If the information we have so far is correct and reasonably complete, this was, to put it kindly, very poor police work.knotquiteawake wrote:Now, normally I am generally ok with a consensual search because I want the officer to feel at ease and I have nothing to hide nor do my passengers. However, I'm pretty sure this would tick me off enough to tell the officer they can go ahead and pound sand when they want to search my car as part of a search where the only criteria was being stopped at a traffic light. Sorry, you've got to do better than that to get me to suspend my rights. Maybe if my car matched a description (color, make, model, year, etc) then I would understand. But a blanket search like this is unreasonable. If I were that last person to be search (TWO HOURS LATER!) I would certainly be considering a lawsuit.
Police Stop, Handcuff Every Adult at Intersection in Search for Bank Robberhttp://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2 ... nk-robber/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;“Most of the adults were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car,” Fania said. “They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.”
The search lasted between an hour and a half and two hours, and it wasn’t until the final car was searched that police apprehended the suspect.
From my understanding, the "credible tip" (if there was one) consisted of information that the bandit was stopped at a particular intersection at that very moment, and the police did not have a description. There is urgency and a valid public safety interest in investigating that in an attempt to keep an armed violent criminal from getting back out into the community.
Under those circumstances I can see keeping the traffic stopped for the few minutes it would take to contact an officer at the bank and find out a basic description of the bandit in question, then look at the people in the cars and let go any who didn't match the description, while investigating further those who were a reasonable match.
Unless everybody there looked an awful lot like the bandit, that should have narrowed things down in a hurry with minimal inconvenience and no handcuffing of people who clearly weren't suspects.
Taking everyone, regardless of suspect description match, out of every car at gunpoint and detaining them for hours is, in my opinion, wildly unlawful and should be addressed with scores of massive civil lawsuits and disciplinary action sufficient to give other officers pause before committing similar acts.
A chief who thought this was a good idea too should be involuntarily encouraged to find another line of work where adherence to the Constitution isn't a job requirement.
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