Police will know what they must document in order to make a legal search after a traffic stop.
Mark G. MastroianniSPRINGFIELD – A state Appeals Court ruling will help law enforcement safely make traffic stops, according to Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni.
“Law enforcement needs to know and the public needs to know that officer safety, when they are stopping cars, is really of paramount importance,” Mastroianni said.
In the ruling the court said police in Boston had the right to order two men out of their truck after they smelled unburned marijuana. The court said police correctly documented other factors which, combined with the odor, made it okay for them to get the men out and search them and the truck.
The ability to legally search suspected drug dealers and their vehicles is key to protect officers from armed assailants, Mastroianni said.
This Appeals Court decision, Commonwealth versus Kevin Bradshaw, followed a much-talked-about state Supreme Judicial Court decision in another marijuana-related case.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in late April the odor of marijuana wafting from a car was no longer sufficient reason for police to order people from their vehicles, citing the commonwealth’s partial decriminalization of pot as the linchpin of its argument. That case was Commonwealth versus Cruz.
The Appeals Court, in the Bradshaw case, wrote the difference between that case and Cruz case was that in Cruz there were no other factors besides the smell of marijuana.
Mastroianni said though the Cruz decision caused alarm to some, he had been careful to say police could still search people and their vehicles if there were other indicators there may be drugs.
What both decisions do is spell out what officers must document to have their searches upheld, Mastroianni said.
In May, city police charged 32-year-old city resident Dion Charles with cocaine trafficking and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute after a traffic stop.
A police sergeant asked Charles to step out of the car after he smelled an odor of marijuana and saw scales and packaging materials in plain view, police said.
A police spokesman said the visible drug paraphernalia, combined with the smell of marijuana, gave sufficient grounds for the search.
Mastroianni said prosecutors and law enforcement will use the Cruz and Bradshaw decisions which “just tell us the way we have to go about it and what we have to put on the record” when justifying a search where there is the smell of marijuana.