The title comes from Adrian, not me, but it fits. Just the kind of thing you’d expect to see on an official law enforcement vehicle for the sheriff’s office of the fourth largest county in the United States, right? Plastic pink flamingos and junk cars on cinder blocks in the front yard of every county facility are coming soon, I hear.

The first time, I was waiting to get into a maximum security area of a jail after hours. There was some kind of problem with the normal intake area for attorney visits at the facility, so a detention officer had to walk me around the outside of the building to the back entrance for employees. The detention officer was a very wholesome-looking girl in her early twenties, short and frumpy with long brown hair and a bounce in her step. We walked up to the back entrance, and she informed me that she didn’t like entering that way because she had to undergo a “rectal scan.” Would I have to endure one as well? Confused and understandably worried, I kept my mouth shut. She skipped up to a door, punched in a number on a console to the right of the door, and put her eye up against a little, colored glass patch above the keypad. The door clicked open and I relaxed, confident I wasn’t going to be the victim of an anal cavity search. The word “retinal” just isn’t in her vocabulary, I guess.

The second time was during the examination of a witness. An officer in a DUI case was explaining why he stopped my client. The officer, who was sporting a flat-top hairdo that made him look like he came straight out of an 80′s action movie, indicated that he stopped my client because my client was driving “erotically.” Taken aback, I inquired about what exactly my client was doing with his compact car that the officer found to be erotic. Demonstrating with exceptionally clear diction that he had no clue “erotic” and “erratic” are different words, the officer said it was my client’s random speeding up and slowing down. He continued to use the word “erotic,” at all times employing extremely precise pronunciation. He indicated that erotic driving was a very common trait among drunk drivers. He would always stop drivers when he witnessed erotic driving, and to him, drunks tend to be the most erotic drivers of all. If I was better at keeping a straight face, I could’ve kept the questions coming forever, but alas, being deadpan is not my strong suit. I really need to work on that.

From what I’ve read about the case, the facts sound all too familiar. An informant tells the police he has buyers who want to buy a large quantity of marijuana. Police set up a meeting where the informant meets with the buyers and establishes the terms of the deal. The buyers check out a sample of weed provided by officers and prove they have the money. Later, at the buy spot, officers arrive with the full load of marijuana. Before the transaction is over, the SWAT teams arrives and arrests everyone involved. The police and the informant go home after a long day of work. The buyers go to jail.

There’s always a lot more to the story. Informants don’t cooperate out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re usually working off their own charges. They get busted selling or transporting drugs themselves, and in exchange for a probation deal or a lesser prison sentence, they help the police find other traffickers, buyers, and brokers.

It isn’t even that simple though. Like I just mentioned, these reversal operations usually start with that felon informant telling officers someone is looking to make a big marijuana purchase. Informants can, and do, take advantage of people who are desperate. The person looking to make a large marijuana purchase may be looking to do it because the informant told him it was an easy way to make some money.

The person the informant targets may not even be the person with the cash. The informant’s target may just be a poor, desperate person who sees brokering a marijuana sale as a way to survive. In this economy, people are desperate, struggling to feed their families. Informants prey on that, turning ordinary citizens into drug buyers and drug brokers. Five or ten percent off the top of a six figure transaction is going to sound awfully appealing to someone who’s starving.

Officer Ledesma’s murder is a tragedy. My heart goes out to his family. I never knew him, but by all accounts it seems like he was a good man. Undoubtedly, he was a brave man. He was willing to risk his life, a risk that was ultimately realized.

Thinking about all my beliefs, even those most strongly held, I can’t say for sure that there’s any government function I’d personally feel was worth the risk of leaving behind a spouse and young children. People like Carlos Ledesma are probably the best and the bravest among us, but his valor was misdirected. The greatest tragedy of all is that he died in a situation that was probably created by a crooked agent of the police and where the police themselves brought the drugs.

My firm has handled these cases. Officers whose names now appear in the news are familiar to me. I’ve read their reports and prepared for interviews with them. My involvement, however, is with the alleged brokers, lookouts, and buyers. They are victims too. Their children also may be forced to go without parents; not forever, but often for years.

When the police become drug dealers, all of the rules break down. Officers put themselves in danger to do these operations and are closely involved in the subsequent criminal cases. Accordingly, the offers are especially harsh. In negotiating, some prosecutors use a twisted logic that really embodies the hypocrisy of the situation.

They say they can’t make a lenient offer, not even for someone who simply helped the broker and brought neither the money nor the drugs, because “there were guns involved.” Obviously there were guns involved. Officers brought them because these deals are dangerous. Do prosecutors really think a first-time broker coaxed into assisting with such a deal by an informant isn’t smart enough to do the same?

They say they can’t show mercy because “it was a lot of marijuana.” Of course there was a lot. The informant set the price and the quantity. The officers showed up with a van full of drugs. If they set up something involving under two pounds, it would be a lower level felony without mandatory prison. The police came with more because they decided to come with more.

I spent some time a few weeks ago talking about these cases with a seasoned defense lawyer who said the Phoenix Police did reversal operations in the 90′s but quit it because they were just too dangerous.

Phoenix woke up, so why is Chandler still doing it? Why do Chandler Police still insist on sneaking into other cities, selling drugs to dangerous criminals and leaving a trail of drug war victims in their wake? Why are they still subjecting themselves to the possibility they might eventually become victims as well?

Every time I hear about someone getting charged with DUI on something other than a car, truck, or motorcycle, I marvel at the stupidity of anti-DUI zealots. How dangerous are these drunk bicyclists and lawn mowers? More importantly, how much more dangerous are they than a drunk person without transportation? Do authorities really think they’re protecting the public by prosecuting that lady in her wheel chair? It seems to me that what MADD really wants is a “being-under-the-influence” (BUI?) or “existing-while-intoxicated” (EWI?) statute that will impose the same outrageous penalties we have for DUI.

All of this reminds me of the legendary “Steve” of YouTube fame. I have no clue if Steve’s videos are real, but they appear authentic to me. I imagine many of this blog’s regular readers have already seen them, but for those of you who haven’t, they’re basically how-to guides on what not to do when stopped by a law enforcement officer. I don’t know if he’s ever been charged with lawn mower DUI, but that’s definitely why he gets stopped. Sure, the guy’s crazy, but does he really deserve a DUI? If police just left him alone, I bet everything would be fine. Do any of you think he looks dangerous? How much jail time does he deserve just for riding around?

Any movement by a defendant is a “furtive gesture” suggesting he was hiding something. If the defendant says his pants were falling down and he had to pull them up, the cop will say the defendant was trying to hide something in his pants. “There was no good reason for Mr. So-and-So to be pulling up his pants.” The trial court will almost always agree with the officer and find the defendant was not pulling up his pants. People pull up their pants when they are loose. A number of my clients wear pants that are always on the verge of falling down. Judges must know that, but when an officer says “there was no other reason for Mr. So-and-So to do what he claimed he was doing,” it’s over. The officer’s version of facts justifies the search. A well-coached cop who is adept at sticking with his opinion and selling it to the judge can often make even the strongest defense motions fail.

If every single objective fact suggests the officer’s opinion was wrong or an outright lie, the appellate court is probably going to say the trial court’s factual findings were supported by the record and not clearly erroneous. That’s the standard. Forget about all the evidence the defendant presented showing he was pulling up his sagging pants. Maybe they even fell down in court; it’s a hazard of the style. You can bring the falsity of an officer’s statement to the appellate court’s attention, but you’ll rarely succeed. The officer said the defendant had no reason to pull up his pants, so there’s your basis. Suck it up, the finding wasn’t erroneous. Your best shot is bringing it up in a petition for post-conviction relief, but you’ll be filing that with the same judge that believed the officer in the first place.

Every time I read a ruling that relies an officer’s opinion about the facts to reach its conclusion, I imagine all the unconstitutional searches and seizures that are going to be upheld as a result. I really wish courts would formulate standards that can’t be automatically satisfied by a well-thought-out lie about what the defendant was doing. Just the facts. Let the court apply the law.

What I’d like to be able to do is take the marijuana from the police evidence and put it in one car out of ten and let the officer try and pick the right vehicle. I’ve never heard of a judge allowing such a test, but I’ll keep looking and trying. Alternatively, I’d like some type of scientific test that could be used to call into question the officer’s ability. I think the American Bar Association, ACLU, or some other organization could do a great deal of good by funding a study that could be cited by attorneys to prevent such blatant violations of our 4th Amendment rights. Shouldn’t marijuana be of comparable odor to something else that would allow meaningful comparison? I can’t smell unburnt scented candles or bottles of cologne riding around in people’s trunks. To my knowledge, no such study or test exists, and without it, I don’t see any indication that judges are suddenly going to start realizing the officers aren’t being honest (or alternatively stop pretending it is plausible).

If I’m wrong and this officer could smell such an incredibly small amount of pot through plastic baggies, metal, rubber, nylon, glass and any other materials blocking his nose from the weed’s odor, then why isn’t this officer simply allowed to walk around parking lots all day pointing to vehicles that contain marijuana? Why do we have police dogs if officers can smell as good as if not better than our four-legged friends? How many people have been subject to search and then released when nothing is found? In my experience, this is very common among poorer people, especially minorities, and it certainly doesn’t help instill confidence in police officers. Most importantly, I wonder how many people are in jail because of some dishonest officers who are willing to testify that they smelled something that they didn’t. You can argue that the ends justify the means, but if officers can tell “little white lies” to win cases, when does it stop? In case you think that I simply have a problem with police officers, my father was a police officer and specialized in marijuana interdiction for many years. I don’t think all cops are willing to lie to make a case. I just find it disheartening when I meet the ones that do.