Your fourth Amendment rights just got thrown out with the bath water!!!

[Glocktogo]

If your not breaking the law and your an honest law abiding citizen this will never effect you.

Here is another example: An officer goes to a house and can smell the overwhelming odor of chemicals that are associated with the manufacturing of Meth. The law says that because these chemicals pose such a dangerous situation to the people in the house and their neighbors for explosion, fire, chemical exposure and death that Officers should make immediate entry to contain and get the area cleaned up and make any arrests that need made....So you would rather have officers go to situations like that and just leave it...what if that house was next to yours....if it blows up and burns down...so does yours and perhaps someone you care about gets hurt or worse...

Shesh....Im done and I'm getting off my soap box now.

That first part is the worst, lamest excuse ever. I mean EVER. You cannot reasonably state that for a fact and you know it. Mistakes are made and people can get killed as a result. The 4th Amendment rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, should trump any concerns over whether someone is smoking a doobie in the privacy of their own home. Take the case in point. They're chasing a drug dealer. He disappears. They smell pot. Is it reasonable to assume that said dealer, who disappeared moments earlier, closed the door, lit up an Up In Smoke sized joint and exhaled enough that they could smell it on the other side of the door? Sell me that "reasonable supposition".

Your meth lab exigent circumstance doesn't apply in this case, so it's a red herring. OSHA now mandates PPE for meth labs, so you wouldn't normally enter a suspected meth lab dwelling immediately upon detecting chemical odors. You might just get yourself killed in the process. You also haven't necessarily established that the dwelling is occupied, or that neighbors (who may live some distance away) are in danger. These are all simply excuses to "get the bad guys off the streets", without exercising risk management and due diligence. I blame the courts in falling for these sorry excuses as justification. The system no longer protects the innocent, nor does it respect the BoR.

 

[Glocktogo]

Did gov just give itself power to enter any residence upon toilet flushing? Is this correct?

So long as they "smell smoke", yes they did. You are no longer secure in your right to drop a deuce while toking on a fattie!

 

[spd67]

You're absolutely right. The cops smelled marijuana and busted down the door. A number-one jusifiable emergency if you ask me.

In the instance of the story the cops were chasing a known drug dealer...the courts have also said that it is reasonable to believe that where there are drugs there are weapons and violence. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that when there is probable cause to believe drugs are present there is also probable cause to believe there are weapons present.

So you would rather have officers give up their safety and allow drug dealers to eradicate the evidence that will keep them off the street, barricade themselves in their home and then have a armed standoff with police? And if I read the story corectly there was also enough cocaine in the house to charge the person with trafficking..so there was not just marijuana.

 

[Glocktogo]

In the instance of the story the cops were chasing a known drug dealer...the courts have also said that it is reasonable to believe that where there are drugs there are weapons and violence. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that when there is probable cause to believe drugs are present there is also probable cause to believe there are weapons present.

So you would rather have officers give up their safety and allow drug dealers to eradicate the evidence that will keep them off the street, barricade themselves in their home and then have a armed standoff with police? And if I read the story corectly there was also enough cocaine in the house to charge the person with trafficking..so there was not just marijuana.

And the courts have frequently ruled that just because the entry resulted in discovery of contraband, does not necessarily make the entry legal. You'll get no argument from me that the courts ruled in favor of the police in this case, but at what expense to the rights of the citizenry? Judges, just like cops, can make mistakes.

 

[spd67]

Your meth lab exigent circumstance doesn't apply in this case, so it's a red herring. OSHA now mandates PPE for meth labs, so you wouldn't normally enter a suspected meth lab dwelling immediately upon detecting chemical odors. You might just get yourself killed in the process. You also haven't necessarily established that the dwelling is occupied, or that neighbors (who may live some distance away) are in danger. These are all simply excuses to "get the bad guys off the streets", without exercising risk management and due diligence. I blame the courts in falling for these sorry excuses as justification. The system no longer protects the innocent, nor does it respect the BoR.

Actually it is not a red herring at all...OSHA does not have anything to do with the law enforcement aspect of Meth Labs...Only the people cleaning it up...in order to find out if there is a meth lab there you have to go in to find out....and after a active lab is found then you get all the people out and then put on PPE to go back in to collect evidence. No PPE on initial contact. And trust me Ive been in many meth labs, labs in cars, hotels, storage sheds, houses, apartments. Ive also seen first hand the damage and danger that these things pose. I've seen hosue fires, apartment fires, people burnt to death in the same fire / explosion. There is a legitimate argument to be made about public safety and drug dealers of any kind.

 

[Glocktogo]

Actually it is not a red herring at all...OSHA does not have anything to do with the law enforcement aspect of Meth Labs...Only the people cleaning it up...in order to find out if there is a meth lab there you have to go in to find out....and after a active lab is found then you get all the people out and then put on PPE to go back in to collect evidence. No PPE on initial contact. And trust me Ive been in many meth labs, labs in cars, hotels, storage sheds, houses, apartments. Ive also seen first hand the damage and danger that these things pose. I've seen hosue fires, apartment fires, people burnt to death in the same fire / explosion. There is a legitimate argument to be made about public safety and drug dealers of any kind.

Still a red herring in this case.

 

[spd67]

And the courts have frequently ruled that just because the entry resulted in discovery of contraband, does not necessarily make the entry legal. You'll get no argument from me that the courts ruled in favor of the police in this case, but at what expense to the rights of the citizenry? Judges, just like cops, can make mistakes.

Really...I never said that cops, or judges don't make mistakes...they didn't this time though and case law giving this power to the police goes back to the late 70's its been around for a long time people. To what expense to the citizenry you ask...A drug dealer that pushes poison on the street gets put away that is the expense. Normal law abiding citizens won't have this happen to them....only people with no regard for the laws of this great country and choose to ignore the law.

 

[spd67]

I think we can just agree to disagree here and leave it at that.

 

[Michael Brown]

Not 2A-related in the slightest.