Let’s say that you are driving down the street. You’ve just left work and you’re traveling home. You aren’t speeding. You are not driving recklessly. You’re just a black person driving your car. The next thing you know the police are behind you. They follow you for a few seconds and then turn on their lights. You immediately pull over. The police officer comes up to your window and asks you where you’re going and what you’re going. Now, you’ve been watching my videos on social media and you know that you don’t have to answer any of these questions and you ask why you are being pulled over because you weren’t speeding. The officer tells you that you didn’t have your seat belt on. He asks if you have any narcotics or weapons in the car. You again tell him that you don’t have to answer his questions and you’d like to get a ticket for the seat belt violation or be free to leave.
Here is where it takes a turn. The officer sees what he believes are narcotics in the cup holder of your center console. He asks what it is. You tell him, it’s aspirin. He says he thinks it is illegal pills and that he thought you’d purchased it from a dealer and that’s why he pulled you over. He says this area is known for drug sales. He tells you to get out of the car and that you are under arrest for possession of narcotics. You are arrested. You don’t get bonded out until two weeks later because it took your family some time to come up with the bail money. During those two weeks that you were in jail, you didn’t go to work and as a result you were let go from your job. The loss of your job caused you to fall behind on your bills. Eventually you were evicted from your apartment. You also lose custody of your kids because you can’t provide for them. You hit rock bottom because of this incident. Finally, three months later, the charges are dismissed when the tests come back as aspirin. You come to me and tell me that you were falsely arrested and you want to file a federal civil rights lawsuit. You start telling me the story and at the end I tell you that you don’t have a federal false arrest claim. You are shocked. And then I tell you that the seat belt violation would prevent you from filing a lawsuit. You say that a seat belt violation is not even an arrestable offense. You actually start to get upset because this entire incident has ruined your life and you are confused as to what a seat belt has to do with the police falsely arresting you on drug charges.
I then break down for you the concept of probable cause and how it’s a false arrest case destroyer. Even though the seat belt violation is not normally something you would be arrested for, the Supreme court has said that it doesn’t matter if a police officer didn’t arrest you for a small traffic violation. A violation of even a small minor law is still an arrestable offense. The court said this in a 2001 case called Atwater v. City of Lago Vista. Make sure you pay attention to this next part because it’s important.
In 1997, a woman named Gail Atwater was driving her pickup truck in Lago Vista, Texas with her 3 year old son and 5 year old daughter in the front seat. None of them was wearing a seat belt. A Lago Vista police officer saw this and pulled her over. The officer had interacted with Gail before and because of this he told her she was going to jail. A friend came to the scene and took her children. The police arrested Gail and took her to jail. She was booked into jail as if she had committed a violent felony. After about an hour she was released on a $300 bond. She was charged with the seat belt violation and failing to have her license on her person. She pleaded no contest to the seat belt violation and paid a $50 fine. A no contest plea means that you neither admit nor dispute the charge. The other charges were dismissed. Gail filed a civil rights lawsuit against the officer and the City of Lago Vista claiming that she was falsely arrested. Gail argued that the officer violated her 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. She claimed that it was unreasonable and unlawful to arrest her for a simple minor offense like not wearing a seat belt. Her lawsuit was dismissed by the trial court as meritless. Gail appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate court agreed and said that the arrest was not unreasonable. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court said If an officer has probable cause to believe that an individual has committed even a very minor criminal offense in his presence, he may, without violating the Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender.
Here’s why this case is important: this case allows police officers to get away with falsely arresting someone like in the scenario I gave at the very beginning of this video. This case established the rule that probable cause to arrest a person for ANY crime defeats a false arrest claim for another claim. If you spent 2 years in jail for a crime you did not commit, your false arrest case would be dismissed if before the arrest, you jaywalked. Or you made a turn without signaling or littered. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation with someone and they think they have a winning case and then I have to tell them about the Atwater case. The supreme court has made it very easy for police officers to get away with egregious conduct. Many people believe that qualified immunity is the biggest barrier to getting justice for police misconduct. It’s not. It’s cases like Atwater. And the Atwater case is just one of many of the bad decisions that have come out of the Supreme Court that prevent people from getting justice.
What do you think about the Atwater case and how it means that small things like jaywalking could stop someone from getting justice for being falsely arrested for something more serious? Do you think it’s fair? Drop me a comment down below and let me know what you think.
