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Comment by ng12 | Hacker News Reader

They need probable cause to bring in a dog. He should have refused to allow them to search his vehicle or answer any of their questions.

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>They need probable cause to bring in a dog.

Cops have lots of practice with the rights words to say about the person's driving, behavior, appearance, and so on. Or the right things to see. Like a ziploc bag, even if there's sandwich crumbs in it. Or ashes, "residue" (i.e. brown spots on anything), etc. Or constricted pupils, even though it's sunny outside and therefore expected.

My favorite one I saw was Krispy Kreme leftovers being "meth". https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/16/558147669...

Yep. I had a cop tell me he would use anything hanging from a rearview mirror as a pretense for a traffic stop.

(That is to say: hanging things from the rearview, legally speaking, is against law in many jurisdictions — and distracting, for many humans!)

Know the law if you want to avoid being harassed by bad factions of it.

Technically, they only need probable cause if they don't have the dogs with them.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-police-use-dogs-...

He still should not have cooperated, of course. Any extra effort you force the cops to go through gives you some protection.

> They need probable cause to bring in a dog.

AFAIK this is only true in a very limited set of local jurisdictions.

The use of drug dogs to manufacture probable cause is pretty well documented.

My understanding of US law (which could be wrong) is that they need probable cause everywhere in the US if it's going to extend the duration of the stop.

You have to explicitly ask to leave, and they'll ask you to get out of the car anyway as soon as you say you don't consent to a search. Depending on how long it takes the dogs to arrive you could argue about it in court, but good luck.

"I smelled marijuana".

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