"I kept it for his courtesy, like I said with his phone, key and wallet," Bradley told investigators. "It's my mistake. I forgot to give him his stuff back and he tracked it."
Gotta love voting/flagging rings.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095123
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095098
Just HOW many stories of civil asset forfeiture, blatant theft, assault, murder, and everything do we need to see that policing in this country is a criminal gang backed by government?
And even for simpler crap that everyone gets hit by, is speed limit laws. You can be pulled over for even 1mph over 'limit'. And more gross, is that its not a safety issue, but a revenue enhancement issue. Its a way they can steal legally, AND fish for more things to screw you over with.
And naturally, any thing these pigs do "in the operation of policing" makes them immune, for <handwaving magical> reasons.
Holy cow.
Assuming the best case version of this guy’s story he arrested this guy for the DUI and then forgot to check in his wallet, key, and laptop or whatever. Fine, not unbelievable. But it doesn’t look like he followed up about the DUI thing.
> That's more than the salary of the Illinois State Police director.
(Although it's sometimes blatant graft and corruption, it's not always the case, a lot of police in African countries are very poorly paid and this is a way of supplementing their income. They typically target people who can afford to make a small donation and it's generally a friction-free experience if you play by the rules).
Much as I hope Bradley would be fired and lose his pension for abuse of power, this part is on Holland. In my state, refusing a breathalyzer is by law an automatic penalty because of the "implied consent statute" that you accept when you get behind the wheel: automatic license suspension for 1 year, and you still have to face the officer's testimony. There are consequences to the refusal that have nothing to do with the officer.
So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn.
One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down.
Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed.
So instead they’re just going away for everyone.
From https://isp.illinois.gov/JoinIsp/BecomeATrooper:
Officers may retire from the ISP with pension benefits under the following plans: Tier 1 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system on or before December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 50 with 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 20 years of service.
Tier 2 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system after December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 55 with 20 years of service.
A maximum retirement benefit of 80% of ending salary is earned after 26 years and 8 months of creditable service.
The cop got a free laptop so of course the ball got dropped. The point is he they didn't want it dragged through court where that could be easily uncovered so he just dropped the ball. $5k+ lawyer fees minimum if they decide to prosecute the DUI vs $2k at best laptop. The math is supposed easy for the accused.
So then this guy goes and gets the GPS info, confronts the cop, it spirals, whole thing comes crashing down.
And now the state is going after this cop because he's at the very least implicitly making DUI enforcement look bad.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
See this post elsewhere in the thread too:
I assume it varies but for most places if you refuse roadside field sobriety tests and they feel you have given indicators of impairment they will take you into custody. Then they'll take you to the station and give you the option of taking a breathalyzer and if you refuse again your license is automatically suspended for a year.
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
Prosecutors need cops. Cops bring them cases. Cops testify in their cases. If they piss off the cops they can't do their job.
Yep! Stand around for 4-5 hours on a Saturday morning (often hungover; I personally know cops) and pad that overtime and pension.
He's not brave. He's dense enough to still believe in the system. See also: Knocking on the door of a cop who you've got beef with.
The real problem isn't the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, but the informal doctrine of "police don't get prosecuted for crimes, and if they are, they don't get convicted."
The whole apparatus is shameful.
What does sending "sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers" have to do with cover-ups? Anyways my guess is that it's general policy for police/courts to not release evidence unless it's part of a trial, similar to how the Epstein files weren't released across 3 administrations and took an act of congress to get released.
This sort of character based BS is exactly the problem. The amount the victim got screwed is completely tangential to how upstanding the cops are/were. Justice is supposed to be blind. Punish them for their actual material conduct.
If so, then I think you've got police problems, not police unions problems.
But your car still gets towed even if you pass the tests at the station and don't ultimately get charged because you refused the field test.
Ask yourself why an officer would want to use a set of tests that require being subjective instead of deferring to a breathalyzer.
>No. Field sobriety tests are not mandatory in Illinois. A driver may legally refuse to participate in field sobriety testing without violating Illinois law. These roadside tests are voluntary and are not part of the State’s implied consent laws.
https://dohmanlaw.com/refusing-a-field-sobriety-test-in-illi...
That is horrible anti-american behavior. It's the definition of corruption; and goes against the fundamental principles of the founding of the US.
And, to put it quite bluntly: Cops walking around demanding tips from affluent Americans will quickly get shut down because no one will stand for it.
That bit of justification seems absolutely bananas to me.
Ive had police in Mexico just walk up and steal $100+ from my wallet. It was refreshing as in the US they instead police have just dragged me to jail on fabricated allegations. When Mexican police can get all they want by just stealing my money and not my time, it feels like living in a more free country, liberating comparatively.
Police probably shouldn't be sued for performing their duties. But the issue is that with a few choice words (I feared for my safety/life) their "duties" cover a wide array of actions that a lot of citizens would argue it shouldn't.
Example: There are many cases of Cops stepping in front of a moving vehicle when confronting a suspect, which then is used as a reason to shoot and kill the suspect because "their life was in danger". But it's very easy to argue that the Cop put their own life in danger by stepping in front of the vehicle. IMO, that should not be covered by qualified immunity, and yet it usually is.
I guess?
I mean you go ahead and call that a release.
If it brings you comfort.
The US government is just corrupt from tip to tail. Why everyone continuously acts surprised about these things is genuinely a mystery?
Are you saying people need to put up with racist POS cops?
Per this 2020 article, police offer is at #22 for fatal injury rate in the US:
* https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
It’s like saying why does the drug cartel leader keep selling drugs, he’s swimming in cash (literally).
Should be illegal.
In Seattle, the police are "quiet quitting" (traffic ticketing is down 8x over ~10 years ago) and literally committing fraud and getting away with it (an officer on his second time falsely applying over 24 hours of work in a day, just had to return the pay for that week. There's STILL not computerized time tracking...)
They use the bargaining to set contract terms that restrict how people can be fired.
A union member who gets in trouble can leverage union resources and representation to protect themselves.
One of my family members did a term as a union rep. He was getting really frustrated with some of the little claims that union members wanted to use the union to protect themselves from, but it was part of the job. Fortunately for him there wasn’t a serious incident like this to deal with during his term.
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
I am neither left nor right, but I feel like I need to say this much more in spaces that heavily lean left -- I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...
I've known several non-bastard cops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_police_shoving_inciden...
Look for “if cops say I smell Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
>In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
>> And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
> No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way.
Where I live municipalities do not run schools, rather it is the province. My municipality breaks out fire and paramedic separately.
Smaller municipalities or regions (~counties) may 'contract out' to the provincial (~state) police for a local detachment, but would have a line item for such payment.
Looking there all that are riskier on deaths either have much lower education requirements, or also pay well.
The right to demand a blood test or other mechanism of having the state own the burden of proof might be inconvenient but it's integral to a fairly operating system, just like the right to demand a lawyer or representation.
And note that “involving” is very much not the same thing as “caused by”. Yes, “caused by” will be a big chunk of it, but there's a reason the latter term is not used.
Having criminal police is possibly worse than having no police. "First, do no harm" right?
I have tremendous respect for the work that good police do. I support laws that have higher penalties for crimes against police and other public workers. But respect is a two-way street. I also support higher penalties for crimes committed by police and other public workers.
Might I suggest that you research it and post what you find.
At any rate, the solution is to fire all of the corrupt cops and strictly enforce ethical and legal rules. Everything considered to be evidence needs to have an actual scientific basis for it. No more arresting people for being drunk because an officer with three months of training is considered to be an expert judge in impairment. Officers caught lying about the basis for an arrest should be imprisoned. Enforce the law, but do it in both directions.
To support the societal belief in law and order, it is much more important to punish the meta issues where the government is itself causing harm. It's not that there should magically be no crime committed by police officers. But rather every single crime should be investigated and prosecuted to the utmost extent.
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
If Mother Theresa or Mister Rogers becomes a cop, ACAB isn't suddenly disproved, because it's not about specific individuals and their specific moral qualities. It's about systemic and fundamental problems with policing as a whole.
See how ACAB is a lot easier to say?
Which is the point of the saying. It’s not that all cops are individually bastardly, it’s that all cops are part of a system that both protects bastards regularly, and does systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth).
Just kind of displays the. corruption and duplicity of the US legal system.
Risk of death?
Risk of injury? How much injury? I've had paper cuts recorded as workplace injuries, I've also had to get stitches after bleeding profusely, are both equally recorded as risk incidents?
What about the risk of getting shot? Just the risk, will I get shot today, has a physiological impact, is that risk recorded?
What about the risk of moral injury? The potential that you're hurt in your soul, because you failed, and someone got injured or hurt?
What about the risk of infectious disease or transmission from needles, blades or bodily fluids?
Police may be a safer job than forestry from a death risk, but there are many risks for police.
I am not sure why some people seem to hate the police so much that downplaying the risks police face. I used to sell drugs and the police were my adversary, but I don't hate them as much as people who have never been arrested. It's very strange. Who do the cop haters call when thieves are breaking into their home with guns?
Not that I have any idea what the content was in this case, but that’s the point. If you’re impugning someone’s character, you need to be a lot more specific than simply parroting vague moral accusations.
They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The U.S. is one of the most punishment-happy countries in the world. Nearly every politician vows to be "tough on crime". This is an incredible thing to say given the past 50 years of policing and justice in the U.S. Won't somebody please think of the children!?
> I am neither left nor right
The "center" is constantly moving and has been, on average, shifting far to the right over the last 20 years. Anyone who claims to be a centrist is therefore either changing their politics with the wind, or was far right all along.
>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests. [...] All 57 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department emergency response team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department.[45] According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers.[46] However, his account has been contradicted by two of the resigned officers, who stated they resigned because of a lack of legal coverage. One of these officers said "many" of the 57 resigned officers did not resign to support the two suspended officers.[47]
Per the article, he refused the old walk-along-a-straight-line-without-swaying, not a blood test (nor even a breathalyser).
Blood tests are not administered in the field, they would be administered at a nearby medical facility, later in this process.
For example, https://www.gov.uk/stopped-by-police-while-driving-your-righ....
I took OpenAI's references as correct without checking legislation as I'm on my phone.
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
A positive result will get you arrested and taken to the station, where they have the (non-portable) court admissible calibrated kit.
I said I hadn't and didn't know anybody who did. It's true that I don't and had not been around any and there's no way my car smelled like drugs. I think I was on the verge of heat stroke and basically didn't respond with any level of stress to anything he said. I was being pulled over for driving without a seatbelt, which I almost never do, but it was 95 degrees and my AC was broken and I couldn't bring myself to put my back against the chair (plus I was in the middle of nowhere).
Another cop also showed up reasonlessly to hang around behind the other one with his lights on after awhile (I'd pulled into a gas station), which I think was also supposed to freak me out. I ended up excusing myself to go stand in the gas station to cool down and when I came back they were gone
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
The concept is right but sovereign immunity is about states and between states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
edit: a source (I assume lawyers.com is reputable..) https://legal-info.lawyers.com/labor-employment-law/wage-and...
Qualified immunity also applies to the officer who individually. The department can be sued still.
For one thing it doesn't happen that much in the first place. In 2024 the rate was 229.4 per 100k in the USA [1] And yet this always gets cited as some reason to keep the police around. These sorts of threats that people cite are exceedingly rare, and yet used to fuel a vision of the world that's one of requiring constantly vigilance and paranoia.
[1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/home-invasion-sta...
The advice given by Toronto police is to leave your car keys out by your front door so that armed home invaders can get what they came for with ease. The police don’t show up to protect you and your property. They also don’t want to risk their own safety around armed invaders.
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
Please give me an example of what you consider "anodyne extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts". Just because you agree with extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts and send stuff like that yourself as blithely as Trump tweets doesn't mean it's "anodyne".
The word you're looking for is "normalized", and that is the problem with today's society, not a justification for extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts.
CHICAGO (WLS) -- This is the second part to a two-part series. To read part one, click here.
A restaurant executive arrested by an Illinois State Police trooper on DUI charges told the ABC 7 I-Team when he discovered his MacBook was missing from his car, he tracked it to the house of the trooper who arrested him.
What followed was captured in a 911 call recording, a cell phone video, and an internal investigation by the Illinois State Police, all obtained by the I-Team.
For three years, ISP Trooper Kevin Bradley was named by a nonprofit as the state's "Top Cop": A moniker given to the member of law enforcement who has made the most DUI arrests statewide.
Over that time, hundreds of drivers were arrested by Bradley for DUI in Cook and DuPage Counties.
But as the I-Team previously reported, public defenders and civil rights attorneys have accused Bradley of "fabricating evidence" and violating drivers' civil rights, arguing many of those criminal cases were later dismissed prior to adjudication, or they resulted in drivers receiving not guilty verdicts.
Local restaurant executive Sherard Holland is one of those drivers.
"It was just a regular, normal day," Holland explained. "Doing a favor for a friend of mine, traveling to pick them up and we were going home when I unfortunately made contact with that trooper."
As the sun rose in the early morning hours of June 2, 2024, Holland says he was confused when he saw the police lights in his rearview mirror.
The son of a Chicago police officer, Holland says he was the designated driver for a co-worker after working overnight when he was pulled over by Trooper Bradley.
The I-Team obtained a copy of the trooper's traffic stop report and dashboard camera footage from that morning.
A driver accused of DUI tracked his missing laptop to Illinois State Police Trooper Kevin Bradley's house. The ABC7 I-Team is investigating.
"I pulled you over because you swerved," Bradley can be heard saying to Holland at his driver's side window.
After speaking with Holland, Trooper Bradley wrote in his report he "could smell the odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from the vehicle."
Bradley then asked Holland to "relocate" by driving down the road to a gas station in Worth Township, passing through several intersections and traffic lights.
At the gas station, Bradley accused Holland of driving under the influence. When asked if he would submit to field sobriety tests, Holland calmly refused.
"No, thank you," Holland told Bradley in the footage.
Bradley took Holland into custody for felony DUI and in the dashboard camera footage, while Holland was in the state trooper's vehicle, Bradley can be seen searching through Holland's vehicle before his car was towed.
Later that day, when Holland needed his MacBook, he said he noticed it wasn't listed on his inventory slip, so he assumed it must be with his car at the tow yard.
"I decided to ping my MacBook," Holland told the I-Team, "and it pinged to an address."
Using Apple's "Find My" feature, Holland says his MacBook was not pinging at the tow yard with his car, rather it was showing up at a Tinley Park home.
"I was fearful of going to retrieve my item," Holland explained. "And I just had to motivate myself and say, 'Hey, I'm going to go get it.'"
Holland says he found his courage, and drove over to the address, where after knocking on the front door, he was eventually met by Trooper Bradley.
"He denied it and began to argue with me," Holland said. "And I decided to call the police."
After filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Tinley Park Police Department, the I-Team obtained a recording of that 911 call.
In it, Holland can be heard speaking to a dispatcher.
"I have an iMac that was stolen last night," Holland told the dispatcher, referring to his MacBook.
"And what did they say when you confronted them then?" the dispatcher asked Holland.
Holland told the I-Team while he was on the phone with the dispatcher, Bradley told him to end the call. In the 911 recording, you can hear Holland say, "How else would I have your address? OK, I'll hang up. I'll hang up," and then the call ends.
Holland and his attorney provided the I-Team a cell-phone video clip that picks up shortly after that 911 call ended, recorded by Holland's wife who was waiting in his car outside of the Tinley Park home.
In the video, Trooper Bradley is seen walking out and handing Holland his MacBook. Bradley then opens his garage door to show Holland his State Police vehicle parked inside, telling Holland the laptop was accidentally left in his state vehicle.
"It was a very traumatic interaction with him," Holland told the I-Team.
The Tinley Park Police Department dispatcher eventually called Holland back.
"Is everything okay?" the dispatcher can be heard asking. "You're fine?"
"Yeah, he's a police officer and for some reason he took my MacBook home with him," Holland replied.
"Oh, gotcha," the dispatcher said. "You'll probably want to speak to a supervisor over there."
That's what Holland did: He filed a complaint with the Illinois State Police, and the I-Team obtained a copy of the state's internal investigation into the complaint.
According to the findings, investigators determined Trooper Bradley never reported the interaction with Holland over his MacBook to Bradley's supervisors, nor did he make note of it in his reports.
In a transcript of an interview Bradley did with internal investigators as part of the investigation, when Bradley was asked why he took the laptop, he said he was doing Holland a "favor."
"I kept it for his courtesy, like I said with his phone, key and wallet," Bradley told investigators. "It's my mistake. I forgot to give him his stuff back and he tracked it."
The report states investigators determined Bradley had violated State Police policies, and he was suspended for one day.
When the I-Team shared this with Holland, he said, "I feel disheartened by that. I feel let down by, again, people who should be entrusted and should be held accountable for their actions."
"I'm outraged," said Brandon Brown, Holland's attorney. "Outraged as a fellow Cook County resident to think that something like that could happen."
"What if he didn't call 911?" Brown asked, "What if he didn't have the Find My iPhone application?"
After months of court hearings for the DUI charges, a bench trial found Holland "not guilty."
Holland is now suing the state and Trooper Bradley alleging his civil rights were violated.
Bradley did not respond to the I-Team's repeated requests for comment. In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
An I-Team analysis of Cook County court records found out of 319 DUI prosecutions stemming from arrests made by Trooper Bradley since 2023, 174 cases were dismissed before adjudication, or the drivers were found not guilty, like in Holland's case.
According to court records, 105 drivers were found guilty, with 96 of those drivers accepting plea deals for lesser charges.
As of last month, 40 cases are still pending.
Brown says there are critical questions that need to be answered about Bradley's arrests.
"How many other people like Sherard, who maybe couldn't afford a lawyer... Maybe they pled guilty or maybe they were found guilty and perhaps their conduct didn't actually match what was alleged," Brown said.
A spokesperson for the Illinois State Police said, "ISP has strong oversight of all officers and addresses any discrepancies or complaints when they are identified."
"It would be irresponsible not to arrest and remove a person off the roads who is suspected of impaired driving," a spokesperson for ISP told the I-Team. "Securing convictions for DUIs in a court of law is a separate process from the role troopers and other law enforcement officers play."
The ISP statement reads, "A trooper makes an arrest when there is probable cause... Ultimately, it is up to the prosecutor to determine whether they can meet the threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
For drivers like Holland, Brown says arrests for DUI are serious and can have a lasting impact.
"It can have a life changing experience," Brown said. "It is devastating. And if you're innocent, that's something that stays with you."
For every DUI arrest made, state police troopers must appear in court, and in evidence motions filed with the court, attorneys have said this has led to a staggering amount of overtime pay for Trooper Bradley.
State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year.
That's more than the salary of the Illinois State Police director.
A spokesperson for ISP told the I-Team Bradley is currently on medical leave after suffering injuries from an accident while he was working.
Copyright © 2026 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.
The final paragraph:
"Court overtime
For every DUI arrest made, state police troopers must appear in court, and in evidence motions filed with the court, attorneys have said this has led to a staggering amount of overtime pay for Trooper Bradley.
State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year."
> Why is someone making that much money [from] stealing a MacBook
instead of
> Why is someone [who is] making that much money stealing a MacBook
Sorry about that.
See "Blue flu" for cases where cops coordinate a strike using sick leave. Another way they strike is by simply not doing their job. They'll just sit in their cars all day and won't respond or will severely delay response to dispatch.
AFAIK, those cops never get a ATF style house cleaning.
You're wrong about that. "Sobriety" isn't limited to alcohol. You'll notice that most laws against drunk driving are actually against being "intoxicated" or "impaired". Breathalyzers and blood tests are for gathering indisputable evidence.
Field sobriety tests are there to determine if you're motor skills are impaired. If an officer observers a person driving erratically and they can't walk a straight line or touch their own nose, they shouldn't be driving. You can be arrested for DUI [of sleeping pills].
The only time police would specify a DUI was for alcohol is if a breathalyzer or blood test showed that. Even if the officer says there was a beer can on the floor and they smelled like alcohol, they could be under the legal limit and be on any number of other substances so the DUI wouldn't specify alcohol.
------- re: below (throttled) ----------
They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.
I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.
All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.
As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.
Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.
There are plenty of reasons that someone might not be able to demonstrate this to the subjective opinion of an officer and be completely unimpaired and competent at driving. e.g. people with atypical minds or bodies
Police generally ask people to do these tests when they have already made up their mind about someone being impaired. The only point of the test, practically, is generate standardized documentation. It is a dog and pony show.
Other countries that have serious anti-driving-impairment programs don't use these types of subjective tests -- they test people for using the substances directly.
If the police decide to have you exit the car and do the field tests, the odds are high they have already decided to arrest you. At that point, it's best to refuse all unless you have had absolutely zero drugs/alcohol. And then the question has to be why did they have you get out the car.
Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it.
And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.
These days, so much of that will be recorded on video, from the dash cam to the body cam, it's usually cut and dry that the person accused is under the influence of something.
> people with atypical minds or bodies
This is a reasonable concern so I don't want to dismiss it but this isn't even close to the typical situation and, to emphasize, the reason for the stop is usually bad driving and the officer is looking for an explanation. Before a sobriety test is administered, there is already a cause for being pulled over. So people who can't pass a sobriety test because they have a physical or mental reason they can't only have that one piece of evidence against them removed.
I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
Not only does it cause significant problems for people who are unjustly jailed and charged for crimes they didn't commit -- but it also lets drunk drivers off the hook when the flimsy evidence fails to convict. These aren't hypotheticals, both are very common.
Police in the US simply need to be equipped with roadside chemical tests for substances. They exist, they just simply don't use them.
Here's is an example of what other countries do:
https://adf.org.au/insights/roadside-drug-testing/
> The officer takes a sample of your saliva by placing an absorbent collector in the mouth or on the tongue. The sample is then analysed at the roadside. If the test is positive, it must be confirmed by laboratory testing before charges can be laid.
Doesn't that sound like a better solution than: "The officer makes you stand on one leg and say the alphabet backwards, if they don't like they way you did it, you are charged with DUI"?
> I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
The more common, and even more scary issue, is that sometimes people undergoing medical emergencies are arrested for DUI and sent to jail instead of a hospital. Which is again another situation that would be avoided entirely by roadside testing.