IANAL.
It seems that the police was investigating the suspect for a separate crime "bail jumping".
There was a warrant, and the suspect was detained and searched with the powers granted by a judge via a warrant.
Again I ask, what's the 4th amendment violation here? That a cop assumed something? A cop is free to assume whatever they want, as long as that's not what they rely on to make a detention or search.
>relying on an existing warrant and criminal record to justify [locating someone], and manufacture probable cause.
A judge issued for the detention of an individual, the police did so. Did the cops rely on the warrant to manufacture a probable cause? What are you arguing here, that the detention was legitimate, but the search was not and the evidence of the crime should be ignored via poisonous fruit? The detention was legitimate, when someone is detained, they are searched, that seems legitimate to me.
I think the confusion arises from a lack of distinguishing between probatory and investigative evidence. A conviction requires hard probatory evidence ( beyond a reasonable doubt or preponderance depending on the charges), a search requires 'probable cause' (pre-search readily apparent, time sensitive, suspicion of a crime).
The purpose of a warrant is to bridge the gap between investigative and probatory evidence. Cops and detectives can obtain investigative evidence (that guides the investigation but is not sufficient to obtain a conviction) by their own means with standard limitations, certain actions like searches are protected by requiring approval from a judge, that approval is called a search warrant. The justification for requesting a warrant can be entirely investigative, it does not require probatory evidence as that would be against the very nature of the system being described, the purpose is to obtain probatory evidence without vulnerating individual privacy rights by adding a check and balance from a different power.
So it wouldn't make sense to argue that the hypothesis was weak, or that flock cameras were used, whatever investigative evidence or hypothesis they had is irrelevant, what matters is only that they had a warrant, whether they got it by submitting the inter-state drug crossing as evidence, or submitting something else as evidence,
Here's where I had to google some nuances. In the case there already existed an arrest warrant, a search of the person would be legitimate, but not a search of the car. So if there's a probable cuase being mentioned, it relates only to the searching of the car, not to stopping the car (as that would have been covered by the arrest warrant).
The probable cause mentioned in filing seems to be based on odour, whether that's enough, I don't know, it appears that it is.
I can see though how this might be nuanced, and how an attorney might argue that odour of an individual officer is insufficient. Maybe some defenders can get him out of the case, but does that mean that the system is working incorrectly? Where? What are we arguing that an officer committed an unlawful search of the car after a lawful arrest? Certainly a routine incident (unless grossly unlawful), wouldn't even merit disciplinary action. And to my understanding completely unrelated to
The complaint even mentions that the officer found a weed grinder in the top of the car, which could have easily been used as probable cause, as it was readily apparent, but it was only found during the search.
So yeah it doesn't look like there was a 4th amendment violation, and even less that it would be related to the flock cameras, there was an arrest warrant, and as far as the search it was not related to.
I'd like to add that every time one of these cases against Flock comes up, it never amounts to anything, I get the argument that this can "start with unsympathetic cases", but I take it there's no cases of dumb teenagers without priors? Like this is the worst abuse that can be found relating to flock cameras? Flock is 'advertising' with cases of lost children being recovered, those have to be weighted, at least I will. I won't analyze every case of a criminal being subjected to a potentially unlawful search, that was actually 100% on point and actually found the evidence.
In the end, the pre-crime is actually done against flock in the (left) public opinion, it's being judged based on slippery slope arguments on potential dystopian futures, instead of what is actually happening.
Bringing up cases like this that aren't even borderline is probably doing more damage if anything, there were cases of officers stalking their ex-gf with the cameras, and it seems that the audit trail doesn't track specific warrants, it just asks for a general string that's usually filled with 'warrant', those are true weak points, this is just engagement bait to get blue dress/white dress debates where the left defends the rights of criminals and false positives(which might be legitimate), while the right sees criminals being prosecuted for their crimes. If that's what it comes down to, I don't see the dress blue, what can I tell ya.
Edit: i don't get why the bail jumping charge was dropped though, like how can you lack evidence for that? If the conviction was never fact based but law based, then that may be grounds for arguing the arrest warrant was illegitimate and thus argue poisonous tree?