By Matt Agorist
The United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that police officers can lie to suspects in regards to a traffic stop — even when no violation has occurred.
The ruling essentially gives police officers carte blanche to stop anyone they want for absolutely no reason — merely acting on a hunch.
According to the ruling,
So long as the facts known to the officer establish reasonable suspicion to justify an investigatory stop, the stop is lawful even if the officer falsely cites as the basis for the stop a ground that is not supported by reasonable suspicion.
The court goes on to justify their rights violating and Stasi-esque ruling by claiming it’s okay as long as the officer truly believes the subject of his lies has criminal intent.
We emphasize, however, that although our focus is on the objectively reasonable basis for the stop, not the officers’ subjective intentions or beliefs, the facts justifying the stop must be known to officers at the time of the stop.
The case in question originated out of a federal court in Montana and involved two men accused of transporting methamphetamine.
The suspect, Hector Magallon-Lopez argued that his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure was violated after he was stopped by an officer who lied to him about changing lanes without a signal. Magallon-Lopez argued, justly, that the evidence against him be thrown out, as it was obtained under false pretense.
The court rejected his argument.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the officer lying to Magallon-Lopez was justified so long as the officer had sufficient evidence to support this type of previously illegal investigation.
According to the ruling,
Officers working with a Drug Enforcement Administration task force obtained authorization to wiretap a suspected drug trafficker’s telephone. From the wiretap intercepts, the officers learned that: (1) on September 27, 2012, a man named Juan Sanchez would be transporting methamphetamine from the Yakima Valley in Washington to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
When police found a car that matched the description of Magallon-Lopez and his friend, the cop, without witnessing any infraction of the law, pulled them over.
Although the officer had not observed any traffic violations, he told Magallon-Lopez that the reason for the stop was Magallon-Lopez’s failure to signal properly before changing lanes. The officer knew this was not the real reason for the stop, but he did not want to disclose at that point the true nature of the investigation.
A subsequent search of the vehicle yielded two pounds of methamphetamine.
Using the War on Drugs to justify the complete dismantling of the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has opened yet another door to despotism.
Police officers are already required to have reasonable suspicion of a crime prior to detaining citizens, which makes this ruling entirely irrelevant as a tool to aid law enforcement in catching the bad guys. If police already had reasonable articulable suspicion that Magallon-Lopez was breaking the law, lying to the man about why he was stopped becomes trivial and yet simultaneously nefarious.
Police abusing questionable rulings granted to them as tools under the color of law — is a common practice. How many innocent people will be targeted by a cop who has a hunch, as a result of this ruling? If history is any indicator, there are likely thousands of future innocent victims just waiting to come across with the wrong cop acting on his skewed intuition anxiously awaiting for the right moment to dole out roadside sodomy in search of a plant.
Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. He is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.
Bang and the round goes through the pig’s face.
It’s called a fascist thug police-state / shake-down…the last indication of a dramatic fall of equality… into an abject heavy-fisted tyranny…..with the accompanying brutal martial law techniques brought to you by the Mossad/IDF…compliments of the taxpayer paid junkets of ‘wined & dined’ US Police Captains sent to Israhell……..bend over ….waddaya want?…regular or premium fascism???
Spot on eddy!
According the ruling:
Based on the wiretap intercepts, the officers had probable cause to believe Sanchez would be shipping drugs.
Officers seized the car and, ‘after obtaining a search warrant’, discovered the meth.
Why didn’t they already have the warrant, if the eavesdropping had previously confirmed the probable cause?
Stingrays and Parallel Construction may be relevant here.
I can hear the Prison Industry press gangs, drumming in the distance.
Their drums sound exactly like police sirens..
It’s been known for decades that police can lie to make arrests. And guess who passed that rule? Richard M. Nixon himself. And the SCOTUS made it allowable in State and County Courts as well to limit REAL police investigation.
Drip, drip, drip…there goes more freedom down the drain.
Police are the Biggest Gang on the Patch and local Politicunts don’t want to pay as they are going for re-elections and need to blame someone else. Especially since Police Departments have all the War Materials from the Army and need to train Officers as SWAT Teams so as to generate Dosh for summer holidays.
corrupt from top to bottom, the UNITED STATES INC.! aka the gvt.
The UNKnighted Snakkkes of Amurderkkka, Inc. has been a police state since 1607.
Welcome Back Kotters to the plantation yous have never left..
This law in itself is criminal. Slowly chipping away at our Constitutional Rights, Freedoms & Liberties.
Let me guess, the building these judges meet at is named:
“The Roland Freisler Memorial Courthouse”