Can an officer pull me over while driving if I am out during enforcement of the Stay-at-Home Order?

It is likely that the newly enacted Order(s) has given law enforcement the ability to exercise greater power when pulling over a vehicle while driving during enforcement of the Stay-at-Home Order.

For Example: Traditionally, a traffic stop is based on an alleged traffic offense (think speeding or texting while driving), the officer will turn on his lights and pull the car over to issue a ticket. In the event that during this traffic stop, the officer becomes alerted to any other illegal activity, the officer will likely conduct a more thorough investigation into the matter and perhaps uncover an additional crime that would not have been founded but for the traffic stop.

However, looking through the lens of the newly enacted Order, it appears that the necessity for a traffic offense to have taken place (like in our example above) is almost deemed unnecessary. That law enforcement may now have the ability to conduct traffic stops on any vehicle that may be in violation of the Stay-at-Home Order without a traffic offense or having any Reasonable Suspicion altogether.

The challenge for the officer now is that there is not a definitive method of establishing who is in violation and how is not. Given this challenge, an officer may now have the inherent ability to stop any individual while driving to establish why and where they are traveling to. If upon pulling the individual over, the officer stumbles upon some other illegal activity that otherwise would have been unnoticed by law enforcement until now, further legal issues and defenses to those issues could arise.

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