M.D.Fla.: “The Court should stop imbuing the ‘objectively reasonable’ officer with a cloak of constitutional comfort for justifications …”

The court finds the stop was unjustified and any mistake on the officer’s part was not objectively reasonable. “The Court should stop imbuing the ‘objectively reasonable’ officer with a cloak of constitutional comfort for justifications that strain credulity and discount the facts out of deference to their necessary ‘game time decisions’.” United States v. Sanchez, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49674 (M.D. Fla. Mar. 20, 2020):

… In short, it was not objectively reasonable for Sgt. Beuer to believe that Sanchez violated Florida Statute § 316.123 by failing to stop at a stop bar that not only was not there, but where there was nothing about this intersection to suggest it would be there—quite the contrary. When you add the fact that Sgt. Beuer actually traversed the area on foot, the reasonableness of his predication is further undermined. (See Doc. 30.)

If these facts qualify as “objectively reasonable”, then the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure is simply not applicable to a pretextual traffic stop. The Court should stop imbuing the “objectively reasonable” officer with a cloak of constitutional comfort for justifications that strain credulity and discount the facts out of deference to their necessary “game time decisions”. See Chanthasouxat, 342 F.3d at 1276. While deference is a necessary component of the analysis, it does not warrant a rubber stamp. The Fourth Amendment still has some teeth in a traffic stop. The Court will suppress any evidence gathered as part of that stop—any physical evidence and any statements made by Sanchez during the stop. See Wong Sun, 371 U.S. at 484-85; Chanthasouxat, 342 F.3d at 1280.