As Trial Over Illegal Traffic Stops Begins, Highway Patrol Admits It Doesn’t Track Rights Violations By Troopers

The ACLU has been helping victims of the Kansas Highway Patrol hold the agency (and its troopers) accountable for their actions. Multiple lawsuits have been filed targeting the “Kansas two-step” performed by troopers. After delivering citations or otherwise making it clear drivers are free to go, the troopers take a step back to the car to start asking exploratory questions or otherwise drag things out until a drug dog arrives.

Unless an officer has probable cause to extend a stop, they can’t. That much was made clear in the Supreme Court’s 2015 Rodriguez decision, which said a traffic stop is over when the objective has been completed. If someone was speeding, it’s over when they’re handed a speeding ticket or issued a warning. Dragging things out in hopes of coming across probable cause isn’t constitutional.

There’s another case in play here as well: the Tenth Circuit Appeals Court’s 2016 Vasquez decision, which said officers couldn’t use the existence of out-of-state plates as part of the reasonable suspicion matrix. Given that the Highway Patrol patrols interstate highways, they should expect to see plenty of out-of-state plates. And if it’s commonplace, it can’t possibly be “suspicious.”

But the Kansas Highway Patrol continues to operate in contravention of both these precedents. Flagrantly.

The lawsuit alleges 96% of KHP’s civil asset forfeitures in 2019 involved out-of-state motorists driving on Interstate 70. In 2017, drivers with out-of-state plates comprised 93% of KHP traffic stops.

The lawsuit currently underway in Kansas deals with the KHP and, specifically, (soon-to-be-former) patrol superintendent Herman Jones, who performed one of these “two-step” stops on a Colorado family traveling cross-country in their RV. Jones extended the stop after issuing a warning for crossing the fog line. He then detained the family for another 40 minutes to allow a drug dog sniff and the tossing of the RV’s interior by three troopers. Nothing illegal was found, but the troopers still managed to damage the toilet, throw clothes everywhere, and break the bathroom door off its frame.

It’s an eight-day bench trial. The first day of the trial doesn’t seem to have gone particularly well for the KHP and its defenders. And it opens with an inadvertent admission of how law enforcement sees constitutional rights: not as guaranteed protections against government overreach, but rather as annoying obstacles that need to be surmounted. This is how officers are trained to view the law, according to the person doing the training.

“The goal of (interdiction) training is so troopers understand the limitations of the Fourth Amendment” and “what related case law allows them to do,” Sarah Washburn, criminal counsel and former-Fourth Amendment and interdiction instructor for KHP troopers, testified on Friday.

It’s not the officers being “limited” by the Fourth Amendment. That’s not the point of this training. It’s there to instruct officers on how to bypass constitutional protections and (hopefully) get away with it.

Even more ridiculous is this fact: the KHP did not alter its policies on traffic stops following the Vasquez decision — precedent generated by the rights violations performed by its own officers.

KHP Trooper Brent Holden took the stand Friday in the U.S. District Court of Kansas, where he testified there were no agency-wide policy changes implemented in KHP after the Vasquez ruling.

Washburn, the supposed training and expertise expert, admitted she didn’t even bother adding the 2016 decision to her training until 2020, and then only to instruct officers how to extract “consent” for extended stops and searches from drivers.

She also admitted there was no way for her to ascertain whether this training is effective, or whether it leads to more questionable stops. There is absolutely no follow-up performed by those providing instruction to state troopers.

There’s also no follow-up within the KHP, which has been sued at a steady clip over the past few years for violating the rights of out-of-state drivers.

Holden testified KHP does not have a system in place for maintaining information on troopers who violate motorists rights. 

He said remedial training is not required for troopers who are found to have violated motorists’ rights during a traffic stop. 

The training encourages officers to brush off constitutional protections and judicial precedent. Their employer can’t even be bothered to pretend to care about the rights the officers violate. And that combination appears to have worked. At least up until now. If this is what law enforcement is admitting to this early in the case, it’s going to be extremely difficult for the KHP to walk away from this lawsuit with a win.