NYT: Kansas Troopers ‘Waged War on Motorists,’ Federal Judge Finds

NYT: Kansas Troopers ‘Waged War on Motorists,’ Federal Judge Finds by Mitch Smith (“The judge said the Highway Patrol had made a habit of wrongly questioning out-of-state drivers in hopes of turning up drugs.”):

They called it the “Kansas two-step.”

When a mundane traffic stop was nearing its end, a state trooper would turn to leave. But after a couple of paces toward the squad car, the trooper would whirl around and go back to the window of the pulled-over driver, hoping to strike up a conversation and find enough reason to scour the car for drugs. Perhaps the driver would say something the trooper deemed suspicious, or perhaps the driver would just agree to a search.

But that two-step, which troopers used often against out-of-state drivers, was part of a “war on motorists” waged by the Kansas Highway Patrol in violation of the Fourth Amendment, a federal judge said in a blistering opinion on Friday.

“The war is basically a question of numbers: stop enough cars and you’re bound to discover drugs,” wrote Senior Judge Kathryn H. Vratil of the Federal District Court. “And what’s the harm if a few constitutional rights are trampled along the way?”

The “Kansas Two Step” was referred to in Shaw v. Jones, 2020 WL 2101298 (D. Kan. May 1, 2020). See Treatise § 12.18 n. 11 (“Annotation: Wayne LaFave, The “Routine Traffic Stop” from Start to Finish: Too Much “Routine,” Not Enough Fourth Amendment, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1843, 1898 (2004) (argues officers can ‘obviate any and all time and scope limitations’ by performing ‘the well-known Lt. Columbo gambit [“one more thing …”]’); cited in State v. Thompson, 284 Kan. 763, 166 P.3d 1015, 1027 (2007); Brown v. State, 182 P.3d 624, 632 (Alaska App. 2008). That was found in cases before this article.”)

Update: WaPo: Troopers detained a Black man. He exposed their unconstitutional conduct. by Tobi Raji:

Joshua Bosire was driving home along Interstate 70 in Kansas on a cold February night in 2019 when he was pulled over by Highway Patrol for speeding. The 35-year-old aviation engineer was returning from Denver after celebrating his daughter’s birthday.

Kansas trooper Brandon McMillan pulled Bosire over for driving seven miles per hour over the speed limit, according to court documents. The trooper did not issue a speeding ticket, but he suspected Bosire, who is Black, was trafficking drugs from Colorado, where marijuana is legal, to Kansas, where it’s not.

What happened next is an example of a policing practice known as the Kansas “two step,” a tactic that a judge ruled unconstitutional this week because routine traffic stops were being used to detain motorists who troopers suspected of transporting drugs.

. . .

But Bosire, who said in court documents that McMillan racially profiled him that night, now lives in fear of law enforcement. He said the encounter destroyed his trust in the police.