{"id":4973,"date":"2011-07-10T08:58:49","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T06:52:08","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-08T06:52:08","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4973","title":{"rendered":"AK: Seatbelt law was legislative prerogative, and there was no showing it was being used as a pretext here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The state adopted a seatbelt statute, as have all other states, based on evidence of savings of lives and money. It was a legislative prerogative to do so. Defendant failed to show that the purpose of the statute was to give police a basis for pretextual stops. The day of the stop, the officer was working overtime on a \u201cclick-it-or-ticket\u201d enforcement program. <a href=\"http:\/\/courts.alaska.gov\/ops\/ap-2283.pdf\">Chase v. State<\/a>, 243 P.3d 1014 (Alaska App. 2010):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Although Chase uses the phrase \u201cpretext stop\u201d to describe his claim on appeal, he is not actually talking about the \u201cpretext\u201d stop doctrine that this Court discussed in Morgan, Grohs, and Nease.<\/p>\n<p>The officer who stopped Chase testified that he was on patrol, working overtime as part of a nationwide \u201cclick-it-or-ticket\u201d law enforcement campaign \u2014 in other words, he was looking specifically for drivers who were not wearing their seatbelts. Thus, the officer had no ulterior motive when he stopped Chase for not wearing a seatbelt. The officer&#8217;s express motive was to look for drivers who were violating the seatbelt law, and to cite these drivers for this offense.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Defendant was properly stopped by a police officer looking across the city limits into an adjoining city seeing him commit traffic offenses. On the stop, defendant\u2019s breath smelled of alcohol, and that justified a detention. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.1stcoa.courts.state.tx.us\/opinions\/HTMLopinion.asp?OpinionID=88478\">Thomas v. State<\/a>, 336 S.W.3d 703 (Tex. App. \u2013 Houston (1st Dist.) 2010).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4973\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}