Highway Patrol can’t buy time to use drug-sniffing dogs. Stop the Kansas two step | Opinion
The way Kansas law enforcement officials wage war against illicit drugs flowing through the state needs an overhaul.
Civil rights organization ACLU of Kansas wants a federal judge to bring an end to a questionable practice known as the “Kansas two step.”
Based on evidence heard this week in open court, U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil should order a stop to a procedure that routinely violates the U.S. Constitution by illegal search and seizure.
Here’s how it works, according to the ACLU: At the end of a traffic stop, a trooper takes a couple steps toward the patrol car, then circles back to probe for more incriminating information. A voluntary interaction with a driver, the highway patrol calls it. We’d call it a questionable practice that needs to end.
The procedure buys time for troopers to get a drug-sniffing dog to the stop, according to the ACLU. And the tactic is illegal.
No one is above the law, ACLU legal director Sharon Brett argued in open court — and that includes officers tasked with enforcing laws on the state’s roadways, Brett contends. She’s right.
This year alone, Kansas state troopers have twice been found in federal court to have violated someone’s constitutional rights during traffic stops.
Unless there is reasonable suspicion to believe that a crime has occurred or that there is probable cause to search a vehicle, a routine traffic stop should never morph into a drug investigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015’s Rodriguez vs U.S.
A traffic stop may not be measurably extended beyond what is necessary to walk a drug detection dog around the car, the U.S. Supreme Court held.
In 2018’s Jimenez v Kansas, the Kansas Supreme Court also ruled that a routine traffic stop is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment and could become unlawful if prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete the mission.
Kansas Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. Herman Jones is being sued in federal court. A civil trial began this week at the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas. But Jones and the agency he leads shouldn’t be the only ones on the hot seat. Every law enforcement agency in the state should be under the microscope, too.
Even in theory, the Kansas two step is bad policing. Not only must the highway patrol dismantle this unlawful tactic, but other agencies across the state should immediately adopt a new approach in removing illegal drugs from the streets.
Not only does extending a traffic stop to find a bogus excuse to conduct a roadside drug search violate the U.S. Constitution — the practice is inherently sloppy police work. As a result, multiple arrests and convictions have been challenged and overturned in Kansas courts.
Is that how Kansas, the so-called free state, wants to be known? We doubt it.
Motorists from states coming from or traveling to states where marijuana is legal, are perpetual targets, the ACLU argued this week. And of course, recreational cannabis is legal in Kansas’ neighbor states to the west and the east.
Will Judge Vratil, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, agree with the ACLU and order an immediate end to the Kansas two step?
We hope she does.
