If you are driving down the street, with your windows up, and your vent on, can you smell marijuana from the car in front of you?
If you are driving down the street, with your windows up, and your vent on, can you smell marijuana from the car in front of you? I know I certainly would never be able to accomplish such a biological feat. Even when my windows are down, unless the person is right next to me blowing blunt smoke into my car, or they have a pile of nugs that they are wafting the scent over from into my open window, I would never be able to smell it.
Apparently, police in Virginia have a super smell power that I do not possess. According to Officer.Com, “Police officers in Chesapeake have been pulling over cars on the grounds that they smelled marijuana while cruising down local roadways, defense attorneys say.”
“We drive our patrol car with the vents on, pulling air from the outside in, directly into our faces,” Officer Barrett C. Ring said late last year in court during a preliminary hearing, according to a transcript of the proceedings received by Officer.Com. “Commonly, we’ll be behind vehicles that somebody in the vehicle is smoking marijuana, and we can smell it clear as day.”
“The idea that police can drive behind a car and smell marijuana is preposterous,” Assistant Public Defender Matthew Taylor, told Officer.Com. “What do we need drug dogs for if (people) can drive behind cars and smell marijuana? If cops can get away with this, they will have total authority.”
“It’s very creative policing,” Suffolk Commonwealth’s Attorney C. Phillips Ferguson said, suggesting that he hopes the tactic catches on in other areas, according to Officer.Com.
This is really going on in Virginia? If someone tried to pull this BS out West, we would never stand for it and would be marching to City Hall. This is police profiling plain and simple. How can a police officer distinguish between the smell of marijuana, and the smell of a skunk on the side of the road? How is this not a blank check to go and do whatever the officers please? Any Virginia readers out there that have seen this being done?
