Speaker 1: Hey folks, I'm attorney Roger P. Foley and I'm driving from Port St. Lucie to my office in West Palm and I decided to do something different today as I'm driving. I just randomly looked up an arrest search and I randomly picked an individual and I looked up their police report. I looked up their probable cause affidavit and I'm going to tell you a story now about what the police report says and I'm going to tell you if I had been that attorney how I would attack the case. Now here are the facts. There is a drug suppression unit in this county. In this county they patrol this area. So drug suppression unit. What does that mean? That means that they try to get drugs off the street. How do they do that? Confidential informants, guesswork, investigative work. They stop people. They look for drugs. They make charges stick. That's what a drug suppression unit is. This police report says that they were in a high crime area where there's prostitution, where there's known drug sales. That's nice. What if Roger P. Foley happened to walk down that street? Does that mean that I'm engaging in purchasing or selling of drugs or prostitution? Could I not just be at the gas station? So they're in this bad neighborhood, high crime area. And a vehicle pulls into a racetrack parking lot and it pulls into one spot and then backs up into another spot. I don't really see anything illegal about that, but that's what the police report says. There are two individuals in the vehicle. They exit the vehicle and they are talking, probably figuring out who's buying gas, what snacks they're getting inside, whatever. Who knows what they're doing? Nothing illegal. The police report says that the person's driver's license is suspended. So how do they know that? They happen to be in the parking lot. They see the car pull in. It backs into a parking spot. Okay. They start with, he's got a suspended license and agents, police officers, make contact. They say when they make contact, they smell the odor of marijuana coming from the car. They ask questions. The person says, oh, I think I'm going to go to jail. They say, is there anything else in the car? And the person says, yes, there's some, uh, some heroin in my bag. Okay. They arrest. They charge. How do you fight it? How do you fight it? Well, you start off because it's a felony. Well, let's go to case filing. I'm going to argue that the whole stop is BS. A guy pulling into a parking lot at a gas station, whether it's a high crime area or not, does not give police, right, does not give police the ability to stop them to do an investigatory stop. It just does not. Now I would find out from my client because they say that they backed into a space. I'm going to use the police officer's words against him or her, right? He backed into a spot. Usually when you back into a spot, especially, especially at, um, gas station might've pulled into to get something out of the store, or you could have pulled into the gas pump. I don't know which, but because they said pulled into a parking space, I'm going to assume that it's the parking space at the gas station. Okay, so let's go with that assumption. There's nothing illegal about backing into a parking space. There's nothing illegal about exiting your vehicle and talking to your passenger. Where does the illegality start? The suppression team approached, the suppression team had contact. Okay, so let's talk about that. How did they have contact? Did they come over and go, Hey guys, how you doing? What's going on? Just what's, how's your day going? Or did they go, show me your hands? I don't know which, maybe it's something in between. So I want to know how they interacted. Why is that important? Because if the car was backed up to the store and the officers pulled in front, either with their vehicles or by their person and blocked their ability to enter their cars and exit that space, I would argue that it was an investigatory stop, that they had no chance that they acquiesced to the police officer's authority, to this suppression team's authority. And then I would argue that's when they found out that he didn't have a driver's license. That's when they ran the David check. I would compare the time of the David request or the dispatch tapes or the CAD reports with any body cameras that they had. I would also request and hold any videos that the racetrack gas station had because they have videos. So I would contact corporate and I would send a preservation letter to that department. If I needed to do a subpoena deus ex ticum, meaning get a special order from the judge, I would to tell them, listen, I know you have nothing to do with this, but this happened on your property. There's evidence that can help in this case and we want it. Okay. If, and I'm just guessing here, dealt with a lot of suppression teams during my 19 years, they aggressively approached. I'm going to say that they blocked their matter of egress to leave, to exit. They prevented them from getting into their vehicle. And when they did that, they did that prior to smelling the odor of marijuana. They may have eventually got there, but they probably jumped the gun. So I would file a motion to suppress the stop of the vehicle. There's nothing in the police report that says that they have a confidential informant. There's nothing in the police report that says that they have a warrant. There's nothing in the police report that says that they witnessed a civil infraction, you know, a traffic infraction, backing into a parking space from one space to another. I don't think cuts it. So how did they approach? Now, that's how I would attack it. I mean, that's, that's it questions, concerns. Tell me just a new thought, taking random police reports in random counties and telling you how a criminal defense attorney would attack the facts of that case. Anyway, let me know what you think. See ya.