If a driver is stopped by police, does the officer have the right to demand car documents? Whenever someone is stopped by police because of a traffic violation or a regular check, does the police officer have the right to demand car documents and proof of insurance without a search warrant? Please note that the question is about the car documents or anything other than the occupant's identification (which any officer has the right to demand).
As has already been said, as far as the vehicle registration, the officer likely already knows who the vehicle is registered to and whether it's expired or not before he walks up to your car, or at the least, he can easily find that information out. The proof of insurance is a different matter. The officer will need to see it to know if you have insurance or not. To him, it doesn't matter what the reason is that you don't provide it to him. Left it at home, misplaced it, lost it, destroyed it, or just refuse to provide it because you feel you have the right to refuse. He can't "force" you to provide it (unless he is able to search your car and happens to find it there). He can only issue you a ticket for not providing it. But your attitude could play a part in what happens next. Being upfront and letting the officer know you have left your documents at home could help your situation. In my experience... one time that this sort of thing happened to me, the officer agreed to hold my drivers license and allowed me to bring the documents to the police station and retrieve my license. Another time, in a parking related matter, I was issued a ticket, but I was allowed to bring the required documents to the police station where they then "invalidated" (cancelled) the ticket. Of course this won't always work, and is not at all likely to work if you are far from home. Keep in mind, (as far as I know, in most states) the real infraction is that you "don't have insurance"... that you failed to provide proof when asked, is secondary. In many cases (likely nearly all cases), if you show up in court and provide documents that your insurance is current, and was current at the time the ticket was issued, the judge (or the prosecutor) will likely dismiss the case with no penalties. But, what the officer has written down on the ticket about your attitude and what you told him at the time, may have an effect on how this all plays out.
Using two states as examples: In California, emergency vehicle operators are exempt from pretty much the entirety of the rules of the road (VC 21055). They can pass you on the right if they want to. Department policy might say no, but that depends on department policy and the details of their emergency vehicle operation course. However, California law requires all drivers to pull to the right when an emergency vehicle approaches (VC 21806). Even though an ambulance driver legally could pass you on the right, you are required to pull right. According to the BLM's emergency response policy for fire personnel in California, this means passing on the right is heavily disfavored: the emergency vehicle operator doesn't know that the driver (who is clearly not paying much attention) won't suddenly notice them and comply with the vehicle code, cutting them off or running into them. Other policies/things which seem to reflect policies say similar things, and all make it clear that operators need to be careful that the car they're passing won't drive into them. In Maryland, the law is a bit different. Section 21-405 of the Maryland Code obligates drivers to move to the edge of the roadway. This means either edge, so on a divided highway you might pull left. On a non-divided road, you obviously pull right. In this case, the vehicle may end up passing you on the right, but again: they are going to be careful about it, and would rather you get out of their way so they don't have to worry that you'll suddenly see them and drive into them.
First, if the police officer had reasonable cause to believe that a crime was in progress then the search would not be illegal in the first place. However, let's assume the search was illegal. Normally the evidence would be excluded under the exclusionary rule. However, there are two exceptions known as the independent source and attenuation doctrines. The evidence of the police officer as to the imprisonment would be excluded. However, the evidence of the victims is independent of that illegal search and their testimony would be admissible. Further, that testimony would allow independent discovery and admissibility of any physical evidence in the property. However, if the victims were dead, then there would be no independent discovery and none of the evidence would be admissible.
Sending a letter to the red light camera company or police department may or may not get the charge dropped before trial. But whether the charge gets dropped before trial isn't the important question -- after all, people sometimes do get charged wrongly -- rather, the question is, if it goes to trial, whether you will win. Since this question is about California, all traffic tickets in California, including red light camera tickets, are criminal cases (that's why the case will be named "People of the State of California v. [your name]" in court documents). The burden of proof is on the prosecution, and the standard of evidence is "beyond a reasonable doubt". There is no provision in California law to fine or otherwise punish the owner of a vehicle for a moving violation, except through a conviction as the driver who committed the violation. If you plead not guilty and it goes to trial, the burden will be on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the driver was you. If the driver in the picture does not look like you, there is no way they can meet that burden, and the court must find you not guilty. (In most cases the prosecution will immediately drop the case when they discover that the picture does not look like you.) Note that you have an absolute right to not testify in your own criminal trial where you are the defendant, so there is no way they can force you to testify at the trial about who the driver was if it was not you (which would be irrelevant to the case against you anyhow). If you do not say who the driver was, and the police department fail to guess who it was (e.g. by searching for drivers whose licenses share the same address as you for someone who looks like the one in the picture), then nobody gets fined or punished for the violation. This is true even if you know full well who the driver was, or even if you were pictured sitting right next to them. You don't need to claim not to know who the driver was, because whether you know or not doesn't matter -- you have no legal obligation to tell the identity of the driver even if you know, and you cannot be fined or otherwise punished for the violation if you intentionally refuse to tell.
The police officers themselves are covered by Qualified Immunity - to put it briefly, a government official acting in their official capacity in a discretionary act (as in, they have some discretion in whether/how they carry out the act) is immune from suit so long as they pay reasonable deference to relevant law. In the case of the police, so long as the search or seizure itself is reasonable (either because there is a warrant, or because they had probable cause), they can take appropriately destructive measures to carry out their duty. Even if the search or seizure is later found to have been unreasonable, an officer may still have Qualified Immunity unless their action violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which reasonable person would have known" (Harlow v. Fitzgerald). However, a search/seizure doesn't give the police license for arbitrary destruction, whatever they do has to be reasonably pursuant to the legal search/seizure. For example, if a suspect is barricaded in a house with a gun, they can knock down doors, windows and walls to apprehend them. On the other hand, that does not mean the officers can then break open safes to try and find evidence - once their probable cause for the entry is fulfilled (apprehending the suspect), they need to get a warrant to do more than a plain sight search of the house. Warrants will specify what items are being searched for, so even with a warrant the police have to take reasonable measures to carry it out - an example of an unreasonable measure would be to tear into walls in order to try and find a stolen bicycle. On the other hand, tearing into walls could be justified if their warrant included searching for drugs from a dealer, where it is not uncommon to hide them in the walls. States and the Federal Government enjoy Sovereign Immunity from suits in most cases. There are some exceptions, but none would apply in this case so long as the general policy of the police department was not illegal or unconstitutional. However, county and city governments do not enjoy Sovereign Immunity and state governments and the Federal Government often allow suits against them for negligence from their actors, so someone injured by unreasonable police action can usually try to recover damages from the officer's department.
See Rodriguez v United States 575 U.S. ___ (2015). It has language describing the extent to which a police office can make "ordinary inquiries" incident to a traffic stop (internal citations removed): Beyond determining whether to issue a traffic ticket, an officer’s mission includes “ordinary inquiries incident to [the traffic] stop.” Typically such inquiries involve checking the driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver, and inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof of insurance. These checks serve the same objective as enforcement of the traffic code: ensuring that vehicles on the road are operated safely and responsibly. The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. The government is only prohibited from unreasonable searches and seizures. Warrantless traffic stops are allowed if the officer has a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the driver has violated a traffic law. Once stopped, the officer can make "ordinary inquiries" described above. Regarding Fifth Amendment concerns, the Fifth Amendment's document-production privilege does not apply to regulatory type records that are required to be kept by law or items analogous to a required record. Baltimore City Dept. of Social Services v. Bouknight, 493 U.S. 549 (1990)
united-states Yes. The right to film police carrying out their duties is constitutionally protected. See, e.g, ACLU v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2012) and Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011). Of course, one could always imagine some fact pattern in which some other consideration overrode this constitutional right (e.g. filming would have had the effect of destroying evidence that was light sensitive, so the police were using night vision equipment). Related: Boulder, Colorado pays $95,000 to settle the claim of a man arrested for filming the police.
There are a variety of situations like border crossings, entry into official buildings, etc. in which there is a general right for law enforcement to demand identification on a suspicionless basis, none of which seem to apply in this case. But, the most common justification for demanding ID is to make what is called a Terry stop (after the name of the U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the legality of these stops in the face of 4th Amendment limitations on searches and seizures). Wikipedia accurately summarizes the law in this area as follows. A Terry stop is: a brief detention of a person by police on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity but short of probable cause to arrest. The name derives from Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that police may briefly detain a person whom they reasonably suspect is involved in criminal activity; the Court also held that police may do a limited search of the suspect's outer garments for weapons if they have a reasonable and articulable suspicion that the person detained may be "armed and dangerous". To have reasonable suspicion that would justify a stop, police must be able to point to "specific and articulable facts" that would indicate to a reasonable police officer that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity (as opposed to past conduct). Reasonable suspicion depends on the "totality of the circumstances", and can result from a combination of facts, each of which is by itself innocuous. The search of the suspect's outer garments, also known as a patdown, must be limited to what is necessary to discover weapons; however, pursuant to the "plain view" doctrine, police may seize contraband discovered in the course of a frisk, but only if the contraband's identity is immediately apparent. In some jurisdictions, persons detained under the doctrine of Terry must identify themselves to police upon request. In Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, 542 U.S. 177 (2004), the Court held that a Nevada statute requiring such identification did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, nor, in the circumstances of that case, the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self incrimination. New York is one of the many states that has a stop and identify statute, that allows an officer to insist on presentation of an identification any time there is a legal basis for making a Terry stop. The New York stop and identify statute is N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law §140.50. This says: 1. In addition to the authority provided by this article for making an arrest without a warrant, a police officer may stop a person in a public place located within the geographical area of such officer's employment when he reasonably suspects that such person is committing, has committed or is about to commit either (a) a felony or (b) a misdemeanor defined in the penal law, and may demand of him his name, address and an explanation of his conduct. 2. Any person who is a peace officer and who provides security services for any court of the unified court system may stop a person in or about the courthouse to which he is assigned when he reasonably suspects that such person is committing, has committed or is about to commit either (a) a felony or (b) a misdemeanor defined in the penal law, and may demand of him his name, address and an explanation of his conduct. 3. When upon stopping a person under circumstances prescribed in subdivisions one and two a police officer or court officer, as the case may be, reasonably suspects that he is in danger of physical injury, he may search such person for a deadly weapon or any instrument, article or substance readily capable of causing serious physical injury and of a sort not ordinarily carried in public places by law-abiding persons. If he finds such a weapon or instrument, or any other property possession of which he reasonably believes may constitute the commission of a crime, he may take it and keep it until the completion of the questioning, at which time he shall either return it, if lawfully possessed, or arrest such person. 4. In cities with a population of one million or more, information that establishes the personal identity of an individual who has been stopped, questioned and/or frisked by a police officer or peace officer, such as the name, address or social security number of such person, shall not be recorded in a computerized or electronic database if that individual is released without further legal action; provided, however, that this subdivision shall not prohibit police officers or peace officers from including in a computerized or electronic database generic characteristics of an individual, such as race and gender, who has been stopped, questioned and/or frisked by a police officer or peace officer. In this particular case, if the law enforcement officer were more clever, he would have said that he was concerned that the crew might be using the drone to case the property in order to commit a crime there in the future. And, if he had said that, this would surely pass muster for reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop and would have provided a legal justification for demanding ID. The "about to commit a crime" justification for a Terry stop makes it, in practice, much broader than probable cause for an arrest, which requires that the police believe that a crime has actually already been committed or is in progress, not just that someone is about to commit a crime (a person may be subjected to a Terry stop even if his actions which tend to show he is about to commit a crime have not yet progressed to the level of an attempted offense for which someone may be convicted and are not truly imminent). (Actually, strictly speaking, the officer is only entitled to determine the information that an ID would reveal, and not to insist that someone actually have the ID on his person, under state law, although a local ordinance or court interpretation of the law could possibly give him the authority to actually demand an ID to determine this information. For example, California courts have held that a duty to provide basic information implies a duty to provide it in a verifiable manner.) The fact that the law enforcement officer failed to articulate any legal basis for the stop, yet went on to arrest the individuals, weakens the case that the stop was valid considerably, because generally, at least in theory, a law enforcement officer is supposed to be able to articulate the reasonable suspicion for the stop at the time that the stop is made and not days later after the fact. In addition to stop and identify laws, some states (including Colorado) have held that failing to provide an ID on demand, under the "totality of the circumstances" can sometimes constitute obstructing a police officer and provide a basis for an arrest. It isn't inconceivable that a law enforcement officer in this situation could make that argument and prevail at least in showing probable cause for arrest on that basis, even if it wasn't a sufficiently solid argument to give rise to an obstructing a police officer conviction.