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A ruling earlier this year by an appeals court in San José, Costa Rica ruled that random searches of vehicles without good reason by police oversteps their powers and infringes on people’s rights.
The Costa Rican Public Security Ministry regularly sets up check-points near airports, ports, borders and on main highways to search at random vehicles passing by and in this way dissuade and also detect potential criminals. Such check-points have resulted in many arrests with drugs, human trafficking, illegal weapons and expired licenses among other things discovered by happenstance by police.
But this is not an acceptable use of police force, said the Court of Appeal in Goicoechea, in resolution 2015-0040 issued January 15, and recently published in the official state bulletin La Gaceta,
“The police can not requisition people at random or at will on the pretext of a simple suspicion, as this is violation of fundamental rights such as personal liberty, privacy, and freedom of transit,” read the sentence.
The sentence further explains that,
“Arresting and imprisoning people on public roads, whether at police check-points or outside of them, based on a simple suspicion, are actions that generate the violation of fundamental rights, and may entail the use of subjective judgment or bias by police or judicial officials in acting on the basis of simple suspicion.”
This decision is based on a specific case in which the police stopped a vehicle because they had information that the four subjects traveling in the car had caused a disturbance, and apparently had even been involved in a shooting. Police stopped a car with four people in it based on this suspicion and found that three of the people had no police records – and were released, but one was arrested for allegedly carrying a gun without a permit.
The judges threw out the evidence in this arrest saying that police did not conduct the search in accordance with seeking evidence for the specific case under suspicion. In the ruling, judges regarded the individual’s basic human rights as above preemptive work by the police.
According to the judges, police can monitor situations and vehicles on the country’s roads, but their police activities such as stopping and searching vehicles and individuals must be related to the investigation of a specific crime, and must be carried out by using a criteria of “reasonableness,” in other words, simple suspicion is not sufficient.
This case sets a new precedent in Costa Rica in considering that detaining a vehicle and ordering a person to get out of a vehicle and have their vehicle searched without justification exceeds the police powers granted by the country’s constitution.
Will those police check-points disappear? Time will tell.
