Society broadly agrees, enough that it's illegal in the US to stop someone just for "unusual behavior." You have to have an actual concrete reason to suspect someone of a crime. Not that police always follow the law on this.
Only in specific edge cases and definitions, which I’m guessing you don’t know. And calling it ‘illegal’ is a stretch in 95% of them. Generally worst case any evidence gathered would just be inadmissible.
After all, even if not a legal stop/detention, that doesn’t mean they committed a crime by doing it.
But tell me, do you think any of these officers would have struggled to come up with probable cause to detain the driver of a giant banana car on a public roadway? Or any other ‘suspicious’ or ‘weird’ vehicle?
Because I can think of at least 3 California vehicle codes off the top of my head that would likely apply, including CVC 26708, 24008.5, and 5201. And I’m not a cop.
And all you need is an articulable and reasonable suspicion to detain.
Stopping someone to chat (aka they can leave without penalty) is a much lower bar, though I doubt they did that.
You've now completely shifted from "unusual behavior is sufficient justification to detain someone and this is necessary for 99% of real traffic stops" to "the police can usually come up with probable cause if they want."
Which I completely agree with. But that's a very different statement.
If a cop saw someone hiding in my bushes at 2AM, that strikes me as reason to think that the person is trespassing if not worse, and would thus justify a further look. It would not be done solely on the basis of "unusual behavior."
It's trivial. Playing the bagpipes while riding a unicycle. Very weird and unusual but not reasonable suspicion of anything.
I'm happy to come up with a dozen more if you lack imagination.
Similarly, there's plenty of non-weird, non-unusual behavior that legally justifies a traffic stop, such as exceeding the speed limit or rolling through a stop sign.
Have you ever tried it in public, except in perhaps a college town or another handful of special places or circumstances?
Because you’d definitely get threatened with disturbing the peace, entertaining without a license, or be evaluated for public intoxication or drug use anywhere else.
People generally get speeding or traffic tickets when they stick out.
You have this weird overconfident naïveté about how the world actually works. Let me guess, 20 something white male, college educated, lives in SF or NYC? Loving parents who are still together?
I specifically mentioned that police don’t necessarily follow the law here. So I don’t know where you get the idea that I’m naive about how the world works. Police might hassle you, but that doesn’t mean it’s legal for them to do so.
Meaning it only leads to suppression of evidence and not punishment for the perpetrators? Or that they'll have to come up with some probable cause to make it legal, but they can do that more or less at will? Or something else?
Yeah, it is pretty bizarre, seeing as how I’ve been very clear that police will gin up probable cause or just ignore the requirement for it, and you keep acting like I’m a poor naive little soul who thinks cops are nice and friendly.
I said it repeatedly. Nearly every comment of mine in this chain contains a disclaimer about police misbehaving in real life. Not my fault if you managed to miss them all.
Right, there's definitely not a bunch of pressure from the fact that they can throw you in jail for basically anything and probably get away with shooting you if they really wanted that would get in the way of a real meaningful relationship...
More like 100s of cops have abused their authority to harass a middle aged artist.
At even just 10 minutes a stop, that is over 30 hours of this poor man's life he has spent staring at the berries and cherries just because some entitled cop thought he deserved a photo op.
Wanting to attract attention and wanting to be constantly interrupted by law enforcement are not the same thing. This is the "well if she didn't want to be raped, she shouldn't have worn that skirt!" argument, and it doesn't look any better here.
He said that he enjoys it. Why not just let him have fun in his banana car if he wants to? HN commenters seem to be the only people upset about this. He specifically said that he enjoys the banter and photo-ops with the police.
I would advise you not drive a homemade fruit car around your town if you are this terrified of the attention it will bring. He clearly said in the article that he enjoys the encounters. He is doing this on purpose.
Him enjoying the attention doesn't make the actions of the police right or just.
He enjoys the attention, they are abusing their authority, Both things are true.
It's perfectly reasonable to question whether that vehicle is street legal when it passes by on the road. It would be my first thought. It looks like it's mounted on a boat trailer chassis, and the windshield appears to have questionable effectiveness at high speeds. Pulling him over to ask about it seems like they are doing their jobs. Especially when I am also a driver on the same road.
That's not true at all. The police can stop a vehicle for any suspicion of unlawful activity. For instance, to question a driver about the street-legal-ness of their homemade banana car. You can, however, refuse questioning and refuse any inspection of the interior of the vehicle and just ask them to cite you for what they pulled you over for.
They are required to have reasonable suspicion that the banana car is unlawful in some way. (e.g. missing required equipment, etc) Simply wanting to question the driver or get a picture for funsies is not quite enough.
It’s a goddamn banana car. This guy’s banana car is apparently legal, well constructed, and registered properly, but yes, the presence of a hand made banana car is reasonable suspicion that the car may not be up to snuff, road legal, or safe to operate around others.
That's a common misconception about what "reasonable suspicion" means.
"Reasonable suspicion of a crime" is an objective legal standard that doesn't mean the same thing as "they look suspicious" or the situation itself is "suspicious" -- it means that the officer thinks that a specific articulable crime has, is, or is about to occur. They don't have to be 100% sure, and they don't even have to be correct about what the law even is, but they do have to believe a law was broken.
Being unusual by itself does not legally qualify for reasonable suspicion of a crime or infraction, because being unusual isn't a crime.
Now, the officer could be interested in the car because it is a banana, and want to stop it to take a picture of it, but they have to have suspicion of some specific violation first.
1. "Hey that banana car looks weird" > "it doesn't look like it has turn signals" > [pulls them over] > "hey do you have turn signals", "yes", "ok my bad have a nice day" = legal, because not having turn signals is an equipment violation.
2. "Hey that banana car looks weird" > [pulls them over] > "hey is this thing legal?" = illegal, because looking weird is not a crime
Interesting, I see the distinction. That said, I’m genuinely curious here (and, I’m not defending police overreach - you can browse my comments if you’re worried I’ve got any love for authoritarians) - let’s take as a given that we’ve got a societal interest in automobiles meeting safety standards, and let’s take as a given that we’ve nominated the police as the body designated to ensure that vehicles being operated on the road meet these safety standards (or at least, we’ve designated them as the on-the-ground eyes for seeking out vehicles that don’t). Let’s also assume that some of those safety standards are not immediately visible from the outside - eg, it’s difficult to tell at a glance if the frame of the banana car is a well-constructed piece of welded steel or a shopping cart.
A cop sees what is clearly a hand-made banana car driving past them in the other direction on the road. What do you feel like are the appropriate actions for that cop to take in those circumstances, with just the facts available to them at hand?
I’m not arguing that the cops we have do not regularly and aggressively abuse their power and violate the social contract, but I’m struggling to see how we would want a cop to behave in an ideal world in this circumstance that isn’t “pull over the banana car and make sure it’s safe.” From the sound of it, they’re not ticketing the banana car, they obviously haven’t impounded it, and knock wood, they haven’t shot the driver yet, but what would your expectation be for them in that situation?
> let’s take as a given that we’ve got a societal interest in automobiles meeting safety standards, and let’s take as a given that we’ve nominated the police as the body designated to ensure that vehicles being operated on the road meet these safety standards
Broadly, I agree. But there are two very distinct groups of laws that you're groping together here:
Firstly, there's federal law, which is primarily responsible for what we think a modern safe vehicle is: crash testing, airbags, backup cameras, tire pressure monitoring, antilock brakes, stability control, etc. These laws primarily apply only to new vehicle manufacturers, enter enforced against those manufactured by the federal government.
Second, there's state law. Basically, all traffic laws are under state purview, and enforcement. The safety equipment required under state law is generally extremely basic. In most states you can qualify with as little as: DOT rated tires with tread, at least two mirrors, turn signals, seat belt, headlights, tail lights, horn, a front windshield, and a functioning wiper. These are the laws that traffic police enforce.
> Let’s also assume that some of those safety standards are not immediately visible from the outside - eg, it’s difficult to tell at a glance if the frame of the banana car is a well-constructed piece of welded steel or a shopping cart.
Because state vehicle safety law is generally very basic, it usually is possible to tell from the outside whether equipment requirements are met.
Also, shopping carts are made out of welded steel. And besides, it is entirely legal to use wood in the construction of a vehicle. State law typically does not prescribe the types of materials used beyond some extreme generalities in their performance (e.g. visibility through windows, structures physically attached as opposed to being loose). Generally, state law only cares about operational safety, they don't really regulate design safety. Horrible unsafe designs that would fail a crash test are only federally illegal for manufacturers to make and sell to people.
But let's entertain your scenario for a second. Let's say that there is something about a vehicle that fails safety standards that isn't visible... legally you there's no way to pull the vehicle over for a reason that you don't know of... because you have to know of a reason to justify the stop to begin with -- you'd have to find some other reason.
Ideally, the way you'd enforces vehicle safety for these kinds of scenarios, and the way that the rest of the world handles it -- is to require vehicles to be inspected. But only 15 states have chosen to require periodic passenger vehicle inspections.
> A cop sees what is clearly a hand-made banana car driving past them in the other direction on the road. What do you feel like are the appropriate actions for that cop to take in those circumstances, with just the facts available to them at hand?
They should do everything that their state law enables them to do, including:
* visually confirming the existence of required equipment: lamps, windscreen, signals, road tires, etc.
* confirming the display of any credentials required by their state: inspections stickers (if applicable), registration stickers (if applicable), license plate (believe it or not... if applicable), etc.
... and if they don't meet these requirements, or they break other rules of traffic operation, initiate a stop and investigate further.
That all makes sense, I appreciate the engagement. I should've figured that the state-level vs federal-level gaps where where all the dragons would live here, and I don't live in a rural area, but I've spent enough time in them that I should've guessed how narrow those state-level standards actually wind up being. I get the reason for all of that, but as someone who lives in a city with many other cars around on a regular basis, I do get nervous about their ability to interoperate safely with the rest of us.
I agree with the concern 100%. I've lived all over the US from some of the poorest rural areas to some of the richest urban areas, and it is wild to see the cultural differences in how people view transportation. And I think there's a lot of distorted opinions everywhere.
Some tend to think cars are a highly regulated option for transportation on professionally engineered roads that people can choose if they want. Others think that cars are synonymous with a basic right of transportation on the untamed highway, and they can do whatever they want as long as they have a plate on it.
But there's multiple realities in this country. Unfortunately, a new car that meets the latest safety standards is essentially reserved for the upper middle class. The lower middle class is driving used cars that met safety standards of a decade ago, with worn parts that may or may not get inspected before they fail. And the working poor are either struggling to afford rent in a city with public transport, or they're struggling to keep a 15-25 year old car functional, let alone compliant or safe.
Yeah, and in urban areas in particular, that exacerbates the “DWB” problem that feeds into all the other problems that make being poor so goddamn expensive.
IANAL, and would like to believe that what you say is true, but I think in most jurisdictions "reasonable suspicion" that the vehicle was not street legal would float as justification for a stop.
There is no "street legal" statute, so it would have to be for something specific like an improperly displayed license plate, that one example in the article alludes to.
But other examples in the article like "Often officers simply wanted photographs." would not be a legal reason.
Now, in practice, this is a very easy standard to meet, because even if an officer wants to pull someone over arbitrarily, they can simply follow someone until they make a very minor infraction like crossing a line improperly, exceeding the speed limit by 1mph, rolling a stop, or failing to signal... but they still have to do it.
No? Not even close. If the police "smell weed" they can stop you. If the police believe you have active warrants they can stop you. If the police believe you have committed a criminal act of any kind, they may stop you
