My regular reader (Hi Jeff!) will recall that there are two sections of Colorado Politics that I especially like: the Out West round up and the Court Crawl. The later offers up a very interesting story about law enforcement to our east, in the great state of Kansas.

As initially reported in The Denver Gazette, it appears the state patrol in Kansas has a particular interest in cars heading into or out of our fair state of Colorado. Kansas is not known for being very liberal, despite a city of just under 20,000 folks that is literally named “Liberal.” And there is also a town of Liberty, Kansas, home to 78 hearty souls, but I digress…

Back in December of 2017 a Denver-bound minivan was pulled over by the Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP) for speeding, as they were clocked doing 14 miles-per-hour over the speed limit. The trooper, upon issuing a speeding ticket, noted that the van looked “lived in,” which is not a crime as far as I know. He walked away, then returned to the van to ask where the two brothers, Blaine and Samuel Shaw, were going. They said to visit family in Denver. Suspicious, eh? Not so much…

But the trooper then detained the brothers until a drug sniffing dog could arrive. The brothers refused permission to search the van, but when the dog “alerted” on the van, that gave the trooper legal justification to conduct a search, which he did.

The troopers found no marijuana, and only plastic bags that smelled marijuana-ish, and, rather importantly, Blaine’s medical marijuana card. Now it is true that as of right now, medical marijuana is not legal in Kansas, but the state house has passed a bill legalizing it. The bill is still working through the legislature, but it appears Kansas will, in the next year or so, depart the increasingly short list of states without a medical marijuana provision (because I know you want to know, those states are: Alabama, Idaho, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming).

The brothers were then required to drive 700 miles out of their way, to Hays, Kansas, so that the troopers could make copies of the medical pot card. Apparently, there were no copy machines between the traffic stop and Hays, nor any phone with a camera to snap an image. Nope, they had to drive 700 miles to make copies.

A few days ago, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the class-action lawsuit filed by the brothers against the Kansas Highway Patrol can continue to trial, over the objections of Kansas authorities.

Good.

The lawsuit alleges that the Kansas law enforcement community – not at all happy with “liberal” Colorado legalizing marijuana – have created a “drug trafficking corridor” designation for Interstate-70 heading east out of Colorado. The suit claims that vehicles are targeted for iffy traffic stops as they exit the Centennial State, and that the KHP then looks for excuses to conduct drug sweeps. The technique is sneaky: the drivers are told they are being stopped for a traffic violation, and then the drivers are told they are free to go. The trooper takes a few steps back, only to return to the drivers’ windows to “engage in a conversation” that is now, in the KHP view, “voluntary,” removing any requirements of probable cause for a vehicle search.

Sneaky, eh?

In my brief two years as an Air Force cop, we were trained to avoid sneaky stuff, and to be fully and completely clear with anyone we stopped. And we were not permitted to pull people over for “fake” traffic stops in hopes of tricking them into a larger criminal charge.

I get that Kansas is a hard-red GOP state that seems to continue to hold to a lot of false beliefs about marijuana. I myself don’t really get the appeal of pot, but I’m quite the stick in the mud anyway, having never been drunk or high in my life.

But I do care a great deal about liberty and not just the charming little town in Kansas, which boasts of quite a few attractions for such a small town, including the Liberty Jail Historic Site and the Belvoir Winery, if you are in the mood for some Kansas wine.

Look, if you decide to transport marijuana to other states, you best know what you are doing, in terms of the law. Driving pot across Kansas now is, well, pretty dumb. But just driving into Colorado to visit family should not be probable cause to do a drug search (which turned up nothing). And compelling two brothers to drive 700 miles extra is just rude and arrogant.

I suspect it will take a national change in the law for marijuana to be legalized in Kansas, and I don’t see that happening any time soon. But I would hope that this class-action lawsuit will give the good people of Kansas law enforcement pause, and perhaps they will rethink their policing strategy on I-70.

Liberty isn’t just a town in Kansas.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.