A long time ago, a pair of white kids were slowly cruising though inner-city Cincinnati, (at least, I think it was Cincinnati), in their expensive car. They forgot to use their turn signal to change lanes, and a passing cop immediately pulled them over. The drivers said some suspicious things, and the cop, believing them to be cruising for drugs (on the basis that a pair of rich white suburb kids had no legitimate business in inner-city Cinci, which was the actual reason he pulled them over), searched the car, found the drugs, and arrested them.
The kids challenged their convictions on the argument that the cop was really pulling them over for no probable cause beyond the fact that they might be drug cruising. The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, reasoning that the kids were acting suspicious, but more importantly, because the cop can always pull over for a traffic violation, and if he just happened to find reason to search the car while he was there? So much the better.
This has become known as a pretext stop--say you want to pull over the suspected drug dealers, maybe get a glance inside the car, have the dog do a quick sniff by--but you don't have the probable cause at that moment. Odds are, if you follow them long enough, they'll break some traffic law. Once pulled over, the odds become much greater that you can find the PC to search the car.
I mention this, because our gnomish friend forgot to mention a bit of excitement on the road out of Denver.
We're going down I-76, when suddenly I see the flashing light of the police car behind me. For once, I wasn't speeding, so I was understandably confused as to why we were being stopped. The friendly state trooper pulls up, brings his flashlight out, approaches us, takes a look in the car, shines the flashlight on the stuff in the back and says "your license plate bulb is out. Where are you folks headed tonight?" We explained that we were on a road trip, he took our registration and insurance info, ran it, came up with nothing, commented that our car was pretty loaded up, and then let us go 10 minutes later, wishing us a safe journey. To the trooper's credit, he was extremely courteous and polite, and I can say that he was a stellar example to police officers everywhere, and the purpose of this post is meant as a quick foray into legal instruction, and not complaint.
I only mention it because subsequent research has turned up that I-76 is a prominent route for meth distribution. I'm sure that had absolutely nothing to do with why an out-of-state car that could be loaded up pretty good was pulled over late on a Saturday night in the middle of nowhere on a dead license plate bulb. Nothing whatsoever.
It's a good thing you two are both heavy heroin addicts and not meth users, otherwise, you could have been in big trouble.
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