Our local newspaper in this part of northern AZ often has stories about local or state police pulling over a driver on a minor traffic offense, then their drug sniffing dogs alert on pot, heroin or meth concealed in the cars. Often it looks like DWH (Driving While Hispanic), but just as many whites get nailed, too.
In today's paper, a middle-aged white guy was pulled over for "expired registration" (a postage-stamp-sized sticker on the license plate whose color changes from year to year); and a young white woman who "failed to signal a lane change" on an Interstate. In both cases, the K9's alerted, and the cops found felony quantities of meth and pot. I wonder what made the cops put the dogs on those cars.
Any claim to privacy for drivers is pretty much eroded. There is a legal fiction out there which holds that driving is a privilege, not a right. With that, the police have a broad ability to conduct warrantless searches on the most specious grounds.
