Reason.tv has a fun interview with Flex Your Rights founder Steve Silverman.
As many of you know, Flex Your Rights is my day job, hence the occasional posts about consent searches and 4th Amendment issues that you sometimes see here in addition to drug policy coverage.
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The question that was not
The question that was not asked, but I wish was, is that given the almost obsequious deference given by judges to police officers, how likely is it that a person stopped on the side of the road is going to have any legal leg to stand on when it's only between the cop and the suspect as to whether or not the magic words "I'm sorry, I don't consent to searches" were ever uttered? Perhaps, after saturating my brain with enough Radley Balko, I've become jaded, but isn't the larger lesson of the stories he posts that the ability to defend yourself from illegal searches and false charges from a rogue cop is essentially nonexistent?
Rogue Cops gone wild
We have lived in a western Washington county where being a rouge cop is the rule rather than the exception. We have seen them do a fake drug raid, but of course take the meth lab away, and allow the cooker to be escorted out of the area by long time drug dealer neighbor with a sheriffs are in front of her and behind her. No charges were ever brought and it took several call to the environmental people before there was even a clean up. This same department has harassed and beaten up several people including my husband, a disable man just trying to make our home a safer place. These same people allowed our home to be squatted in while we were away at the hospital and we were told they didn't steal our property, 'they just recycled it' I am al for ending the drug wars but I think first we should clean up the police departments that are killing, maiming and terrorizing the citizens that are just trying to do the correct thing and get no assistance.
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