failure to ID in the state of Texas [closed]

Question

I was pulled over and the cop said that the reason was that when he ran the tags he couldn't find insurance on the car.

A former officer told me that, that is not a reason to pull someone over. He said if someone is speeding, ran a red light, made a wrong turn etc. those are reasons to pull someone over and THEN if it comes up that you don’t have insurance or they can’t find it I'm their system, that's when they can add that on as no proof of insurance. But he said simply pulling someone over because he doesn’t see insurance is an illegal stop.

Was that a legal stop? Then he asked for drivers license and proof of insurance. The car was not mine so I told him I didn’t have proof of insurance and I didn’t have my license on me. So he gave me a pen and pad to write down the name. I write down my sisters name assuming because it's her car he’d be able to find it's registered to her and he'd find the insurance I didn't know it was my first time ever ever stopped. Another office came and he asked for MY name in specific so I gave it to him and he said is that the same name you gave to the other officer I said no I gave home my sisters name because that's who's car this is.

In the end the original cop told me to step out, he searched the car (didn't find anything) and then arrested me for failure to ID and false information.

Should I have been taken to jail if I didn’t intentionally give him a wrong name? I told him I didn't intentionally give him a wrong name and in the end he still had my full name, address and date of birth.

Answer 1

The legality of the stop may be somewhat up in the air, but it would seem that the vehicle is not in the Texassure database, so it is reasonable to think that the person driving is not insured, and therefore is breaking the law. And that is all that is required: that the suspicion is reasonable. Until someone makes a sufficiently persuasive legal stink about this, it is probably a legal stop. This article gives some legal discussion. One applicable case is US v. Broca-Martinez, a Texas case where a person was pulled over for being "unconfirmed" w.r.t. the insurance database: the court held that this was a reasonable suspicion.

Thereafter, a charitable interpretation is that you misunderstood the request in providing your sister's information when he asked for your license and insurance: but you are expected to understand that when they request your license and proofs of insurance, they mean you the driver, and not the car owner. That they is even more suspicious, although I understand your confusion. At your hearing you cane explain why you didn't comply with the first officer's request, and the judge may they chalk this up to a simple misunderstanding rather than intentional deception. The problem is that you are expected to know – whether or not you've ever been pulled over before – that you have to provide license, registration, and proof of insurance. You will have a hard time making it believable that you didn't understand what the officer told you and what the law requires.

Answer 2

The stop is legal. The plates are and are required to be publicly displayed and the police car’s computer is probably scanning all the plates around it and raising flags for things like no insurance or other reasons to stop a car.

Police officers make arrests when they have reason to believe the arrestee has committed an offence. They don’t have to be right – indeed they quite often aren’t. So, yes, your arrest was justifiable.