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If you hand the cop your unlocked phone, and they hop over from the ID app to other apps and find evidence they think implicates you in a crime, what happens? If you hand the cop your phone, and then say “hey I need that back to call my lawyer” and they say “Sorry, no, I need to keep this for processing”, what happens? There are cases every day where cops are just outright wrong about the law, your rights, or their own department’s policies. The law protects them from being either criminally or civilly implicated in most of those cases, because they’re not expected to be experts in the law. For most purposes, to have a case against a law enforcement officer for violating your rights, you’d need to show that their behavior was so egregious that it was crystal clear they should have known their action was a violation of your rights. And courts have looked very favorably on LEOs historically in this context: things that to a lay person would count as “obvious” have not met that bar. So while you may, after spending a pile of money, time, and energy, find out that yes, the police officer overstepped, you’ve still been severely impacted by their action. |