Police state stifled - goods news for drug traffickers.
New rule: once a policeman issues a ticket or warning that is the end of a traffic stop - he can't then continue to investigate, detain you, or look in your trunk.
In the Supreme Court case below a drug sniffing dog detected drugs 8 minutes after the ticket was issued.
"The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the police may not prolong traffic stops to wait for drug-sniffing dogs to inspect vehicles.
“A police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. The vote was 6 to 3.
"In a separate dissent, Justice Alito added that much will now turn on the order in which police officers complete their tasks during traffic stops. Issuing a ticket or warning, he said, will now become the last step.
“Most officers will learn the prescribed sequence of events even if they cannot fathom the reason for that requirement,” he wrote. He added, “I would love to be the proverbial fly on the wall when police instructors teach this rule to officers who make traffic stops.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/us...tops.html?_r=0