Ryan Routh: Caught by a License Plate Reader
Posted on Mon Sep 16, 2024 at 07:16:10 AM EST
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This is suspect Ryan Routh, who was arrested yesterday after allegedly planning to kill Donald Trump at his International Golf Course in Palm Beach. The photo is taken from Routh's Linked In account.
Routh didn't shoot anything. He fled when police arrived. When the Secret Service opened fire on him and missed, he ran out of the bushes and into a Black Nissan, leaving his "AR 15 style" rifle in the bushes along with his Go-Pro camera. A bystander just happened to be in the area and took a photo of his car driving off that showed his license plate number. The cops called into their real-time crime center which used a license plate reader to capture his license plate as it on Interstate 95. Routh was stopped and taken into custody.
From the news conference at 5:10 pm (MT): The FBI in Miami is the lead investigating agency. The state prosecutor is preparing an arrest warrant and will ask he be detained without bond. Then the state will decide whether to charge him and with what crime. And it could be that they turn the whole thing over to the feds. [More...]
According to Routh's Linked In page, he owns a company in Hawaii (on Oahu) called Camp Box. He describes it:
Build simple economical structures to help address the highest homelessness rate in the United States due to unparalleled gentrification. The extremely high cost of land, building materials, labor and ridiculous government regulation makes affordable housing extremely challenging in this environment. We try to build units that fall below permitting requirements with the simplest of construction techniques to make units fast and affordable.
About himself, he writes on Linked in:
Constantly focused on contributing as much as possible to the community, always trying to put in far more than I take out. Work has never been about money rather building frameworks for people to thrive and succeed. Being mechanically minded I enjoy ideas and invention and creative projects with artistic flare. I enjoy building and collaborative projects that allow an unlimited range of ideas and options so see what our minds can create and push the limits of our thoughts. I love the unlimited opportunity right in front of us.
Having passed along any meager remnants of myself in North Carolina and relocated to Oahu, I currently build very simple housing structures for the less fortunate and pursue a wide range of other creative projects towards developing unique products and devices as well as community improvement projects. (My emphasis).
He's really into change.
I am constantly looking for collaborative opportunities which yield the most public impact for the improvement of our society. I would tremendously enjoy the invitation to join any monumental worthy cause to bring about real change in our world.
I am certainly free to relocate to any remote location on the planet that might render the most positive impact, or right around the corner creating something unique and magical. If you are working on any sort of interesting project I would appreciate an invitation to join your team as an economical, energetic unrelenting partner to help push your hopes, ideas and dreams forward as fast and as far as they can go. I look forward to your ideas and input and curious what amazing things we might create and build together.
He attended a city council meeting in 2017. He writes letters to the editor. From a 2021 letter to the editor complaining about noise level of vehicles:
Too much noise can ruin life in paradise
Kuleana, the aloha spirit, a sense of community, caring for the land and caring for our fellow man all seem to be disregarded when it comes to noise.
I have never been anywhere in the world where the people are so disrespectfully loud.
It is a childish competition to see who can be the loudest, as if everyone craves attention they did not get as a kid: the loudest fireworks, loudest motorcycles and scooters, and the loudest music on the planet.
Was no one required to take sociology in college to learn about the public costs of noise pollution? Perhaps we must make it grade-school material so noisemakers can grasp that they are infringing on others’ lives and happiness.
I would like a maximum decibel level added to vehicle inspections. And the fools who use the cannon-sounding fireworks push us to eliminate all fireworks, even the most beautiful.
Please people, noise is just noise and no one wants it here in paradise.
Ryan Routh Kaaawa
He set up a forum site called "Ryan Routh for Mayor" in 2024. Here's one of his pressing issues:
City parks and bathrooms
Post by admin » Sun Jul 07, 2024 2:09 pmI am baffled by the stealing of showerhead; who and why do our citizens do this? Or does the city have a ban on shower heads so if I put on a plastic shower head the city removes it? Likewise if I donate a volleyball net to a city park city officials must promptly remove it as illegal. I am befuddled by the retarded notion that a donated improvement is not allowed to stay in place because someone authority was threatened and some proper channel was not satisfied; quite bizarre. Perhaps Oahu stays exactly as it is for fear of stepping on someone’s toes; I hope that most would choose to move forward. I am in favor of showerheads on showers, volleyball nets where designed, rollaway pickle-ball nets, spring-loaded shower and water valves, dry-erase boards for park calendar of re-occurring events, locals hired to maintain parks and whatever it takes to make our parks function better for users. Send me a suggestion and we will make it happen.
His Linked In site has two photos of him with jackets and ties. One is a picture of him in front of Congress. The other (posted above) is him standing in front of "Independence Tower" in a square referred to as Maidan, in Kiev, Ukraine. It implies went there there to support the war effort in the Ukraine. (Those are tiny American flags on his tie). He's too old to be a fighter, so I'm not sure how his trip would increase the number of soldiers fighting for the Ukraine, but apparently that was the purpose of his trip. Also, he may have moved from Hawaii back to North Carolina earlier this year but that's not confirmed.
It will be interesting to see what he is charged with. I think a federal charge could be 18 U.S.C. 879, attempted murder of a former President or candidate for President.
Then again, an armed man posing as a U.S. Marshal at a campaign event for RFK, Jr. in 2023 ended up being charged in CA state court with misdemeanor violations of carrying a loaded firearm, carrying a concealed weapon and impersonating an officer. "The LAPD said the man never brandished the gun or threatened anyone." (Via ABC News, no link due to autoplay video you can't shut off). I'm sure some Florida lawyers will be weighing in on TV as to what the charges would be in Florida state court.
Whatever he might be charged with, he's considered innocent until and unless the charges are proved beyond a reasonable doubt (or he pleads guilty).
About the license plate readers: In Routh's case, according to the press conference linked above, they were used to capture a fleeing suspect. But most of the time, they are used as a warrantless end-run around the Fourth Amendment, because of the lack of standards and regulations setting out their accepted use and how long police can hold on to the reams of data captured on license plates of people who are not suspected of criminal activity. Check out this report from the ACLU, You Are Being Tracked:
Automatic license plate readers have the potential to create permanent records of virtually everywhere any of us has driven, radically transforming the consequences of leaving home to pursue private life, and opening up many opportunities for abuse. The tracking of people’s location constitutes a significant invasion of privacy, which can reveal many things about their lives, such as what friends, doctors, protests, political events, or churches a person may visit.
In our society, it is a core principle that the government does not invade people’s privacy and collect information about citizens’ innocent activities just in case they do something wrong. Clear regulations must be put in place to keep the government from tracking our movements on a massive scale.
There needs to be more transparency. The public has a right to know how much state and local police departments are spending on these services, from the cost of cameras, to installation and software fees to training and monitoring fees. Some cops have license plate readers in their vehicle that hook them right up.
If you are pulled over for a speeding violation, the cops should not be able to simultaneosly run a license plate reader check on your car to see where else it's been over an extended period of time so they can claim they have reasonable suspicion to convert the traffic stop into an criminal inquiry, bring out their dog or ask you for permission to search your car. Most drivers, especially those from countries that don't provide the constitutional restraints that we have in the U.S., don't know they can refuse a police request to search. It should be mandatory that police not only return the driver's license, registration and insurance the end of the traffic stop (with any written warning or ticket) but also tell them they are free to go, before converting the traffic stop into a criminal investigation. That moment when the character of the stop changes from a traffic stop to a criminal inquiry is called the "Rodriguez moment", after the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Rodriguez v. United States, available here. A federal district court judge in Colorado (opinion here) relied on Rodriguez and its progeny to suppress methamphetamine found during the search of a vehicle where the cop extended the time needed for the traffic stop by contacting EPIC (El Paso Intelligence Center in San Antonio) to check whether license plate readers turned up an inconsistency in the travel history the driver told the cop.(P.S. the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination is there for a reason. Any criminal defense lawyer will tell you that you don't need to answer questions about your travel route or plans or anything else. Just hand over your documents and zip it. When you get them back, ask if you are free to leave. If the answer is yes, just skedaddle. Don't take the bait when they start to walk away and then turn back to ask you some more questions. Our jails are filled with people who thought if they could just tell their side of the story, the police would see it their way. It rarely happens.
I'm glad no one was killed yesterday. There's a big difference between protesting against a government's policies and taking the law into your own hands by planning, attempting or committing a violent act.
There's also a legal way to prevent Donald Trump from his increasingly unhinged promises to turn this country backwards and reinstate or double down on policies that violate our constitutional rights. It's called voting.
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