Police can wait by a bar to give you a DUI
The police cannot entrap you or coerce you into committing a crime that you wouldn’t otherwise have committed, and then arrest you for it. However, they can do some things that people mistakenly think of as entrapment, such as waiting outside of a bar for people to come out, get in their cars and drive away.
In fact, in some places, police have admitted to doing this. They use it as a way to scare people into not drinking and driving.
What you should know is that this is totally legal. The police are not violating your rights, as they also have a right to be in an open, public area — even if that area is the alley across the street from your favorite bar.
However, the police cannot just pull over every single car that leaves the bar, hoping everyone is drunk. That is not probable cause. You could have been drinking water, you could have had just a single beer, or you could be the designated driver.
Police still do have to find probable cause, meaning something — other than the fact that you came out of a bar — has to tip them off. Most of the time, this means they watch how you drive when you leave. If you go through a stop sign at a rolling pace or drift over the center line, they may pull you over. Whether or not these things happened because you were drunk doesn’t matter; they have probable cause.
Do you think you were illegally stopped by an officer who had no reason to pull you over? Visit our site to learn more about what you can do in Colorado.
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