The Police Want to Search You... (Do You Consent?)

if you get pulled over by the police and they ask to search your vehicle should you consent even if you have nothing to hide we need to talk about this consent search that's at the police academy they always told me boy if you get consent then just search away but cop is standing at the window of your car and you know maybe you were speeding at a tail light out or something like that hand over the driver's license a concealed carry permit because officer friendly certainly said do you have any weapons in the car and then he utters these great words would you mind if I search your vehicle what do you say no no and to be clear no I'm not consenting any searches in a in a polite respectful way and and that's probably as simple as we can make that because me as a law enforcement officer I can kind of spot anything in plain sight I got you know that's that's open to me but I don't get the or you know you hear it on on Criminal Minds all the time the fishing Expedition or something like that I can't just as a cop search your vehicle unless I have Reasonable Suspicion to think that there's something going on in there what would give me that reasonable suspicion well in order to create the detainer and then to in order to get the consent search or even just if you get the consent search I mean there's the Fourth Amendment doesn't uh have the same sort of protections in your automobile when you're out and about as it does in your home right um and I'm not saying that's the way it ought to be I'm just saying that's the way it is all right so you have a you have a lower degree of a reasonable expectation of privacy in your automobile to your point earlier yes officers generally speaking um they can shine their flashlights in and see what's in plain view and so forth um when you said Reasonable Suspicion that's making me think that you're talking about this or approaching this as law enforcement officer to a former prosecutor defense attorney from a while you're creating a detainer because at some point if you're just circling the car with a flashlight for 10 minutes there's a detainer that's been created and an argument that could come up in court as well was the person free to leave and you of course would say of course they're free to leave they didn't that was their choice so in essence they consented to this search it means the defense attorney or some other defense attorney might be arguing no they didn't feel like they had uh permission to leave and as a result of your you know you had the lights on at the squad car you're behind them you pulled them over and that created the the you know the custodial situation of well no they they reasonably did not feel like they were free to go there for you now need to have presumably there was some sort of reasonable suspicion in order to extend the stop to turn it into a search situation but of course if you then say can I search the car and if the person says yes good luck getting that search thrown out into court as a defense attorney even if uh nothing really results from it or or if many things do result from it good luck any thrown out unless something Upstream of that you know the stop was illegal the detainer was illegal which then preceded the request so the easiest way to win is not to play that's just the simple answer and even if you got nothing to hide there's no reason why and we kind of fought a war about this too the Revolutionary War right there's no reason why you have to consent to searches and seizures right you don't have to do that that doesn't make you a bad guy and good Law Enforcement Officers understand how this is going right good law enforcement officers are trained to ask for permission right they are seeking the consent that doesn't make them bad they're following their training it's amazing how many drugs and how many things come out of yeah of course I consent to that oh look what I found in the trunk right what were the odds right but a good law enforcement officer also of course has all law enforcement or officers has have took an oath to defend an up to hold the Constitution and they understand that part of that is to defend your right to say no I don't consent I'm pausing the video quickly to remind you that we have a secret giveaway going on that ends really soon and it's free to enter just click the link in the description below to reveal what you could win now back to the video now I'm going to give you a situation that actually happened to me prior to 2011 when the concealed carry law was enacted in the state of Wisconsin and it taught me a valuable lesson about keeping my vehicle clean so the interior of my vehicle tidy I got pulled over for speeding I was speeding I understand that the officers Shine the flashlight into my vehicle there was a box of ammunition and a holster on the floor on the passenger side as I looked over my shoulder I saw the muzzle of his gun and I heard the screams over and over where's your gun where's your gun where's your your gun and I didn't know what he was talking about because I didn't pay attention to the trash on the you know I just tossed the stuff on the floor she pulls her this floor of my vehicle and I wasn't paying attention hands were on the wheel um next thing you know I was out of the vehicle I was back in a squad car other cops arrived and they searched my vehicle top to bottom looking for my gun the gun wasn't in there I had taken that home and put it in the safe but I had left the box of ammo and the holster at that point I guess Reasonable Suspicion had kicked in that you know they saw this material related to a firearm there was no concealed carry law at the time they wanted to know why there was a holster and an ammo in the car so they were looking for a gun um the defense attorney of me says I don't know of reasonable suspicion kicked in but certainly there's probably going to be some sort of Officer safety law that would allow them to to at least detain you for a pat down I would assume and get you away from the car at a minimum I'll give you that at a minimum and and um I found it odd that I wasn't handcuffed in the back of the squad car I was placed in there here sit down here and stay still you know that sort of thing and then another officer arrived and you know so that they weren't dealing with me individually but all right so that's a a situation that gun owners could find themselves in and from my part I complied I knew one thing only um when the yelling was going on I'm not going to get shot right now that's not what's going to happen that that's all I was thinking about was are you going to sit still your story is important because it introduces a line of logic and reasoning in the law that many folks are not familiar with which is all the officer safety exemptions okay these are not meant to be loopholes or end around the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or anything like that um Courts for obvious reasons give the officers in the streets a degree of latitude and discretion to take actions in order to protect themselves from folks who might be armed and might be willing to use their weapons nefariously against law enforcement uh these are exceptions to the law so they're generally with wiggle room they don't exist at all places at all time there's typically a triggering scenario or kind of a set of things that often arise like in your story right um It's always important to make sure that you're making it very clear even if the officers are holding it at gunpoint right as in your story that look if they're if they're drawing guns in you I'm getting out of the car personally I don't want any more holes yeah it's just what that boils down to right but I will make it clear that I'm not consenting any searches right because I don't want some sort of prosecutor even though I've got nothing in my car but just the same I don't want to have I don't want to be running up against an argument incorative well he consented when he got out of the car and left the door open yeah or whatever the case might be right so that's where yeah I'm going to follow officer's demands if they've got the guns out they're pointing at me and they're all yelling and surrounding the car yeah it's not it's not time for I know my rights it's time to survive that encounter uh so that you can move on to God forbid if there is a legal counter or aftermath um but that could be not that I'm suggesting people should sue police officers but uh that could be a plaintiff's lawsuit against that municipality if they did something you know and the scenario keeps going on and on and on it gets worse and worse and worse and so forth um you're doing yourself favors by remaining calm respectful not swearing falling the officers commands but simultaneously raising your rights and making it clear you're not consenting to searches and things of that nature and if they're going to search the car they're going to search the car there's no stopping that In the Heat of the Moment and don't try to for that matter because even if the officers are doing something illegal if you resist it it could be illegal to resist an illegal officer action in many states so you need to be mindful that fact that if the officer is going to do something illegal that's on them you can't control that you will be able to remedy that in court that is why we have courts to fix things like that later but for right now remain calm remain cool make it clear you're not consent in anything and raise your rights before you go you just missed one of our best videos that got over a half a million views click right here to watch it now foreign [Music]

Channel: USCCA

Views: 66,431

Keywords: traffic stop, criminal defense, help police officer, can you help police in a shootout, traffic stop while carrying a gun, traffic stop while carrying concealed, concealed carry, ccw, uscca videos, uscca official, police search, let the police search you, consent to search, criminal defense lawyer

Id: Vd6D9OfbV7s

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2023