Pubdate: Wed, 05 Mar 2008
Source: Sun, The (Yuma, AZ)
Copyright: 2008 The Sun
Contact: http://yumasun.com/opinion/sendletter.php
Website: http://www.yumasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1258
Author: James Thompson

VEHICLE SEARCHES PROVIDE EVIDENCE

You're kidding me, right?

The lawsuit claiming that a police officer is not  justified in 
searching the vehicle of a person who has  just been arrested is 
outrageous. It is almost as silly  as the woman that sued McDonald's 
because she spilled  coffee, that she happened to order, on herself 
and  claimed that the beverage was hot.

As an active duty police officer, protecting my  homeland and every 
citizen in it is what gets me up  every morning, and I am certain 
that goes for many of  our fellow dedicated law enforcement officers. 
(We all  know that it is certainly not the pay!)

But with possible rulings such as these, why don't we  just hand the 
criminals empty Arizona Statute books and  let them write some more 
laws that will protect and  assist them with performing their various 
illegal  activities and endangering innocent lives.

Having attended many cases in court, I have seen many  criminals hide 
behind lawyers (most of them provided by  our tax money) to "clean 
up" their wrongdoings, and  there couldn't be another perfect example 
of it than  this issue.

The individual who believes that the officers were  wrong in 
searching the suspect's vehicle would have had  a good defense if 
those police officers had just  strolled on by and told him, "Hey 
you, we are going to  search your vehicle for no apparent reason."

But that was certainly not the case. Instead, what we  have here is 
another person, caught with cocaine and  drug paraphernalia, who does 
not want to take the  punishment for his bad decisions, and in turn, 
decides  to complain about it.

I can almost guarantee you that if this individual did  not have any 
illegal substances and/or paraphernalia in  his vehicle at the time 
of his arrest, he would not be  bringing up this issue in the first place.

We must take into consideration all of the illegal  drugs, terrorists 
and victims found due to evidence  and/or leads possibly contained 
inside and arrestee's  vehicles that would have otherwise gone 
unnoticed if it  wasn't for the search.

This issue has been around for a while and has two  sides to it of 
course, with both its good and bad  points, but we should - no, we 
MUST - acknowledge the  one that outweighs the other in safety for 
our officers  and citizens, regardless of what Mr. "Bad Guy" wants to 
whine about in order to escape from doing "the time for  the crime."

JAMES THOMPSON, Yuma
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom