Police are happy that a state Supreme Court ruling makes it
easier for them to search vehicles, according to an article in Monday’s Reading Eagle.
Could you think of a duller slant for this story?
In their efforts to make the paper as boring as possible, it
seems, whoever OKs the story angles consistently ignore the issues. Not only
does that make for biased, one-sided news articles, it violates the first rule
of narrative, fiction or non: explain the conflict.
The conflict in the police-search story is
obvious. Considering anybody’s ability to search me or mine, start
with the Fourth Amendment and work down from there. I’m very suspicious of laws
that make it easier for government-paid people with guns to go through my glove
box.
“With the ruling, there's no reason to get a judge out of
bed just to sign a warrant in a case in which, for instance, an officer smells
marijuana in a car stopped for running a stop sign,” police reporter Steve
Henshaw writes.
Reasonable people would say there’s no reason to wake up a
judge in this case, with or without the latest ruling.
I can understand why police reporters want to be gung-ho
crimefighter. If the cops don’t like what they write, the cops clam up. But the
editors should flag this.
Why not talk to a couple of defense attorneys and
civil-rights supporters to balance the comments from the district attorney and three
(count them) police leaders?
I can see why the idea would perhaps not occur to Editor Harry “Follow the Rules” Deitz.
But questioning expanding police power is one role of
watchdog journalism.
"...no reason to get a judge out of bed just to sign a warrant in a case in which, for instance, an officer smells marijuana in a car stopped for running a stop sign". So I wonder- what would happen if that same person had a cell phone in plain view (on passenger seat/in console) rather than just the smell of something and a locked glove box? Is it procedure for a judge to be involved, possibly 'wakened', to sign a warrant to obtain cell phone records? Would the officer even bother, although it is clearly a law that you cannot use electronic devices while operating a vehicle? If 'smell' constitutes use, or using caused the driver to fail to stop, as implied, then why wouldn't the same procedure be used in the case of the cell phone, as both are equally illegal?
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