Drop the Pen! What Every Writer Should Know About Real Police Work: Legal Justification for a Traffic Stop
Patrol officers have many different roles day-to-day. They may bust out of the station for a domestic violence call or be dispatched to an armed robbery while eating lunch. The next hour may be taken up with a traffic accident, followed by a shoplifting complaint. An elderly woman may call about hearing sounds beneath her house, relieved when the smudged and dusty officer reappears from the crawl space to report the intruder was only a raccoon. In other words, the mission of protect and serve stays the same, though the tasks involved change by the minute.
The most visible duty, though, has to do with traffic stops. We’ve all seen them, and many of us have been the subject of a stop. Perhaps we were speeding, didn’t use a turn signal, weaving in and out of lanes or tailgating another driver. There are any number of reasons a patrol officer might pull us over, but this aspect of police work is one of the least understood.
Even if you write exclusively about detective work, it is important that you understand the reasons for and mechanics of traffic stops. I can’t tell you how many times as a detective that I asked patrol officers to pull over a car for me so I could locate a suspect, find contraband specific to the case I was working, or to make an arrest for a violent crime. Stopping vehicles using the trappings of a patrol vehicle such as the emergency lights, decals and insignia, and public address systems is the safest way.
Your protagonist investigator may need to stop a fictional “bad guy” while he’s driving a car in which he has hidden an axe he used in the murder of his business partner. Perhaps your detective has gotten information the suspect will be moving the axe from his basement in order to throw it in a lake. Your investigator needs to stop the guy quickly to secure the evidence, and the safest way is to call in help from Patrol.
There are a lot of factors that go into the decision to stop a car. It must be done in the safest way, which means controlling the tactical advantage at all times. It must also be done in a constitutionally sound manner, both because it is wrong to violate someone’s civil rights, and also because not doing so is the fastest way to get your case thrown out in court.
There is no such thing as a “routine” traffic stop. Every stop carries the possibility of ending badly. People don’t much like being pulled over by police, even if they know they’ve been speeding, driving drunk, or throwing litter out of their pickup truck. Some people, however, hate it so much that they’re willing to murder the officer who stopped them.
There are people in this world with felony warrants out for their arrest. Some are looking at life behind bars once they’re caught, so the safety of the officer and anyone else unlucky to be in the line of fire are of no concern. They will die in prison if they don’t get away from the cop who stopped them, and violence is a choice too many are willing to make.
Thus, every officer coming out of a police academy in America is trained on how to safely and professionally conduct such a stop. Unfortunately, not everyone does it the way they were trained, but the preparatory foundation is a starting point for this discussion. Let’s explore the most professional, least confrontational way of conducting a temporary detention of a driver for an infraction.
In a traffic stop several things should happen as a matter of constitutional law, training, experience, and a totality of the circumstances. First and foremost is the stop itself. It is only legal for police officers to stop you while driving a car if they have evidence—probable cause—that you have committed a crime or an infraction, or they have a reasonable suspicion that you are about to commit a crime or just committed one.
Examples of reasonable suspicion that have come before the Supreme Court include stopping cars coming out of a parking lot where there is known drug trafficking (this is constitutionally limited and not used as often anymore), “furtive” movements such as a guy ducking into the shadows when a patrol car cruises by, or someone sprinting away when a police officer approaches. All suspicious, but such subjective decisions on the part of the officer based on his or her training and experience are ripe for misinterpretation, abuse, and second-guessing.
Probable cause, however, is less subjective, which is why most officers wait to make a stop until they have actual evidence and not just a suspicion of misdeed. This is a critical concept for writers of mystery and thriller fiction to understand. Yes, officers could stop a car based on suspicious circumstances, but veteran cops soon learn that they will spend less time in court being grilled on the stand by a defense attorney if they spot evidence of an actual infraction before turning on their emergency lights.
This is why some of you may have felt like a police car was following you for too long. You start muttering profanities and staring into your rearview mirror. I’m sure this is where the phrase, “Doesn’t he have better things to do with his time?” came from. Perhaps. It could be that the officer is simply driving in the same direction as you, but it could also be that he is waiting until he has verifiable probable cause. This is especially true if he is trying to record said evidence on his dash camera.
For example, he may see a person speeding down the road, crossing over the median stripes, or their car has a burned-out taillight. Any of those would constitute probable cause for a stop.
I can almost hear some of you groaning right now. Stopping someone for a defective taillight? Are you kidding me? Stopping a car for speeding or suspicion of drunk driving is one thing, but why would an officer “waste” time pulling over a car for a light bulb issue?
There are two answers to this. First, every state has laws regulating safety features on a car, and working lights are part of that package.
I grant you a broken taillight isn’t on the same level of offense as a driver speeding through a school zone or drunkenly weaving back and forth in traffic. That said, every officer I know has stopped someone for a lower-end priority infraction such as a defective light, expired license tags, or a busted muffler only to find out the driver is a wanted felon.
In 1995 Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger pulled over a yellow Mercury for the minor infraction of missing a license plate. To his surprise, Trooper Hanger came to discover the driver of the Mercury was one Timothy McVeigh who had just perpetrated the largest domestic terrorism attack in the history of this nation. McVeigh had worked with other white supremacist/government separatists to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah building in downtown Oklahoma City.
That one stop helped the FBI retrieve an avalanche of evidence later used against McVeigh at trial. Would McVeigh have gotten away with the murder of one-hundred-sixty-eight and the injury of another six-hundred-eighty people had Trooper Hanger not stopped him for a minor infraction? Potentially, yes, but I think it is also fair to wonder how many others Trooper Hanger saved by stopping McVeigh such a short time after his cowardly act. It was courageous, savvy police work, and it illustrates the potential value in such traffic stops.
Next month I’ll walk you through how a safe, constitutionally sound, and effective traffic stop should go. Until then, be safe…just not too safe. Onward.
