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.
