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IcheeWaWa wrote:

skerbo wrote: Yeah, same thing happened to me. I was driving on I-10 towards Austin for the weekend. We were in my friend's VW bug and we had our bags in the back seat along with his climbing equipment (rock climber). I get stopped for rolling through a stop sign after getting gas, which I should admit was probably illegal, but at 2am who would have thought it would cause problems. Anyway, we consent to a search and the guy tears through our garment bags and climbing equipment and 15 minutes later gives me a warning for the stop sign and leaves us with 30 minutes of straightening up and repacking before we get back on the road. That kind of irritated me.

You must have been on the east side of Houston heading west when this happened. Out here, DPS runs drug interdiction more than traffic. My understanding is that they look for certain indicators...I have no idea what they are, but I'd be interested to know. I think the drugs go East and the ca$h goes West. Anyway, almost without exception, when DPS has someone pulled over on I-10 out here, the occupants are out of the vehicle and a search is being conducted.

jimlongley wrote:"If you've got nothing hide, what's the problem?"

While I would have nothing to hide, and have never really been the direct subject of any search, reasonable or unreasonable (ok there was that time on the New York Thruway with the 7 long guns in the back seat and the Trooper, but that was different and in 1966) I have watched aq couple of searches while I was doing ride alongs with the police in one place or another.

In the more memorable situation a young man was stopped for street racing and was noticed to have several cartons of cigarettes on the front seat of the car. As explained to me later by the officer, the fact that the cartons were not in a bag and were several different brands made him suspicious that they had been stolen, and the kid was under 18.

He received verbal permission from the (17 year old) driver to search the car and he did a thorough search, pulling out the back seat and emptying the contents of the glove box and console and then going through te trunk for good measure. Nothing was found, and the cop wasn't taking the kid's explanation that the cigs were for his mother, brother, and mother's boyfriend at face value, so he finally called the mother to find out if she knew her son was out street racing at that hour.

The mother was very upset - she had sent her son to get cigarettes for her, her boyfirend, and his (the kid's) brother more than an hour before and she wanted to know why he hadn't returned.

The store that sold the underage kid the cigs should have gotten a summons, in my opinion, and maybe mom for something (hey the kid wanted to make the run, he got to horse around in big brother's hot car) and the kid for his traffic violation, but what really bugged me about the whole thing was:

The cop made an absolute mess of the inside of the vehicle - nothing broken or torn, no actual damage, but items strewn all over - and he made absolutely no effort to clean up after himself.

Just for that reason alone I might deny a search - even though I have nothing to hide.