You seem like a, like a constitutionalist to me.
Are you?
A little bit, yeah.
Oh, I'm, I'm a lot a constitutionalist.
This police officer in Alexandria, Louisiana stopped Mario Rosales
for failing to signal a turn.
He says he's a constitutionalist, but how true is that?
We're gonna watch the video of this traffic stop and talk
about the ways it both follows and violates the constitution.
First, this is the view from the squad car's dash cam.
See the turn signal?
It's clearly on, but immediately after the light turns
green, Mario's pulled over.
Okay, so can you be honest with me?
Why am I being stopped?
Failure signal straight.
Pure, straight, honest answer.
You failed to signal so we stopped you.
Um, hey, we're, we're just talking to people after we stop them, ok?
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has said that police can engage
in pretextual stops, meaning they can follow you until you commit a
minor traffic infraction and then pull you over if they just have a
hunch you've done something wrong.
But pulling someone over without any reason to believe that they
have violated the law itself violates the Fourth Amendment,
so everything moving forward violates Mario's and Gracie's
constitutional rights in this stop.
At this point, Mario told the officers that he has a firearm in
the car, but not on his person.
The officers have no reason to believe Mario is lying or is
otherwise armed and dangerous.
He followed the officer's every command, remained calm and is
not reasonably suspected of a crime, much less a violent one.
So Frisking Mario here was unconstitutional even if
the officers had pulled him over for legitimate reasons.
Hey, can I have your permission to retrieve that firearm
outta your uh, vehicle?
Uh, no.
I don't want anybody searching my vehicle.
Mario knows they can't search his car for failure to signal.
If police demand a search, you shouldn't try to stop them,
but you never need to agree.
In recent years, some officers have been captured on their
own body cams, planning drugs in the back of vehicles.
These officers might be honest, but Mario doesn't know that and doesn't
trust them since he's already been pulled over for no good reason.
Hey, listen, I don't know if my partner's done this or not,
but I'm gonna do it, okay?
Uh, you do have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of
law do understand your rights.
Traffic stops a legal detainment.
The reason I did that is I got a couple questions that
may or may not pertain your guilt or innocence, right?
So I was advised before I ask those types of questions.
That goes to the Fifth Amendment right, so anytime you're not
comfortable with one of my questions, you can say pass.
Are you familiar with the Fifth Amendment?
Anyone who's watched a cop show on TV is familiar
with the Miranda warnings.
They inform people of the right not to incriminate
themselves when police are detaining, interrogating them.
Do you mind emptying out your pockets for me?
On the hood of my car?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a question.
Nothing else.
Do you mind if I check?
Hey, grab my bar real quick.
Do you mind if I check?
Uh, do you have something on you're not supposed to have?
I don't have anything on me.
The officers already frisked Mario for weapons.
Now they wanna search him for evidence of crimes, but the officers
don't have a warrant, so they need to arrest Mario if they're going
to search him without his consent.
The implication is that if Mario refused to empty his
pockets here, the officers would do it themselves or make
the detention more unpleasant for him and his girlfriend.
So Mario emptied his own pockets, but not voluntarily.
That made this search unreasonable.
I mean I'd feel a lot safer, if, uh, she had her phone, she was
able to record while you check me.
I'll record her on camera.
Body camera.
Americans have a first amendment right to record the police.
Government officers can impose only reasonable restrictions in the time,
place, and manner of the recording.
They cannot impose a blanket ban on recording them at all.
Saying that the officers themselves were recording the
incident is no justification for their ban on others recording.
The officers recordings could have technical issues, they
could get lost or worse, and they capture only the officer's
point of view of the incident.
Here, the officers had no legitimate reason to prohibit Mario and Gracie
from recording on their phones.
Have you ever been arrested for anything?
No, I have not.
Never?
Never.
Okay.
I have a clean record.
I gotcha.
Any marijuana in the vehicle?
No.
Uh, meth?
No.
Uh, heroin?
No.
Fentanyl?
No.
Prescription pills not prescribed to you?
No.
Cocaine, crack cocaine?
I don't, I don't deal with drugs.
I don't mess with any kinda illegal drugs.
Here the officer asked Mario a bunch of questions mainly about drugs.
That's most likely the real reason they pulled Mario
over, not the pretext to failing to signal that turn.
This is a good time to remind you that you do not have
to answer police questions.
You can just politely decline.
They had a hunch based on something, his appearance, his car, his
out-of-state license plates, that Mario was involved in drugs.
But even if Mario had failed to signal a turn, the officers
are now unconstitutionally extending the stop for a free
form investigation of drug crimes.
When police pull you over for simple traffic violations, they
aren't allowed to detain you to ask questions about anything
you might have done wrong.
If they want to question you about other illegal activity, they need
to reasonably suspect that you're involved in that illegal activity.
Otherwise, they should promptly proceed with the ticketing process.
Then restore your freedom of movement.
Do you live here?
This is where I'm trying to, uh, create my residency.
So where do you, where do you live?
At her sister's house.
I gotcha.
I'm still trying to get, cause in order to me to change my
address and all that, I need to get proof of residency.
So I've been having to swap over a lot of my bank
statements and all that.
So if you move from out-of-state to in-state, right?
You have 30 days.
The officers can't tell how long Mario has been living
in Louisiana just by driving behind him, but they are fishing
for crimes big and small.
Trying to be cooperative, Mario opened himself up to a
citation about his registration by telling police about his
complicated residency situation.
The officers would later cite Mario for not switching his license plates
and driver's license within 30 days.
Did you call him up yet?
Huh?
Say what?
Did you call that up yet?
I would say that there's more to this than meets the eye.
I would check that and I would check this.
Fail to signal, fail to update his driver's li- Oh, here comes 32.
Negative all around on those.
Here, the officers express shock that someone driving a bright
red Mustang with out-of-state plates isn't a wanted criminal.
This implies Mario was pulled over on a hunch and an imagined traffic
violation was a pretext, but the Bill of Rights exist to prevent
government officials from just going with their gut, even if that
makes it easier to uncover crimes.
Here, the officers couldn't uncover the crimes they were hoping to find,
so they were disappointed and it really makes you wonder, what about
Mario Rosales made the officer so sure he was a drug dealer, that they
audibly reacted to his clean record.
Check it out.
This is your citation.
After a stop that should have taken less than five minutes that took
20, the officers finally write Mario a ticket for failing to signal and
not switching his registration.
But Mario says he was lucky.
I don't know what this was gonna become and I was more concerned.
Uh, yeah, I was more concerned after I saw the, saw the police
officer have her exit the vehicle.
I honestly thought that I was not gonna be able to drive away.
I really thought in my heart they were going to arrest
me for, for something.
This stop shows that polite, calm, constitutional violations
happen in America every day.
Many of them end with people in the back of a squad car, or even worse.
But they shouldn't happen at all.
Law enforcement is an important function in a free society,
but if we the people must follow the law, our government
must follow the constitution.