NPC
特別な目を開けるためにパトリックを殺す
- Joined
- May 23, 2015
- Messages
- 7,316
Hi everyone -
Thank you all for the feedback!
I decided to stop by a criminal defense attorney office near my place that I googled a few hours ago just because I was getting paranoid this may not be the end of it and the cops were going to raid my house or something.
Basically, he told me I was SOL. He said that what the probation officer did was called a "consensual encounter" and was totally legal in my state. Basically, he said it was my fault the moment I answered his first question, and that by doing so I basically "gave legal implied consent" to the "encounter". He said what I should have done was immediately told him that I didn't want to answer any questions and asked him to leave me alone, but, because I didn't, he had every right to follow me and ask me questions in a public place. He said that the probation officer also could keep me there because something I may have said could have given him "reason to believe" I had drugs. I told him nothing I said would have implied that. Then he asked me if I had it on video. I told him no, but the store cameras in the parking lot may have. He said unless they had audio there is no way to prove that I didn't say anything incriminating for him to keep me there while a cop came with a drug dog.
He also said that what the cop did was totally legal in my state because both my car and myself was in a public place, and they can walk a police dog anywhere in a public place. He said that all it would have taken was the dog to bark on me or my car and it would have given them probable cause to literally (completely legally) rip my car apart searching it.
He also said that since it was Target's property and someone with management authority basically was cool with him being there, I can't do anything at all about him being there in the future. He also said probation officers have powers to go to places of business to verify that people who are on probation are holding down a job, and I have no way of knowing if that is what he was doing there. He also said the ETL-AP probably didn't do anything illegal and that one of the TMs who heard what I said could have "suspected that a crime was going to occur" if they thought I was serious about getting drugs from the dude that was high, and that they could report that to the police.
So, basically, he told me I was screwed, but to tell him to leave me alone in the future and not answer any questions if it ever happened again.
Oh and the best part? He charged me $80 for the "consultation".
Well if it happened in the parking lot...Target doesn't own the parking lot, so that's not really on their property. I dunno if that makes a difference.