Reflections on Navarette: What guards against fictitious police reports? Nothing, really

So, on reflection, what does Navarette do to guard against the fictitious 911 call that somebody was driving erratically to justify a stop? Absolutely nothing. In most all of the prior cases, the officer follows for a little while and the truly impaired driver will show it. This requires none of that. Now they can stop without corroboration of the 911 call. Cops don’t even get prosecuted for perjury. What makes SCOTUS think that a 911 caller with a false DUI report will ever be sought out, let alone prosecuted. It’s fantasy land. There is nothing to protect motorists from people calling with an ax to grind or to set somebody up because SCOTUS has just sanctioned stops based on false information.

This is just another activist court, like striking down the Voting Rights Act because racism suddenly disappeared in their ivory tower or the Watergate-era campaign finance laws no longer serve a purpose. But, it’s only an activist court when you disagree with it. Otherwise, they are wise purveyors of truth and justice.

Where’s the umpire calling balls and strikes? He’s calling the third out a home run. That’s what he’s doing. Sounds like a rigged game.

Who’d have thought that Justice Scalia would become one of the Fourth Amendment’s best friends? See WaPo: Volokh: Thomas v. Scalia on traffic stops by Jonathan Adler:

One of the things that is interesting about the Court’s decision in Naverette is the line-up. Justice Thomas’s majority opinion was joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Kennedy, Alito, and Breyer. Justice Scalia dissented, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. According to Justice Scalia, an anonymous 911 call reporting one incident of erratic driving is not sufficiently reliable to provide for reasonable suspicion that a driver is impaired and is thus insufficient to justify a traffic stop.

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