[image-1]Mother Jones took a ride with the Ohio State Highway Patrol recently, garnering a close look at how officers intercept drugs being trafficked across the state and, otherwise, “hunt criminals.”
It’s a good read. With the heroin addiction crisis growing worse by the hour here in Ohio, the OSHP plays a vital role in the law enforcement corner of the solution. Last year, the patrol “seized 167 pounds of heroin—the equivalent to about 2 million doses on the streets—and 64,708 opiate pills,” MoJo‘s Julia Lurie reports.
So far this year, troopers have made 4,531 drug-related arrests. (See the map, which shows how arrests have been made along every inch of major freeway in Ohio.) But in the MoJo piece, Lurie explains how officers do that, how they take a hunch and turn it into an arrest — or a broader investigation.
The sergeant’s job is, in the split second that cars pass by, to look for telltale signs of drug couriers. It’s typical for people to see the car, slow down, and then speed back up once they’ve passed him—those are the people he’s not interested in. He’s not interested in people speeding, or the drivers who look confident and relaxed. He is interested in rental cars, overly cautious drivers who stay below the speed limit, people who look in their rearview mirrors at him as they pass by, cars with tinted windows, drivers who look like they’re scrambling to move or adjust something as they pass, cars with recent fingerprints on the trunk. Cars that move into the right lane or that are closely tailing another are also red flags—they’re trying to distance themselves from the patrol car and blend into their surroundings, says the sergeant. Ultimately, a lot of the job is based on gut instinct: After years of watching thousands of cars go by, “your intuition will tell you when something’s wrong,” says [Lt. Robert] Sellers.
During Lurie’s ride-along, she’s there for a few weed busts (including the seizure of “two quarts of marijuana Kool-Aid”).
The piece is a helpful glimpse across the yellow line, one affords a bit more clarity on how officers are tracking drivers and enforcing various drug laws. One supposes, though, that the marijuana Kool-Aid isn’t as significant a problem as the millions of doses of heroin coursing across Ohio asphalt in a given year.
Read the full Mother Jones piece here.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2017.
Seeing fingerprints on the trunk lid of a car passing by at 70 mph. The ability to really tell drivers are looking in their rearview mirrors at them at said speeds. The uncanny ability to detect “confidence” or lack therof at said speeds, from many yards away, both parties enclosed in a sheet metal cabin… AMAZING! What incredible superheroes!!! Their incredible experience and training somehow morphs into powers of observance and intuition way above mere mortals. Being a cop automatically gives you 20/10 vision. Who knew.
Look no further for a more clear cut example of the unhinged narcissism of cops. I personally do not trust anyone who claims they can see prints on a car’s surface passing by them on a highway and can only assume such ridiculous overconfidence only leads to incompetence.
What malarkey. They do whatever they feel liked doing because they can. Hell, they have stopped drivers with what they thought were red-and-orange Ohio “drunk plates”, only to discover they had stopped someone for “Driving While Being From New Mexico.”
Nope, cops ain’t interested in speeders or drunks, just looking for weed dealers and people who are eating, or drinking a shake, and moving that sandwich or cup around.
You damn well better be looking in your rearview mirror as often as possible, what with so many assholes on phones and texting, and being “confident and relaxed” on today’s highways is a good way to get yourself killed.
Looking in the mirror on the Indiana Toll Road gave me the few seconds I needed to save my life and get out of the way of some frat boy doing a hundred while babbling away on his goddamn phone. and there was not a cop in sight…or out of it.
Distracted driving should carry the same penalties as being drunk. You have to be constantly on the alert. Just alert enough to make some Ohio cop wonder about you and pull you over…one of the many joys of living in North Missitucky.
Chuckles the Clown
Awesome. That’s also called, “lying”, officer. You see, you need a thing called, “reasonable suspicion” to pull somebody over going “below the speed limit”…because *that* isn’t a crime and the “average citizen” lacks your well-honed instincts. Ergo, they wouldn’t find your suspicions reasonable for a *specifically articulatable crime* (nor would you…you just think they have done “something wrong”). So, why not just admit the truth? (oh, that’s right, you’re permitted legally to lie all that you want to…but not about something that YOU did that violates the rights of a citizen) The truth is that in spite of no reasonable suspicion, you’re going to pull them over anyway, commit the criminal act of fabricating a reason for pulling them over (I can’t WAIT until every vehicle is equipped with a black box data recording system to finally put an end to this little criminal secret of law enforcement…data and video and audio that utterly can impeach any lies that you might make about your reasons for violating our protections against search and seizure), then you’re going to trick them into pefmitting you to search their vehicle (or, just lie about probable cause to eliminate the need for a warrant). Then if you find anything, it’s your word against theirs in terms of the stop and search OR if you don’t find anything, it’s still revenue for the state and at worst a complaint to your supervisor regarding your breaking of the law MANY times by urinating on the constitution that you swore to uphold and defend.
You’re worse than the drug dealers you bust. At least they are true to what they do. They don’t pretend to be criminals while secretly enforcing the law. You, on the other hand DO…just with roles reversed. At the end of the day, you’re both criminals.