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Connecticut Resident Stopped By State Police For Radioactivity
Okian Warrior writes "A Milford, CT man was pulled over when a state police car radioactivity scanner flagged his car as being radioactive. The man had been given a cardiac exam using radioactive dye, and had a note from his physician attesting to this, but it raises questions about the legality of the stop. Given that it is not illegal to own or purchase or transport radioactive materials (within limits for hobbyist use), should the police be allowed to stop and search vehicles which show a slight level of radioactivity?"
I am not from USA, but from ex USSR. It's not that we have radioactive waste everywhere lying around,
but there could possibly be some "over the level bolt" lost somewhere in some abandoned base.
So if that bolt happens to end in your car, I would be happy if police stopped me, and checked
why my car was radioactive.
More to the point - if somebody transports nuke, they better get stopped.
Unlikely, what most likely happened is he past by a detector which are mounted usually by truck weigh stations and it set one off. yes that is what those little white box's that hang over the highway are
Or possibly it's some guys strangely interested in trying to bring balance by submitting stories with cops acting normally...
Nuclear radiation is bad and generally to be avoid. The interesting story here is state police cars with built in radioactivity detectors, obviously either checking for dirty radioactive weapons, nuclear weapons or newly arrived aliens hot off the star ships skulking about in their human skin suits ;).
How far does this testing occur, is it only a single state dissolving into professional paranoia or is the whole of the US in on this detection of radiation sources.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I don't. I expect once the terrorist has a nuke, he's going to be able to set it off. If you catch him short of his target, you just get a nuclear detonation in a less populated place. If you catch him in New York Harbor, you're already totally fucked.
And it is. As Lord Acton (yes, a Liberal) pointed out, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And you need merely look at what government does with power when it gets it to see that any power will be abused. Special wiretapping laws supposed to be used only for terrorism get used for totally unrelated investigations 90% of the time. The NSA teams up with AT&T and other phone companies to monitor everything. The TSA... just about anything the TSA does. The government has the power to do border checkpoints... so they set them up dozens of miles from the border and claim they get 100 miles of rights-free zones. Reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech become "free speech zones" surrounded by chain-link fences. The list goes on...
The police state is HERE. Most people don't value freedom at all, happily (or at worst grouchily) submit to any demand the state has, and think something is wrong with YOU if you object.
"reasonable suspicion" is all that's required for a traffic stop - they notice you weaving, driving erratically, speeding, emitting radiation, taking a slug from a Jack Daniels bottle, running a red light, rolling through a stop sign, or violating a host of other safety rules.
If the traffic stop is valid - e.g., they can show there was 'reasonable suspicion' sufficient to stop the car - and the officer has probable cause to believe that there is contraband or evidence of a crime in the car, they may search the car without a warrant. Smelling or seeing alcohol, drugs, weapons, or any other possibly illegal substance certainly gives them probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. When they reach the threshold of probable cause, they may conduct a warrantless search of the vehicle, including any and all compartments of the vehicle which may contain the contraband or evidence.
They cannot search your car simply for "speeding," but if your car is registering as emitting radiation, it's hard to argue that that doesn't constitute "probable cause" for a search - either you're transporting radioactive materials unsafely (a crime), or you're the victim of some bizarre murder plot (a crime), and either way, the car would seem to be involved. It is both reasonable to stop you, and cause to believe there is a crime being committed.
Can you spell out the point that you're making?
It sounds at the moment like you're worried about this being a "slippery slope" to something else. But a slippery slope to what? This seems to be exactly how we would want the police to behave:
-The policeman had solid information that suggested that something was wrong (either a crime or a person in danger from radioactivity).
-He investigated that in the least invasive way possible - he asked the person involved, who explained it.
That sounds like good policework - investigating things that suggest that something's wrong and reacting in a measured and reasonable manner. I would definitely want a policeman to stop me if I was driving along in a radioactive vehicle - I don't want radiation poisoning - just like I would want an officer on foot to come over and speak to me if they saw blood on my shirt and thought I had either been injured or attacked someone. The only unreasonable overreaction I see is dozens of slashdot posters trying to turn it into an excuse to rant about another assault on their civil liberties.
Yes. I tried talking to a police officer. He threw me down with my hands behind my back so that my head slammed into the pavement hard enough to give me a serious concussion and some lingering memory problems. Then he fractured half my ribs, dislocated my shoulder, and strangled me until I was nearly dead, leaving lingering damage to my larynx such that the next day I again almost choked to death from it while just sitting in front of my computer. So thank you for the advice, but I think I will abstain from ever talking to the police under any circumstance. Cops are very dangerous thugs except that they are 100% above the law and can easily get away with anything up to and including murder. Talking to them is like playing Russian roulette. You never know when you are going to run into a psycho cop who will kill you just for looking at him in a way that he doesn't find sufficiently meek or respectful. Best thing to do with American cops is to stay far away. Don't ever forget that they are not your friends. They see you as their enemy regardless of how you see them.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
So terrorists would either shield their payload perfectly or not at all--there's no chance that they'd only shield it down to the level that would be emitted by somebody who recently received an injection of a radioactive dye? That seems like pretty shaky reasoning to stake people's lives on.
And people who have recently received some kinds of radioactive tracers or radioactive implants for cancer treatment can be pretty hot. It is not uncommon for patients to be cautioned to keep their distance from kids and women who might be pregnant. Isotopes used for medical purposes mostly decay rapidly, but particularly early on, they can emit well above background. I knew a scientist who discovered after a test that he could not enter the room with his lab's radiation scintillation counter without screwing up the results.
"Probable cause" does not mean "proof beyond a shadow of doubt." You can legally be detained if a cop notices you driving with bags of white powder in the front seat, even though you may only be a baker transporting powdered sugar to your bakery. Stopping the occasional person who is emitting unusal levels of radioactivity for a benign reason hardly seems an overwhelming intrusion on civil liberty. An unusually high level of radioactivity could be an indication of crimes other than terrorism, by the way--unsafe transport of radioactive materials, for example