Law & JUSTICE
Proposed Opinion to PNJ in August 2015 But Never Printed
​The Fourth Amendment requires probable cause and a judicially issued warrant in order to seize someone or something. The Fourth Amendment was “adopted in response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, a type of general search warrant issued by the British government and a major source of tension in pre-Revolutionary America.” (See Wikipedia.)
But I also know that the Fourth Amendment has been emasculated by many court created exceptions. Today the police can stop you without a warrant for just about anything – not coming to a complete stop, stopping too long, driving too fast, driving too slow, presence in a ‘high crime’ area, walking away, nervousness, a furtive movement, factual mistake of another person, even protesting police misconduct – all considered in the totality of the circumstances. The police can even be ignorant of the law and stop you. In December 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a police officer's mistaken understanding of a simple traffic law would be excused and drugs found during the ‘mistaken’ traffic stop were admissible. And if they make a mistake, they might make something up, lie and perjure themselves or forge evidence, such as a search warrant affidavit (maybe another viewpoint) .
These things are all done to advance the war on drugs. So let’s review this case to better understand it.
Officer Caitlyn Grantham was driving eastbound on Garden Street, a busy traffic corridor in Pensacola. At D Street she turned north into a neighborhood of modest homes, in Escambia County District 3, ‘trolling for vehicles to stop and search’.
About ten seconds later she sees her first catch, a pickup truck driving westbound on Chase Street, nice vehicle in a modest neighborhood, a great catch! She did pass several parked cars, but she not did run tag checks on those vehicles. Officer Grantham turns left to follow the vehicle. About 5-7 seconds later she was close behind the target at a stop sign. The officer and the target vehicle continued westbound, but the officer hesitates for 4-5 seconds at the stop sign, she must be busy. Was she typing on her police cruise computer, while driving through a residential neighborhood near a library and community center? Was stopping this vehicle that important?
The officer then rapidly accelerates to catch the vehicle about 20 seconds later at the next intersection, also a stop sign. The officer and the target pass through the stop sign and the driver pulls over seconds later.
Image the surprise of the driver, Lumon May, who represents District 3, when the officer tells him he is driving a vehicle with a tag not assigned. Mr. May is surprised because, as he tells the officer, he is pulled over frequently and no officer has ever made this particular claim. I’m sure that our other four county commissioners are stopped like this all the time. (Note to PPD, please release the records of those stops.)
I’m confused though, because while the PPD said the stop was “legitimate”, a “review confirmed that Grantham incorrectly entered May’s tag number, and another officer ran the tag again later and verified the truck belonged to May’s wife.”
(Note, a traffic stop is still not justified by what is found after the stop. And I could stop dozens of vehicle an hour for window tint violations and never finish the task. Take a look next time you drive in Pensacola.)
I guess in pursuit of the goal of filling our jails, errors should just be expected, and excused.
Of course color me suspicious that the stop wasn’t just a pretext for a drug search. Nevertheless, pretext stops are legal; the courts find them reasonable in the war on drugs. But please release the video of targeted stops done in Districts 1, 2, 4, & 5 – in Cordova Park, Gaberonne and other less modest neighborhoods – to allay concerns that this is mostly done in District 3.
So what might Mr. May have been arrested for, maybe resisting an officer without violence (ROWOV)? Section 843.02, Florida Statutes, provides in relevant part: “Whoever shall resist, obstruct, or oppose any [law enforcement or probation officer] or other person legally authorized to execute process in the execution of legal process or in the lawful execution of any legal duty, without offering or doing violence to the person of the officer, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree”.
Under case law, mere words are insufficient to constitute resistance. (Note, this defense is very tricky. There are several exceptions, and it should not be relied on by the layman.)
Maybe the mitigating circumstances and factors Office Grantham’s superiors considered included her error caused by quickly entering the tag number while driving through a residential neighborhood. Perhaps they could not agree that she was acting pursuant to a legal duty and doing so in a lawful manner. Although there are many exceptions noted earlier, I’m not sure an officer can rely on self-error, it would render the Fourth amendment meaningless. I would love to review the PPD’s legal authority used in declaring the stop “legitimate.” But maybe the decision not to arrest Mr. May on reckless policing and a bad charge is what she now calls “‘politics’ [that] let May off [her] hook”.
And maybe if Mr. May and his brother had acted with more maturity, it would be easier to get people to understand the points I am trying to make.
But I imagine the people in District 3, and people like them such as President Obama’s son (if he had one), are tired of being targeted and treated like second class citizens, and that frustration is most evident during police stops.