“The war is basically a question of numbers: stop enough cars and you’re bound to discover drugs.”
The Kansas Highway Patrol has been ordered to stop its infamous “two-step” technique by a federal judge, in what the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas calls a “huge win” for all motorists using state highways.
The U.S. district court ruled KHP’s policies and practices violate the Fourth Amendment, releasing a Friday opinion that the KHP “has waged war on motorists—especially out-of-state residents traveling between Colorado and Missouri on federal highway I-70 in Kansas.”
The trial challenged the constitutionality of the KHP’s policy of targeting out-of-staters and other “suspicious” people for vehicle searches by drug-sniffing dogs, along with the “Kansas two-step” maneuver. The “ two-step” is a technique taught to KHP personnel, in which they end a routine traffic stop and begin a separate effort to dig for information and gain entry to a vehicle to search for contraband.
The experiences of being held on the side of the highway by the KHP were harmful and traumatic for our clients. We cannot overstate how these experiences affected them, and we are gratified the Court saw the unconstitutional harms of KHP’s conduct and intervened.
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