Glad to have this debate with you. Yes I over exaggerated that no department does it correctly. In the 90's, A lot of departments did not have policies or did not follow the dictates of 1978 Supreme Court case of Mangold. Departments either didn't have policies, didn't follow their own policies and/or pursuant to Mangold, the last requirement was an issue. Mangold states 1) the impoundment had to be justified, 2) the search had to be lawful which takes into consideration whether there were Departmental policies on how to conduct the inventory search and were the policies followed and the availability of less intrusive means like could they get a family member to pick up their stuff. That last requirement was usually never followed.
Inventory searches are still allowed. It just has to be done right.
Consents to search a vehicle still exist. The officer just can't go by a hunch. However, all they need is an articulable reasonable suspicion. More than just a mere hunch. But it doesn't take that much to get there.
Like I said, I don't know what department you were in, but in Union County we had and still have AP's and Judges on call 24/7 to get a search warrant, even if it is at 2 am on a Saturday night.
As far as the AP that was accused of smelling of marijuana, well we left the office together and drove to get drinks 15 minutes away from the office when he was pulled over. He never smoked marijuana and did not smell of marijuana after he was pulled over, It was just a cop who tried to search a car for no reason behind some BS excuse. And please, don't tell me there aren't police officers especially in the 90's that did that crap. We saw it often and started bringing this up to our superiors at the time.
Are you saying police officers didn't try to get consent to search without PC by the threat of saying we can wait here for a couple of hours for a search warrant? That bluff was done many times in the 90's.
You long for the good ole days of the 90's but that was a bad time when we over prosecuted like first time offenders for drugs who would have to stay in jail for 3 years before parole. All the things you say you used to do, you can still do, just within the confines of the 4th Amendment which were then clarified. You say restricted and I say clarified. Moreover, in the good ole days of the 1990's, no video taped statements from defendants or witnesses, Just Q&A's which were not verbatim. Cops hated the video taping of defendant statements. But guess what, it was great. It made better cases and stopped the BS defenses and stoped the BS cops would pull in statements too.
With bail reform, a defendant is picked up and locked up on a warrant. He is not given bail anymore. He has to wait for a 1st appearance hearing. That is normally the next day unless he gets picked up in the morning and can get that hearing in the afternoon. At that time, if the State moves to detain, then he gets a hearing 2 or 3 days later, otherwise he is released. I have not seen bail given in any cases, although it still exists on the books.
Ultimately, if police had their hands tied behind their back since the 90's, then why has crime dropped so much? Or is it just a matter of police hate change even when it is great for them like video tapping statements and body cams? I think it is probably the latter.
