Originally Posted By: turtlevette
Everybody must have a license. They have carte Blanche in that they can pull over anyone they please. Not carte Blanche to do other things after that. You guys are experts at twisting stuff.
No one was trying to twist anything. I had a legitimate different view of the term than you did, and you clarified it.
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
Here when they do stops looking for drunk drivers they must stop everybody or nobody. Its a fairness thing.
I already pointed out that this is a little more murky up here, even. Just stopping someone in the hope that they might possibly be drunk isn't exactly going to cut it. It would, at the very minimum, make the officer's case much more difficult. With respect to the big traffic stops, it's the same as you mentioned, where you stop everyone, at least as far is as logistically reasonable.
Originally Posted By: turtlevette
If a cop finds something after the fact its still an invalid stop here. We have a constitution. We have a bill of rights. So there are standards.
That's the same here, and I also know you have the plain site doctrine there. If I get pulled over for failing to signal in the States and I've got a bag of weed on the dash and leave it there in plain view when the officer comes up, I would assume that I'd be in big trouble. On the other hand, I would gather that in the States, just like up here, if I get pulled over for speeding, he cannot check my trunk simply because he wants to. Of course, if someone is screaming from the trunk and pounding on lid, that's another matter altogether.
You can call it "asking for papers," but at least it's honest. As we've seen already, we know that if a law enforcement officer wishes to pull you over in the States, he will do so. There's no temptation to concoct a reason or "sell" a reason when you're already given a basic reason that doesn't result in detention of the motorist. Also, driving is a privilege, not a right, and that plays into it as well. There is freedom of movement and freedom from search and seizure, but as I've pointed out, a 3000 lbs chunk of metal wipes out more property and lives than a certain little chunk of metal that fires projectiles, so one can argue that there is a justifiable reason to infringe upon those freedoms, to a limited point.
Being pulled over isn't being searched, nothing is being seized, and it's already been legally decided that it's not detention or arrest.