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EEllis wrote:

chasfm11 wrote:

EEllis wrote: Doesn't matter why I would think it or what you might think. In this case depending on the flavor I think the carton has colors and designs that would lead me to think it was beer not soda. Now other people may look and use different input to draw other conclusions but if the agent saw something and that led them to believe that the package was likely beer. What matters for the RS for the stop to be found legal in court is that the agent can articulate the reasons for their belief and that a judge find that explanation of the agents belief reasonable. The judge doesn't need to agree or think that he would also think the same just that to the agent it was reasonable. I hope I gave a decent explanation because an expert I'm not. Is it a bit arbitrary? You could look at it like that. You can take 5 cops have them look at a situation and only 1 may see RS and even though no one else sees RS if the 1 cop can explain it in court then it may well be good RS.

I'm sorry but what you said scares the heck out of me. Paraphrased, it says "justice administered by the officer with the most vivid imagination." I don't accept that. In this case, there compound mistakes. I judge the worst of those mistakes to be the DA going along with the events and filing the initial charges against the girls. There should have been more of an investigation before that happened.

We seem to have lost the concept that there are checks and balances. For me, one of the first checks should be from police administration who reviews what an individual officer does and allows it to continue or stops it right there. The second check is that the DA should be carefully reviewing what is brought to him or her to make sure that the elements necessary to prosecute the case are available or that they are not.

I would submit that if 5 officers review a situation and 4 of them don't see RS, retraining is needed. Either 4 of them are missing things or the 1 is finding things that aren't there. I completely understand that breakthroughs in some cases come from a single officer finding a piece of evidence that was overlooked. For me, that is vastly different than 5 officers looking at a live scenario and only one of them seeing something that requires further action. There are enough blatant infractions of the law that we don't need to be pursuing subtleties

Look this is not new. Heck there are more restrictions of cops now that there ever were in the history of this country. They just also have a bit better protections than before in some jurisdictions, meaning they can only be fired when they violate the law or their dept regs not just because there is bad press.

I'm sorry you have such an issue with the RS doctrine but you do realize that it has only gotten stricter over the years requiring even more from law enforcement. As to your "submission" , it's impossible to say that with the info given!!! That's why we have judges who review RS. Maybe the guy notices some smell, has better vision, haw 30 years of experience, has a pet parrot and happens to know exotic pet statutes the others don't. You would take Sherlock Holmes and kick him out of the Dept because he is too observant? Yes he is fictional but serves a point. I made the 5 to 1 comment to illustrate it was just about what is in the mind of the individual officer and their ability to articulate it to the court that determines RS. Does that leave a lot to the vagaries of human opinion? Well yes but until the robots take over that is what we are stuck with.

Now as for as the DA taking charges I think you are even farther off base. You have suspects who fled the scene and hit 2 agents. After investigating the DA felt that prosecution would be wrong but deciding without info would of been just a dereliction of his duty.