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Home Depot's ad on "Pulled over Santa" too close for comfort

Home Depot is running an ad this month (click on "Pulled Over Santa") where Santa Claus is pulled over by an officer who asks for his license and registration.  Santa can't find the registration, and he sits back looking resigned to the fact that something bad may be in the offing. The elf nervously waves to the officer. The officer then asks: "What's in the bag?"

So, if kids, or even the general public, see this ad, are they supposed to believe that it is legally permissible for a police officer during a traffic stop to ask "What's in the bag?"  

The ad is funny on one level because it shows the reality of stops of suspicious characters. It is deathly serious on another level if the public thinks that this police conduct is de rigueur and lawful.  (The ad appears to have been produced in Canada for Home Depot.)

Update:  No, there is no reasonable suspicion. There is no excessive nervousness, failure to make appropriate eye contact, talkativeness, or furtive movements from Santa or the elf or overpowering smell of air fresheners or obvious modifications to the sleigh for a compartment where contraband could be hidden. Also, it appears unlikely from the video that there was any a bona fide moving violation to pull the sleigh over in the first place. There was, however, no registration in hand.  That does not, however, translate into justification for the officer to ask "What's in the bag?" How many innocents are stopped and subjected to the same routine for every one that gets arrested?  Without police stop statistics, we can never know.

A few years ago, I bought an enlargement of NACDL's Champion cover that showed Santa Claus being rousted, hands up and "assum[ing] the position" at the border by officers from every police agency, going through the sleigh and his bag. The ATF bomb disposal expert examining a box is the best character of the six shaking down Santa Claus.  I pull that one out every year to get into the Christmas cheer. And this was before some of the media manufactured a "War on Christmas."

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