When a Cop Knocks on the Window, Just Drive Away (in Wisconsin)

Fear no more that
heart-in-throat moment when a police officer knocks on your
driver’s side window and you think to yourself, “oh shit. Now
what?” Because the answer is to just put the car in gear and cruise
away—at least, if you live in Wisconsin. Earlier this month, the
state’s Supreme Court ruled that a tap on the glass does not in and
of itself give people reason to assume they’ve been detained, so
they’re free to go about their business.

Just don’t roll over the cop’s foot.

The decision actually came in a case that didn’t work out to the
defendant’s benefit. On Christmas morning in 2011, Deputy Matthew
Small of the Grant County Sheriff’s Department noticed a car with
its engine running in a parking lot. He found the vehicle’s
presence “suspicious.” He parked directly behind the car,
approached and knocked on the driver’s side, and asked driver
Daniel Vogt to roll down the window. The result was a blast of
booze breath which got Vogt busted for drunk driving.

Vogt argued that Small had no reason to conduct a traffic stop,
and that any evidence obtained by it should be suppressed. While
the appeals court agreed with him, a majority on the supreme court
reversed, saying that Vogt was under no duress and didn’t
have to interact with the deputy. Wrote
Justice David T. Prosser for the majority:

Although we acknowledge that this is a close case, we conclude
that a law enforcement officer’s knock on a car window does not by
itself constitute a show of authority sufficient to give rise to
the belief in a reasonable person that the person is not free to
leave.

Really?

The court adds, “The objective of law enforcement is to protect
and serve the community. Accordingly, an officer’s interactions
with people are not automatically adversarial.”

Do you ever get the impression that judges really don’t interact
with the same police officers the rest of us meet? Or at all?

For the record, Deputy Small told the court that if Vogt had
revved the engine and driven away, that would have been fine by him
because he “had nothing to stop him for.”

Uh huh.

Vogt apparently felt a little boxed in during the encounter, and
the appeals court agreed that “when a uniformed officer approaches
a vehicle at night and directs the driver to roll down his or her
window, a reasonable driver would not feel free to ignore the
officer.” But this is is a misinterpretation of “social instinct”
to defer to authority, says the Supreme Court.

All right, then.

That leaves Vogt screwed. But Wisconsin residents are free to
drive away from the cops. That’s what the court says.