TROOPER ACCUSED OF ILLEGAL SEARCH

A state police field supervisor who instructed officers how to lawfully
conduct drug interdiction stops is facing a $20 million lawsuit for
allegedly violating those same standards during a traffic stop two years ago
in Hanover County.

At the center of the allegations is a 10-minute Virginia State Police
videotape that purportedly shows some of the officer's misdeeds.

The tape, a copy of which was provided to The Times-Dispatch, mysteriously
came into the possession of local lawyer Frank G. Uvanni, who is
representing the South Carolina man who was stopped.

90-minute drug search The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in
Richmond, alleges that Sgt. William C. Blydenburgh illegally detained and
repeatedly searched Samuel H. Brown and his car for more than 90 minutes
during an errant search for drugs along Interstate 95.

Brown was never charged with a crime.

He repeatedly asked to leave but was prevented from doing so, even after
Blydenburgh's initial searches turned up nothing, Uvanni said.

"The search that he conducted, holding the man as long as he did,
continuously searching the car, and ignoring the man when he said he wanted
to leave - all of that would violate standard police practice, and the law,"
said a senior law enforcement officer who recently viewed the tape with a
Times-Dispatch reporter.

Trooper on medical leave

Blydenburgh has been on emergency medical leave since the middle of last
week and could not be reached for comment. He did not respond to
Times-Dispatch efforts to contact him.

The suit also alleges that the Virginia Department of State Police
"attempted to conceal and destroy evidence" related to its own investigation
of Blydenburgh, who once supervised a state police interdiction team that
looks for drug traffickers on Virginia's interstate highways.

The suit says the department demoted Blydenburgh sometime after the Aug. 8,
2000, traffic stop but reinstated him to sergeant after learning that a
claim against the department was forthcoming.

"The Virginia State Police did this in an effort to cover up the serious
violations of federal and state law that had been committed," the suit says.

Blydenburgh was transferred from the interdiction team to a supervisory
position in the state police field office in West Point.

State police Superintendent W. Gerald Massengill has been on leave this week
and was unavailable for comment. Sara Poole, a state police legal
specialist, said department officials have not seen the suit and could not
comment.

Uvanni, an attorney for the Southern States Police Benevolent Association
who frequently represents police officers in grievance matters, said the
videotape came into his hands after someone left it on his dining room table
on Dec. 21, 2000.

Brown called Uvanni the next evening. "Somebody gave him my name," Uvanni
said.

Uvanni said state officials initially denied the existence of the tape,
which was recorded from another officer's car unbeknown to Blydenburgh. Most
state troopers are equipped with video cameras mounted in their vehicles,
and they are required to switch them on during traffic stops.

"What we see on this tape is what he [Blydenburgh] teaches them not to do,"
Uvanni said. Blydenburgh didn't switch on the camera in his vehicle.

According to the suit, Brown, 46, then a lumber salesman, was driving south
on I-95 on his way home to Florence, S.C. Blydenburgh pulled him over for an
object dangling from his rear-view mirror and the tint on his car windows.
The dangling object was a graduation tassel with an eight-ball charm
attached.

Blydenburgh, the suit says, immediately concluded that the window tint
complied with the law, and he told Brown that if the object was removed from
his mirror, he would not give him a traffic citation.

Brown complied and asked whether he could leave, the suit says, but
Blydenburgh continued to detain him.

"Once they ask to leave, you must let them go, unless you have reasonable
suspicion that you can substantiate that there's something illegal in that
vehicle," said the officer who viewed the tape for The Times-Dispatch. He
agreed to discuss the case on condition of anonymity.

"When you do your traffic stop, you do whatever you're going to do - either
issue them a summons or you give them a warning," the officer continued.
"Then you give them back their license, their registration, and you have to
tell them they're free to go.

"And then you can ask them for consent to search," the officer added. "But
he has to know that he's free to go."

Blydenburgh walked back to his patrol car and ran a criminal history check
on Brown, in violation of state and federal law, Uvanni said. Such
information is prohibited from being disseminated or transmitted over a
radio device, Uvanni said.

"Also, you can't use that information in determining reasonable suspicion,"
Uvanni explained. "You have to use what you have in front of you at the
time."

Blydenburgh learned through the background check that Brown had been
arrested more than 25 years ago for a drug and gun violation.

About that time, Uvanni said, Blydenburgh told Brown that if he didn't allow
a search of his vehicle, the trooper would detain Brown, impound his car and
then search it.

Believing he faced arrest if he didn't comply, Brown consented to a search
of his car's passenger compartment, Uvanni said. Blydenburgh took it a step
further by searching the trunk and under the hood, Uvanni said.

In the tape, Brown can be heard objecting to his prolonged detention after
the first search of his vehicle.

" . . . You stopped me for my tint, sir, you stopped me for my tint," Brown
tells Blydenburgh. "You gave me my license back and said I was free to go."

"Yeah, I did say that," Blydenburgh replied.

"And now you're pulling my car apart," Brown added.

"All we're doing is searching your car, like you said it was OK,"
Blydenburgh said.

"All right," Brown said. "But . . . you said you wanted to search the inside
of my car. You searched the inside, you looked under my hood."

By then, two other interdiction team officers had arrived on the scene.
Uvanni said it is unusual for one member of the team to make a stop alone.

Blydenburgh comments on tape to one of the officers, "I think I'm going to
detain him."

Blydenburgh tells Brown that a drug canine unit is on the way and that he
wants the dog to sweep his car. Clearly frustrated, Brown agrees to let the
dog search the exterior of his vehicle.

"You don't need to search my car, the dog can smell it," Brown says. But
Blydenburgh has the dog handler search both the outside and inside,
including the trunk.

"I'm clean and I just want this to be over with so I can keep going back
home, where I'm going," Brown says at one point. The dog does not alert on
any possible contraband.

Blydenburgh then instructs Brown to raise his arms above his head, and the
officer digs into his pockets and feels the outside of his groin area in an
apparent search for drugs. This occurs about 90 minutes into the traffic
stop, Uvanni said.

"He had no reason to pat him down at that point," said the officer who
viewed the tape. "He had already patted him down once earlier. So it's not
like anything had changed in the meantime. It seemed almost more like it was
a pat-down out of frustration because he couldn't find anything in the car."

Uvanni said Blydenburgh then "adds more insult to injury" by searching
Brown's car a third time.

Uvanni said he doesn't believe Blydenburgh's alleged actions are
representative of how the majority of state troopers conduct business.

"I think 99.9 percent of the troopers on the road wouldn't do this," he
said.