‘Say, Mister, You Don’t Mind If I Take a Little Look-See, Do YOU?

Just like the blacks and Latinos we’ve been reading about lately, I get pulled occasionally by the cops, and it’s clear they think I’m a possible drug transporter. Once about three years ago, on Interstate 90 not far out of Butte, Mont., a state trooper rode just to my left rear, pushing me to the right. Then he stopped me, saying I’d crossed the inside white line. This, I learned later, was a pretext.

The trooper hemmed and hawed a bit and asked if I was carrying large sums of money laughed and said, “‘I wish.” By this time, we’d gravitated to the back end of the car and he was looking hopefully at the trunk. Was I carrying arms? Absolutely not. “Are you carrying large amounts of drugs?” “’No.”

He didn’t order me to open up. Maybe it’s because I’d told him I was a writer. Seeing a red stain on my fingers, he asked, “‘Is that blood?” No, I said, it was ink and showed him the fountain pen. That broke his spirit. He let me proceed.

It’s clear enough to me that Operation Pipeline, as described by writer Gary Webb in this month’s APRIL?? Esquire, is why I was stopped in Montana and later in Washington and Oregon, and why, for every middle-class white guy like myself, a hundred blacks or Latinos are pulled over. In Operation Pipeline, millions and millions of federal Drug Enforcement Administration dollars and training sessions by the thousands have sent cops out on the roads alert for the trace signs that supposedly spell “‘drug carrier.” Webb says that 301 police commands in 48 states participate in Pipeline in some fashion.

Operation Pipeline took shape in the 1980s. The basic rule is seems to be to stop and hassle blacks and browns, but there are other things that make you suspect, such as whether you decline eye contact with a cop driving along side you, or whether you happen to have in your car such seemingly innocuous debris as fast-food wrappers. In my case, I’m sure it didn’t help that I was driving a big, old 1972 Imperial. But you could also call attention to yourself by driving a rental car, or bu having new tires on an old car, or by having a single ignition key.

It wasn’t long before cops in every state were using the vehicle laws as the pretext for stopping people for any one of a thousand reasons: dirty license tags, a brake light burned out, etc.

So you get stopped. There’s dialogue. The cop sizes you up. Let Webb tell it:

“If your indicators are on the high side ... this is what will happen. You’ll be given your papers back, and then the officer will hang around and strike up a conversation.”

Most drivers don’t realize their legal status has changed at this point.

Webb again: “‘At the moment your license and registration are returned, you are technically free to leave. In the eye of the law, the traffic stop is over. Now you and Officer Friendly are just having a “consensual” chat. And your new friend is free to ask anything.

“From here, it’s almost a script. You’ll be told that the local police have been having a problem with people ferrying guns and drugs along this part of the highway, but they’re doing their best to stop it. Good, you may say. Glad to hear it. The officer will nod and say he’s happy you see it that way. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any guns or drugs in your car, would you?” “Me?’ you will ask. “Oh, no. Of course not.”

“The officer will look at you and say, “Then you don’t mind if I take a look-see, do you?”

“You’ll be asked to consent-orally or on paper-to a search, but don’t think too hard or hesitate to comply, because those are more indicators of drug trafficking, as is refusing to allow the search. ‘If they refuse, the stuffs in the trunk,’ our CHP instructor tells us matter-of-factly. A refusal justifies calling out the dogs and letting a drug-sniffing canine take a walk around your car. If Fido gets a whiff of something, the cop doesn’t need your permission anymore.

“Most drivers consent. This can authorize a complete search of everything, including your luggage and person. It allows the officer to literally to take your car apart with an air hammer, which has happened. Once they’ve given consent, our CHP instructor tells us, “They’ve dug their own grave.”

The DEA took up profiling in 1987. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court OK’d the DEA program for stopping people for minor breaches of the vehicle codes in order to check for drugs. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion, saying it was not the role of the court to say whether there were too many trivial traffic laws on the books.

Webb reports that after this case, known as the Whren decision, a CHP instructor told him, “After Whren, the game was over. We won.” Two weeks ago, Scalia wrote another opinion, this time okaying the search of passengers in a car, without a warrant.

There will, I think, be new laws. Stop a thousand black people and you’re bound to snag some off-duty cops or lawyers. In the end, someone (many are now being helped by the ACLU) will fight back. Police chiefs and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno are expressing concern.

The pretext stops have to end. Otherwise, it’s goodbye to what little is left of the 4th Amendment supposedly protecting us against unreasonable search and seizure.