{"id":55420,"date":"2023-07-22T12:11:57","date_gmt":"2023-07-22T17:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=55420"},"modified":"2023-07-22T17:41:48","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T22:41:48","slug":"nyt-kansas-troopers-waged-war-on-motorists-federal-judge-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=55420","title":{"rendered":"NYT: Kansas Troopers \u2018Waged War on Motorists,\u2019 Federal Judge Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NYT: Kansas Troopers \u2018Waged War on Motorists,\u2019 Federal Judge Finds<\/a> by Mitch Smith (\u201cThe judge said the Highway Patrol had made a habit of wrongly questioning out-of-state drivers in hopes of turning up drugs.\u201d):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

They called it the \u201cKansas two-step.\u201d<\/p>

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.<\/p>

But that two-step, which troopers used often against out-of-state drivers, was part of a \u201cwar on motorists\u201d waged by the Kansas Highway Patrol in violation of the Fourth Amendment, a federal judge said in a blistering opinion on Friday.<\/p>

\u201cThe war is basically a question of numbers: stop enough cars and you\u2019re bound to discover drugs,\u201d wrote Senior Judge Kathryn H. Vratil of the Federal District Court. \u201cAnd what\u2019s the harm if a few constitutional rights are trampled along the way?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cKansas Two Step\u201d was referred to in Shaw v. Jones, 2020 WL 2101298 (D. Kan. May 1, 2020). See Treatise \u00a7 12.18 n. 11 (\u201cAnnotation: Wayne LaFave, The \u201cRoutine Traffic Stop\u201d from Start to Finish: Too Much \u201cRoutine,\u201d Not Enough Fourth Amendment, 102 Mich. L. Rev. 1843, 1898 (2004) (argues officers can \u2018obviate any and all time and scope limitations\u2019 by performing \u2018the well-known Lt. Columbo gambit [\u201cone more thing \u2026\u201d]\u2019); 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.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update: WaPo: Troopers detained a Black man. He exposed their unconstitutional conduct.<\/a> by Tobi Raji:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s birthday.<\/p>

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\u2019s not.<\/p>

What happened next is an example of a policing practice known as the Kansas \u201ctwo step,\u201d 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.<\/p>

. . .<\/p>

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT: Kansas Troopers \u2018Waged War on Motorists,\u2019 Federal Judge Finds by Mitch Smith (\u201cThe judge said the Highway Patrol had made a habit of wrongly questioning out-of-state drivers in hopes of turning up drugs.\u201d):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reasonable-suspicion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55426,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55420\/revisions\/55426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}