Colorado City lawyer contests vehicle searches
COLORADO CITY (AP) - A sign on Interstate 20 co-opts a familiar phrase of America's anti-drug advocates, but local law enforcement certainly hasn't welcomed its message...
``Just Say NO to Searches! 915-728-5505,' reads the billboard erected by Colorado City lawyer Pat Barber.
The sign, posted on Barber's ranch about 70 miles west of Abilene, has set off a debate about First Amendment rights to free speech and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches - and set off police officers in the area.
A call to the telephone number yields a tape-recorded message encouraging law-abiding travelers to ``just say no' when police ask to search their vehicles for drugs during routine traffic stops.
``An innocent citizen ... should know that when an unreasonable search request is refused, the officer must let him go,' Barber advises.
Law officers are not amused.
``I think it would be fair to say we resented it at first,' Mitchell County Sheriff Pat Toombs said. ``But he has a right to his opinion.'
Barber, a 52-year-former county prosecutor, said his main goal is to create a fundamental debate about roadside searches: Do they yield enough criminal cases to justify intrusions into glove compartments, trunks and luggage of law-abiding travelers?
``Nobody wants to see us turn into a Third World police state where you can't walk across the street without a drug dog in your crotch,' Barber said. ``Police may want it, but people don't want it.'
Thus far, Barber has aimed most of his barbs at the West Central Texas Interlocal Crime Task Force, which operates in a 15-county area surrounding Abilene.
Billy Schat, the task force commander, said that no one has complained about his interdiction officers and that they have never used threats or intimidation to get consent to search a vehicle.
``We don't operate that way,' he said. ``We don't have to. Most people give permission to search.'
Officers with probable cause - the smell of marijuana coming from a car, for example - don't need a warrant to search the vehicle. But officers without probable cause cannot pressure travelers into a consensual search by threatening to detain them while a magistrate issues a search warrant, Houston criminal law expert Ted Wilson said.
Barber said he has heard stories of people left to repack their belongings after officers found no drugs and left.
Schat estimates that 1 in 20 traffic stops results in a search. He said his two interdiction officers have racked up impressive statistics since he implemented the program in January: 1,153.66 pounds of marijuana confiscated; 7.2 pounds of cocaine; 20 pounds of heroin; 17.23 grams of methamphetamine; 10 vehicles seized; three stolen vehicles recovered; one DWI case; and the arrest of a prison escapee.
Searches that do not yield drugs are not reported.
Texas Department of Transportation officials also had a problem with Barber's sign. They said his billboard violated the Highway Beautification Act and threatened to fine him $1,000 a day if he didn't remove it.
Barber filed suit against the highway department. The sign, he argued, sits on his own property and carries a political opinion that cannot be censored.
Last month, District Judge Suzanne Covington of Austin granted Barber an injunction, which means the sign can stay up until a trial next year.
In her order, Covington said Barber ``will probably prevail on his claim that the statute (Highway Beautification Act) as written and as enforced is an unconstitutional infringement of his rights of free speech under the Texas and U.S. constitutions.'
