NY Queens: Even a stop for an apparent trivial traffic offense requires full constitutional analysis

When the police make what appears to be a trivial traffic stop, the court still has to make a proper analysis lest the court become a rubber stamp for the police. People v. Davis, 2024 NY Slip Op 24041, 2024 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 644 (Queens Crim Ct. Feb. 15, 2024):

The court’s responsibility to meaningfully review the factual basis for police conduct in situations like this is critical to preserving “the interest of individuals in living their lives free from governmental interference.” (People v. Howard, 50 NY2d 583, 589, 408 N.E.2d 908, 430 N.Y.S.2d 578 [1980]). Automobile stops alleging excessively tinted windows are common and can have major consequences. (See, e.g., Alysia Santo, The Marshall Project, When ‘Broken Windows’ Meets Tinted Windows, Aug. 17, 2015, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/17/when-broken-windows-meets-tinted-windows [noting that in 2014, the NYPD issued an average of 204 tickets for tinted windows each day, every day]; see also id. [“Critics see a law that disproportionately targets people of color and provides a pretext to churn revenue and fish for other violations or crimes.”]; David D. Kirkpatrick et al., Why Many Police Traffic Stops Turn Deadly, NY Times, Oct. 21, 2021 [“The problem is especially acute at so-called pretextual stops, [Kalfani Ture, a criminologist and former police officer] argued, where officers seek out minor violations — expired registration, a dangling air freshener, tinted windows — to search a car they consider suspicious.”]; Philip V. McHarris, The Nation, I Experience a Hollowing Fear Any Time I’m Stopped by Police, Nov. 19, 2020 [“Gutting the Fourth Amendment has turned tiny traffic violations into abusive traffic stops and coercive searches for millions of Black drivers like myself.”]).

In fact, here the police intrusion based upon purportedly excessive tints escalated into violence against a New Yorker who was sitting peacefully in his own lawfully parked car. At the very least, a suppression court must fulfill its responsibility to determine whether an officer’s conclusion that the tints were unlawful was reasonably warranted. The alternative—simply adopting the officer’s conclusion—reduces the court to a rubber stamp.

Nonetheless, in December of 2022, the Appellate Term for the Second Department’s 2nd, 11th, and 13th Districts concluded otherwise. (People v. Neklatov, 78 Misc. 3d 1, 183 N.Y.S.3d 686 [App. Term, 2d Dep’t 2022]; but see id. at 6 [Weston, J., dissenting] [arguing that an officer’s mere statement that he observed “excessively tinted windows” is alone insufficient because it is a conclusion that requires factual support]). This court is required to follow that decision. For that reason, and for that reason alone, the People here meet their burden to establish probable cause of a traffic violation and justification for the officers’ temporary detention.

Constrained to find that the officers’ detention was lawful, the court is likewise constrained to find that there was probable cause for the arrest. If the detention was lawful, Mr. Davis was not entitled to resist the officers’ commands to lower his window or open his door. As a result, the People established probable cause for obstructing governmental administration.

[Referred to in the Treatise as the reviewing court become a rubber stamp for the police. 2 Search and Seizure § 54.04 n. 8, citing Aguilar at 111 (“Although the reviewing court will pay substantial deference to judicial determinations of probable cause, the court must still insist that the magistrate perform his ‘neutral and detached’ function and not serve merely as a rubber stamp for the police.”)

Noted in techdirt: Court: Turning A Minor Parking Violation Into A String Of Rights Violations Is A Great Way To Lose Your Evidence by Tim Cushing