Dr. Shades wrote:That's the key word: "Lawful order." GoodK had every right to use his cell phone during the search, so the cop telling him to put it away was not a lawful order. GoodK would've been within his rights to question why the order was lawful.
I love how you focused on one part of that law to the exclusion of all else, Shades. Read the whole statute and as a matter of fact, yes, that officer can tell you to put your cell phone away. You can ask why you need to, you can ask whatever you want, as long as you comply. By not complying GoodK broke the law and is lucky the officer had to leave.
Dr. Shades wrote:Of course, whether or not he wished to piss the cop off further is questionable, since it sounds like the guy was really "badge-heavy" anyway.
Yeah, we can tell that this cop was obviously a badge heavy power tripping fascist simply from GoodK's biased narrative. Nope, totally couldn't be that there's something GoodK isn't mentioning, and it couldn't have been because GoodK was being a smartass to the cop, driving without license plates in a car with a tinted front windshield (which depending on the level of tinting could have been illegal in itself), and going out of his way to make a simple traffic stop more work then it should have been the cop was obviously at fault...
Dr. Shades wrote:That's a sad reality of life in these United States: Even if one is well within one's rights, the cops can make life miserable for one, causing one to weigh whether an assertion of one's rights is "worth it." Very sad, and not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.
Because we should all go around "asserting" our rights for no damned reason at all. GoodK says he had no contraband in his vehicle and other then the missing plates had nothing to worry about for the stop. So other then being an asshole about it, what point is served by "asserting" your rights? And of course it's just the cops who can make your life miserable, and it cannot at all be the other way around.
Point of fact, Law Enforcement is given such leeway because they need such flexibility in order to do their jobs. Sometimes they have to give orders to citizens out of a concern for public safety (and I can make a good argument that having your cellphone out playing videogames on the side of a busy interstate is a safety hazard). But if everyone goes around asserting their rights, eventually some jackass will do this in a situation where their safety and the safety of those around them, the officer included, relies on them shutting the hell up and doing as they are told.
I was afraid of the dark when I was young. "Don't be afraid, my son," my mother would always say. "The child-eating night goblins can smell fear." Bitch... - Kreepy Kat