Huff Post covers "drug" stop

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
May 8, 2012

It's not often that you get to watch a traffic stop and vehicle search from the dashcam's point of view. But now you can.

Watch this stop by a Collinsville, Ill. Police officer, Michael Reichert. In December 2011 a driver and a friend had left St. Louis and were returning to Ohio. They were stopped along what is locally considered a mecca for officers and their departments that want to confiscate vehicles and money in asset forfeiture proceedings.

I first heard of those "lucrative" activities in traffic stops on east-west interstate highways in southern states. Mexicans who had worked agricultural jobs in Florida and who were heading back to Mexico would get stopped. Their vehicles and cash from earnings were taken in custody and often lost, when the drivers could not maneuver the U.S. legal system to recover their property.

Ofc. Reichert stopped the wrong driver that morning. That driver retained the Chicago law firm of Meyer & Kiss, a firm known pretty well to our own McHenry County Sheriff's Department in the Pavlin Federal Court case.

Read the May 8th Huffington Post story and watch the video from the dashcam here.

Know your rights. When the officer tries to sweet-talk you into allowing him to search, don't fall for it.

What do you think would have happened if Huff had allowed the search and a minute amount of "personal" illegal substance had been found?. Would Ofc. Reichert's "I won't be concerned" have turned into "Reichert 1, Driver 0"?