K9

When I'm on a long drive my number one goal is to make it unmemorable. I'm all for excitement, just not while I'm driving on the freeway. If I could go this whole road trip without one second of freeway driving making it to my long term memory I'd consider that a raving success. Unfortunately I failed to achieve that goal today on my drive from Dallas to Albuquerque.

The freeway west of Dallas is wide open and in the middle of nowhere, like the majority of freeways I've been driving on. Unlike most of the freeways I've been driving on though, this one would occasionally go through some random small town and have it's speed limit absurdly reduced. It was in one of those small towns with an absurdly low speed limit that I got pulled over for "speeding."

It's worth mentioning that I played darts last night in Dallas. The fact that I won the game of cricket isn't relevant so I won't mention it, but the fact that I had to checkout the darts with my driver's license is. When I eventually left the bar my friend Casey was still playing, so I didn't think to go turn the darts back in and get my license back. In fact I didn't even realize that my license wasn't in my wallet until today when I was about three hours outside of Dallas. No big deal though, I thought, as long as I don't get pulled over today.

The police officer explained that the speed limit in the area is reduced to 35, so my excessive speed of 39 was the reason he pulled me over. That seemed strange though, since at 39 mph I was one of the slowest cars on the road. In fact I distinctly remember a semi-truck passing me when I noticed the squad car behind me, which led me to believe that there was no possible way he'd pull me over for my speed.

He didn't make a big deal out of taking my passport instead of my driver's license, and explained that he'd just let me off with a warning. He asked me to join him in his squad car while he wrote me up for my warning. I wasn't sure what to make of sitting in the front seat of his squad car while he wrote me up. He asked me for details about where I was going and where I was coming from, and I'm sure my story of driving from New York to Seattle by way of Dallas in a rental car from New Jersey with plates from Massachusetts wasn't what he was expecting.

He explained that the highway we were on was used for drug smuggling and that part of his job was to look for smugglers. He asked me if I had any drugs, weapons, or large quantities of cash in my vehicle. I told him I did not. Then he asked me if I would mind if he looked around in the car. I really wasn't sure what to make of that question. First and foremost, I certainly didn't want him to search my car. I was in the middle of a 12+ hour drive and the last thing I wanted was to be delayed while a law enforcement officer rifled through my carefully packed personal belongings. The aspect of that question I had trouble making sense of was what the consequences of my response would be. If I said yes, then I figured he would search my car with my consent. If I said no, then I figured he would search my car without my consent. I decided that if he was going to search my car it was going to have to be without my consent, and told him as much.

I was expecting his demeanor to turn aggressive in an attempt to get consent out of me, but he took it surprisingly well. Turns out that's because, as I suspected, it really didn't matter what I said. He cheerfully explained that he'd just have a drug sniffing dog do a quick check of the exterior of my car, and if the dog didn't signal anything that I'd be on my way. If the dog did signal though, he'd have "probable cause" (a term he used multiple times) to search my car without my consent. He asked me to take Grizzly out of the car and wait with him over in the shade while the K9 did the search. I went to the car and retrieved my cell phone, a bottle of water, and Grizzly.

The dog did the search and, to everybody's amazement I'm sure, it signaled. I have no idea what it even means that the dog "signaled," but I have a strange feeling my ignorance isn't something that they minded. Two officers asked me for my keys and a third told me that Grizzly and I could wait in the back of one of the squad cars since it was over 100 degrees out. While there I called my dad, which was the reason that I had retrieved my cell phone. I explained the situation, and my dad's basic response was that the cops sounded like douchebags and that they'd likely leave me alone once they realized that I didn't have anything of interest in my car.

When I was in Iraq I spent a couple of months working at a vehicle checkpoint (VCP). I'm not an expert on vehicle searches, but I've done a few and can at least notice when the're being done completely incorrectly. First thing that struck me was that they had obtained "probable cause" because their drug sniffing dog had "signaled," and yet the dog wasn't present for the actual search. Call me unorthodox, but if a dog signaled at something in a vehicle that I was searching, I'd want the dog to help me find what it was signaling at. Second thing I noticed was that the dog had apparently "signaled" at the back seat behind the driver's seat, but the officers were going through my dirty underwear in the trunk was well as the front passenger's seat on the complete other side of the vehicle. The third thing I noticed, which was by far the biggest blunder on their part, was that during this entire process they never searched my person. Even when, after he had told me that he planed to search my car for drugs, I went to the car and put things in my pockets (my cell phone and the water bottle) I wasn't as much as patted down.

Eventually they concluded the search and told me that I was free to go. I was glad I didn't end up with a BS ticket for doing four over the speed limit, but I was still pretty disturbed about the entire situation. These police officers had just pulled over an innocent person and performed an invasive search without consent or a warrant, all because they got "probable cause" from their dog. I'm really curious, how often does the dog not signal? For that matter, did the dog even signal? From my perspective, the dog's signal seemed to be a foregone conclusion before the dog had even arrived. Bringing out the dog seemed like it was just a minor formality for the sake of bypassing that pesky fourth amendment of the constitution. I really wonder how often they say, "well the dog didn't signal so we don't have 'probable cause,' I guess you can just leave!" I have a strange feeling the number of times that has happened is approximately 0, and that the police dog "signal" rate is approximately 100%, making the entire process a farce. In reality I probably got pulled over for being a young (and smart and handsome) guy driving through a small town in Texas with east coast license plates.