LAW ENFORCEMENT LYING AND STEALING - SOP

This is a pretty amazing story.

"Ascension Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend drove up to a traffic
light. As the light turned green, the car in front of them lurched
forward, then stalled. Alverez-Tejeda managed to stop in time, but
the truck behind him tapped his bumper. As Alverez-Tejeda got out to
inspect the damage, two officers pulled up in a police cruiser and
arrested the truck driver for drunk driving. The officers got
Alverez-Tejeda and his girl- friend to drive to a nearby parking lot,
leave the keys in the car and get into the cruiser for
processing. Just then, out of nowhere, someone snuck into their car
and drove off with it. As the couple stood by in shock, the police
jumped into their cruiser and chased after the car thief with sirens
blaring. The police then returned to the parking lot, told the
couple that the thief had gotten away and dropped them off at a local hotel. "

The whole incident was staged.

Everyone mentioned above except Alverez-Tejeda and his girlfriend
were police (or working for them). It was all an elaborate ruse to
search the car without tipping off the drug conspirators.

This was a case that went to the 9th Circuit Court on whether this
was an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and the court
ruled that it was not.

It's certainly an interesting case, and a little disturbing, but it's
not the huge Fourth Amendment debacle that a few are making it out to be.

What some commenters online are failing to notice is that both
parties agreed that the government in this case had more than enough
probable cause (from wiretaps, etc) to legally search the car. This
was not a fishing expedition in the sense that we're used to
examining. The only question was how they went about getting the car
to do the search. So the court was examining whether the nature of
the seizure (pretending to steal the car instead of just taking it)
was unreasonable, and ruled it wasn't.

And quite frankly, compared to the violence of home invasion as part
of the drug war, this ruse involving a tap of the bumper seems less
of a constitutional concern to me.

This doesn't meant that I like it. Just that I don't think the 9th
Circuit was wrong in this case, given the current weakness of the
Fourth Amendment.

However, I also think that law enforcement should consider carefully
the ramifications of their actions. They probably considered this
operation to be a crafty or cute idea (and I can imagine the
high-fives afterwards with the car "thief.") But what does it say to
the public that they serve?

One of the serious repercussions of the drug war is the fact that, in
the eyes of the public, law enforcement has become a force to be
feared, not trusted. An agency of lies and corruption that will take
your friends away. That breakdown in the perception of law
enforcement's status with the public makes it easier for violent
crime to exist, and is destructive to communities.

Every time that law enforcement uses techniques such as lying and
stealing as part of their standard operating procedure, they drive a
further wedge into their relationship with their employers and feed
the societal sickness we are experiencing.

Note that this thought was articulated by Kozinski within the 9th
circuit opinion:

"If people can't trust the representations of government officials,
the phrase "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" will become
even more terrifying."

Full 9th Circuit opinion,
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/C2D95381F1084FD9882572F30082587B/$file/0630289.pdf?openelement

Articles at Wired Blog
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/06/appeals_court_r.html ,
Volokh
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_06_03-2007_06_09.shtml#1181324646
, Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/10/103631/297