian snark on one of these threads, even if only once in a while.
It is sort of like hearing a guy yell, "Allah Ackbar!" You tend to immediately jump to the conclusion that he is up to no good.
If you read the news you can find on a daily basis the police acting out in a way that is questionable to say the least and usually criminal. And you always find the "thin blue line" there to try to say that the police were doing nothing wrong when they crossed county lines to do a no knock raid on the house of the mayor of a neighboring town and proceed to shoot his dogs that were running away from them.
On the other hand as a general rule neighborhood watch guys tend to be pretty levelheaded as do CCW permit holders.
So one group has a record of behaving in a criminal manner and one has a record of being the good guys.
Are there good cops? Sure
Are there bad CCW holders? Sure
But in general it tends to be the other way around.
You can read all sorts of nonsense on teh intarwebz. Doesn’t make it true.
But, look. I get it that the Libertarian mind thinks that the local cops act in a way that is usually criminal. To a lot of us SoCons, that sounds, simply crazy. A cop, like any human, can commit a crime, but to say that our local city and county cops are “usually criminal” is so utterly divorced from our own experience that we can’t even figure out where you’re coming from.
And if taken seriously, this notion calls into question our ability to continue to govern ourselves as a constitutional republic. If the people of east nowhere, New Mexico can’t even control their own elected sheriff, is there any function of government that they can competently execute?
And if not, what is the alternative? Roaming bands of self-appointed Libertarian CCW holders accountable to, well, whom? Certainly not the voters, as we’ve established that they can’t be trusted. It’s a puzzler, all right.
_____________________________________________________________
1. Police obtained a search warrant based on a false alert by the drug dog.
2. There were X-rays and an anal exam.
3. No drugs were found.
3. He did not consent to these procedures.
4. The search warrant did not cover the county where they took place.
_____________________________________________________________
All of the above claims are easily refutable by police if they're false. Is it your position that police would withhold evidence that refutes the above claims?
Being one of those NM natives that ran over a decade ago, I can honestly say NM is a whole different animal and not to far removed from old Mexico.
I recently completed Travis’s book centered on NM. It is accurate in my memory of Albuquerque. I listened to the radio talk show host in the afternoon that is a character in his book, I heard callers tell him to get his Anglo self out of NM (not as nicely of course). I am sure he endured worse. I am familiar with the racism, the anger, the idea that whitey stole land.
The political corruption would blow your mind. Remember, NM gave us Bill Richardson. Tax monies being spent to pave private roads for politicians, monuments being built to themselves. Generational welfare, and the admins teaching you how to beat the system. Being registered to vote democrat to receive benefits. There aren’t many guys in NM at all, and there are far too few good guys.
Not too far removed from old Mexico at all, and far worse in the years since I left.
Okay, then I won’t worry about doing that in the future.
I wonder how long before that is reversed?
It only took a decade and a civil war to reverse Dred Scott v. Sanford.
Who know they will have to pay for their own defense out of pocket and will have to pay from their own hides should the be found guilty of the slightest misstep as opposed to professional LEOs who have the full weight of the state paying for and providing their defense, have the full weight of the union behind them, have a fully supportive code of silence, are paid at full salary for the duration of the trial and are insulated from any personal liability.
Who will be more cautious?
BINGO! This will only cost the tax paying citizens and the out of control cops will still have their jobs. Where the hell is sue happy Holder??? Oh yeah, he is still chasing George Zimmerman around. Everyone involved in this fiasco needs to find out what unemployment feels like, including the “narcotics sniffing dog” that alerted to a car seat. Really, they got a warrant to scope the guys bowels on the word of a friggin’ dog??!
You definitely have Alfred E. Neuman and Obama characteristics.
Who says that the county is withholding evidence? Has discovery even started?
No I’m certain that they’ll address all of the claims made in the complaint, but they certainly don’t have any obligation to try the case in the media, or to entertain Libertarians on the internet, which seems to be your point, if I understand you correctly.
5.56mm
So you think that there’s mass outrage about the Whren decision? It’s been 15 years, and the lack of commotion is deafening.
Here’s the thing: Whren didn’t expand the power of local police, it strictly limited when and how they could conduct warrantless searches, and have the fruits of those searches admitted into evidence at a criminal trial. It’s not that long, and worth reading, which is why i gave the link in the previous post.
But, here’s a serious question for you. If you don’t like the Whren standard, what, in your view should the standard be? If an officer conducts a traffic stop and sees a bag of meth in plain view, what should then happen? Send the guy on his merry way? Get a warrant to retrieve the dope? Repeal the drug laws so this doesn’t even come up? Seriously, if Whren is bad, how should we demand that the police do business. After all, almost all law enforcement is handled at the local level in this country, and there’s nothing stopping the people of any given county from placing a more restrictive standard than Whren on their own police forces.
So, what would that standard look like?
I see it as a matter of intent, if the stop was intended to issue a fix-it ticket for a tail light and the officer sees evidence of a crime in the process of issuing that $10 fix-it ticket, fair game.
If the officer intends to use the broken tail light as an excuse search the driver and tear into every compartment of the car looking for contraband, that’s another thing.
Of course proving intent can be...tricky...but isn’t that the whole basis of hate crime legislation?
(And yes, I’ve gotten fix-it tickets)
(Oh, and did I happen to mention that we had to register my roommate’s truck in my name? It seems he has the misfortune of sharing an uncommon last name with another guy in this county whose hobby is beating up cops. They’d run the plate, see red, boil over, and stop him and approach guns drawn with backup screaming in code 3, about once a month or so. They haven’t stopped him since.)
For the moment most police do not abuse this, no abuse, no one cares.
The police in Deming and Lordsburg seem to be abusing it to an absurd level.
There MUST be push-back to insure this does not become the norm.
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