If officer breaks your window and destroys your property and inflicts violence upon a motorist simply because a motorist is in violation of some quasi tag requirement, than said officer is a bully and an a coward.. And any attorney worth his/her weight in salt will win the civil rights and constitutional rights case.. All these encounters with LEOS are won in court and not on the side of the road. A motorist has the right to stay in their vehicle until an attorney arrives on the scene.. Safety goes both ways and we can agree to disagree.. LEOS safety does not trump citizens safety..
If Leo is in fear of every motorist they detain on a traffic stop, said Leo should seek other employment.. I understand that Leos enjoy stealing the fruits of a citizens labor and finding a real job could be a problem for said leo, however that is their PROBLEM.. Officer safety does not trump citizen safety..
The term " officer safety" is simply another term for, we are going to violate your rights, if you fail to exercise those rights.. You shall be violated..
Keep the video rolling and let the bully's be themselves.. Justice shall prevail..
My .02
My .02
While you and I are definitely on the same principled side, I'm not talking about principle.
I am talking about the law (as defined by government--and we all know what that is worth in the big picture).
Can a cop order you out of your car during a traffic stop for any reason or no reason? Yep. See
PA v Mimms. Can a cop assume you are dangerous just because you might have a weapon? Yep. See
PA v Mimms. Can a cop search the car "within the wingspan of the driver" if he reasonably suspects a weapon might be within reach of the driver? Yep. See
Michigan v Long.
The point here isn't that government has usurped these things and arrogated to themselves the righteous ability to conduct these searches for "officer safety." While you and I are massively indignant that government would even try such shenanigans, that isn't the point. The point is suppression of evidence. While you and I are manfully hot-under-the-collar at some equal pulling such a stunt, while we were busy being hugely annoyed at the chutzpah of such court rulings, government was actually busy justifying admitting into evidence something found during the search arising from the justification.
You see, nobody ever went to prison because they violated
Michigan v Long (cop can search the wing-span of the driver). They went to prison because of something
else the cop found while searching for the possible weapon. Terry didn't go to prison to conspiracy to rob a jewelry store. Terry went to prison for illegally carrying a concealed handgun--discovered when Detective McFadden searched him on suspicion of planning a jewelry store robbery.
So, this is what this is really about legally: the cop decides to search someone. Lets say he finds a little weed. He arrests the searchee. The legal question becomes, did the cop have legal justification to search the detainee in the first place? If not, the court can suppress the evidence.
And, from the civil rights angle, there is a legal standard whether the right in question was clearly established in law. If a court decides the right in question was not clearly established in law, then the cop gets something called qualified immunity and walks. I'm not at all saying I agree with this legal so-called principle.* I am saying it exists. It adds up to this: if a cop orders you out of your car, and you refuse--for entirely manly and totally justified freedom-based principles--when the cop breaks your window and causes you forty stitches dragging you through the broken glass, the courts will rule that
PA v Mimms was clearly established law and grant the cop immunity from your lawsuit.
*This is one of the clearer examples of how bad things have gotten. Think about it for a moment. You cannot successfully sue a cop for a rights violation unless that right was clearly established in law. Excuse me!?!? This turns our form of government on its head! Under every "rational" explanation of how our government works, we the so-called people, delegate powers to government. Reversely, if a power has not been delegated to government--then government ain't got no dammed power to exercise it!! That is to say, if the
power is not clearly delegated, then
the cop is out-of-bounds. No, no, no. Government wants you to believe that if a right is not clearly established in law--which is another way of saying, if a power is not expressly refused by law--then the cop is free from lawsuit to do as he wants (read: assume whichever powers he wants). This is just plain nucking futts. It totally turns the whole system of delegated powers on its head. The cop can only be held legally accountable, not for exercising powers not delegated to him, but only for exercising powers expressly refused him (rights). And, refused by other members of government, at that. As Joe Danby said in the movie
Support Your Local Sheriff, "This is just plain dumb and stupid."