Welcome to Audit the Audit, where we sort out the who and what and the right and wrong of police interactions. This episode covers cash bond, Texas traffic laws, and the Fourth Amendment, and is brought to us by the Civil Rights Lawyers Channel. Be sure to check out the description below and give them the credit that they deserve. On July 30th, 2021, Officer James Reynolds of the Fort Worth Police Department pulled over pregnant language teacher Vilma Montalvo while she was driving to pick up her husband from the hospital after surgery in Fort Worth, Texas. According to Officer Reynolds, he initiated the traffic stop because Ms. Montalvo did not move over or slow down when passing a stopped emergency vehicle, and Ms. Montalvo did not pull over for several miles after he activated his cruiser's emergency lights. Ms. Montalvo eventually stopped her vehicle in a parking lot, and the interaction that followed was captured by Officer Reynolds' body camera. Get out of the car, ma'am. You're under arrest. And don't make me pull you out. What's wrong? Turn around, put your hands behind you. Please let ME CALL MY HUSBAND. GET IN THE CAR. HOSPITAL WAITING for me. Oh my gosh, please help me. Talk to her. Get in the car, ma'am. She's under arrest. And she's going to jail for on a cash bond for failing to vacate the left the lane closest to an emergency vehicle and for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. After handcuffing Ms. Montalvo and placing her in the back of his vehicle, Officer Reynolds states that Ms. Montalvo is going to jail on a cash bond. According to Article 17.01 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, quote, "Bail is the security given by the accused that he will appear and answer before the proper court the accusation brought against him and includes a bail bond or a personal bond. A bail bond is when a bail bond company pays the defendant's bail in exchange for a fee, typically 10% of the total bond amount. If the defendant appears in court as required, the bail is refunded to the bond company, but the 10% fee is retained. If the defendant fails to appear in court and the bail is forfeited, the defendant or the person who obtained the bond is responsible for repaying the entire amount to the bail bond company. Generally, Article 17.028 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure requires that, quote, "Without unnecessary delay, but not later than 48 hours after a defendant is arrested, a magistrate shall order, after individualized consideration of all circumstances, that the defendant be granted personal bond with or without conditions, granted surety or cash bond with or without conditions, or denied bail in accordance with the Texas Constitution and other law. However, Article 14.06 clarifies that, quote, "A peace officer who is charging a person with committing an offense that is a Class C misdemeanor may, instead of taking the person before a magistrate, issue a citation." And Article 17.20 states that, quote, "In cases of misdemeanor, the sheriff or other peace officer may, where the officer has a defendant in custody, take the defendant's bail." As we will discuss later in this episode, both of the traffic offenses that Officer Reynolds has accused Ms. Montalvo of committing are Class C misdemeanors punishable by a fine only. So, it is possible that a court would conclude that Officer Reynolds would be within his discretion to require cash bond. However, Section 543.003 of the Texas Transportation Code states that, quote, "An officer who arrests a person for a violation of this subtitle punishable as a misdemeanor and who does not take the person before a magistrate shall issue a written notice to appear in court. And section 543.005 states that quote, "To secure release, the person arrested must make a written promise to appear in court by signing the written notice prepared by the arresting officer. The officer shall then promptly release the person from custody." While the interplay between these statutes is complicated at the very least, Ms. Montalvo would have a colorable argument that Officer Reynolds would either be required to take her in front of a magistrate or issue a written notice to appear in court and release her upon signing a promise to appear and that he would not have the authority to unilaterally require her to pay cash bond in this situation. Ma'am, you want to leave your car here or do you want me to impound it? Your incident Please, my husband is in the hospital. He had a heart surgery. He's bleeding to death. Ma'am, I understand. Why do you think it's okay for you to do what you did? Why do you think I don't understand what you're saying. I've been behind you for 5 miles. realize you were following me. You are not believable. to wait to look at my husband cuz he's in my husband. Do you have a Where's your driver's license? It's in my wallet. Is this your purse? No. Please, Officer. Please be with me. What's going on? Ma'am, I feel silly explaining to you what's going on. You're an adult and you have a driver's license. So, you know that when a police car gets behind you, turns on the lights, and turns on the siren, and I stay behind stop. You asked me to explain, I'm doing that. When that happens, you are required to yield, to pull over and stop immediately. Not 5 miles later. And there are consequences for our actions. When we do something good, we're rewarded. When we do something bad, there's a penalty. Your penalty today is I'm going to put you in jail. And that's so that you don't think you can get away with this tomorrow. You're under arrest and you're going to jail. Please listen to me. What? I realized right there in that in that flight right there that I have police car behind me. That is not believable, ma'am. I'm sorry. Officer Reynolds explains to Ms. Montalvo that he's going to put her in jail for failing to vacate the lane closest to an emergency vehicle and failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. According to the police report Officer Reynolds authored on this encounter, Ms. Montalvo allegedly quote, "Failed to vacate the lane closest to an emergency vehicle and failed to slow to 20 mph or more under the posted speed." The report also states that when Officer Reynolds initiated a traffic stop, Ms. Montalvo quote, "Failed to yield for approximately 4.8 miles." Section 545.157 of the Texas Transportation Code requires that when approaching a stationary authorized emergency vehicle using visual signals, quote, "An operator shall vacate the lane closest to the vehicle when driving on a highway with two or more lanes traveling in the direction of the vehicle or slow to a speed not to exceed 20 mph less than the posted speed limit when the posted speed limit is 25 mph or more or 5 mph when the posted speed limit is less than 25 mph." Additionally, Section 545. 156 of the Texas Transportation Code states that quote, "On the immediate approach of a police vehicle lawfully using only an audible or visual signal, an operator shall yield the right of way, immediately drive to a position parallel to and as close as possible to the right-hand edge or curb of the roadway clear of any intersection and stop and remain standing until the authorized emergency vehicle has passed." As mentioned earlier in this episode, both of these traffic offenses are misdemeanors that are only punishable by a fine of up to $200 according to Section 542.301 and 542.401 of the Texas Transportation Code. Despite this, as we will discuss further in a moment, both Texas state law and the Supreme Court's interpretations of the Fourth Amendment unambiguously authorize Officer Reynolds to arrest Ms. Montalvo for either violation. You can call your husband, you can call student, you're still going to jail, and you can tell him where your car is. Where is your husband? In the hospital. Which one? Can he drive? Medical City, Fort Worth. Do you have family there that I can give this key to? him. He can drive. He just had surgery. Okay. Now, I don't have to be good. Can I know where I'm going? You're going to Fort Worth jail. Fort Worth what? Jail. And I'm not accusing you of running from me. You were not running from me. You The reason I pulled you over in the in the first place, come on now, ma'am, was because you didn't move out of the left lane. There were two There were three police cars stopped on the on the left shoulder. I didn't realize. I'm sorry. It's my first time. It's unbelievable. I don't believe it. Come on now, ma'am. Is he still going to have her surgery? He had surgery. He was discharged. Oh, okay. waiting for me. Okay. And it wasn't my lunch time. I'm a teacher. And what? It was during my lunch time. I'm a teacher and I was going to pick him up. So, I go to You You have a degree, a college degree. Yes, sir. And you have a driver's license cuz I've seen it. And you're telling me Just be honest with me for this long. Just Just be honest with me. You're telling me that you didn't know that I was behind you trying to make you stop until the red light before. I I swear I thought it was an accident or something. I didn't think it was me. Come on now, ma'am. I was so close to not bringing her in. Just write her ticket. When Ms. Montalvo explains that she did not notice that Officer Reynolds was trying to stop her until the intersection before she pulled over, Officer Reynolds orders her to enter the jail and makes a comment to himself about how {quote} close he was to just writing her a ticket, implying that he's only arresting her because he does not believe her story. The Supreme Court determined in the 2001 case of Atwater versus City of Lago Vista that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit an officer from making a warrantless arrest for misdemeanor offenses punishable only by fines, such as the ones in this situation, holding that {quote} if an officer has probable cause to believe that an individual has committed even a very minor criminal offense in his presence, he may, without violating the Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender. In this instance, Texas state law also explicitly authorizes Officer Reynolds to arrest Ms. Montalvo. As Section 543.001 of the Texas Transportation Code states that {quote} any peace officer may arrest without warrant a person found committing a violation of this subtitle. Although it is not applicable to this situation, it is also important to note that the Supreme Court decided in the 2008 case of Virginia versus Moore that officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment by making an arrest based on probable cause, even when the arrest is prohibited by state law. In this case, an individual was arrested for driving on a suspended license, despite the fact that Virginia state law required the officers to issue a summons instead of making an arrest. The court explained that {quote} in a long line of cases, we have said that when an officer has probable cause to believe a person committed even a minor crime in his presence, the arrest is constitutionally reasonable, and noted that in previous decisions, when a state chooses to protect privacy beyond the level that the Fourth Amendment requires, the court had {quote} treated additional protections exclusively as matters of state law, partially because {quote} linking Fourth Amendment protections to state law would cause them to vary from place to place and from time to time. The court ultimately concluded that {quote} warrantless arrests for crimes committed in the presence of an arresting officer are reasonable under the Constitution, and that while states are free to regulate such arrests however they desire, state restrictions do not alter the Fourth Amendment's protections. Therefore, even if Texas law explicitly prohibited Officer Reynolds from arresting Ms. Montalvo for a traffic offense, a court would almost certainly determine that he did not violate the Fourth Amendment by arresting her. Pull over here, please. So, let me ask you this. So, even if you If you knew I just wanted to pass Why wouldn't you let Well, I would have passed. I can't hear you, sir. Yeah. It's okay. I'll take it out. So, you're not coming in here? No. If you're not coming in here, you don't say that. Then, I'm Listen, I'm going to write you a bunch of tickets, and I'm going to take you back. And You closed the door. I don't even know what to tell you. I would tell you how you should have behaved, but you know that. You know that you should have pulled over. There's nothing I can tell you that you don't know. You're just not being honest with me. Who's being honest? I swear to God. I mean, I'm a Christian believer. I'm not lying. Maybe I was so distracted I didn't realize. No. I realized on the light. Just stop. Just stop. What up, ma'am? You're free to go. I wrote you a ticket for not moving over. Officer Reynolds eventually issued a citation charging Ms. Montalvo with failing to vacate the lane closest to an emergency vehicle and failing to yield the right of way to an emergency vehicle, both of which are misdemeanor offenses. Court records show that the failure to yield charge was dismissed prior to trial on June 16th, 2022, and that Ms. Montalvo was granted a so-called deferred disposition, which allows the charge to be dismissed after the successful completion of a period of probation for the charge of failing to vacate the lane closest to the emergency vehicle. After the incident, Ms. Montalvo filed a complaint with the Fort Worth Police Department, and after she received a letter clearing Officer Reynolds of any wrongdoing, she filed another complaint with the Office of Police Oversight Monitor. As a result of her complaints, the Fort Worth Police Department conducted an internal affairs investigation, which was monitored by the oversight monitor. As of July 2021, when this interaction occurred, Officer Reynolds had received 29 citizen complaints. While only eight of these complaints were so-called substantiated, some of the unsubstantiated allegations determined that Officer Reynolds had behaved, quote, very unprofessionally. As a result of the investigation's findings, Officer Reynolds was suspended for 7 days. Overall, Officer Reynolds gets a C- minus for unnecessarily arresting Ms. Montalvo for minor traffic offenses, speaking to Ms. Montalvo in a callous and condescending manner throughout the encounter, and allowing his emotions to dictate his decisions instead of relying on common sense police practices. Although Officer Reynolds was within his legal authority to arrest Ms. Montalvo for her traffic violations, it was an excessive and unproductive overreaction to do so. And the fact that he chose to arrest Ms. Montalvo before hearing her side of the story and discovering the circumstances that likely contributed to her driving errors provides further evidence that Officer Reynolds decided to arrest her because he was angry that she did not immediately yield to his authority. This interaction is yet another example of the abuses of power that can occur when officers make decisions based on their egos rather than their training, and are driven by their emotional responses rather than a desire to protect and serve their communities. Ms. Montalvo gets a B because while I have a tremendous amount of empathy for the stress caused by a loved one having surgery, if she truly did not notice that Officer Reynolds was attempting to pull her over for nearly 5 miles, she was not paying enough attention to the road to safely drive her vehicle. Life is full of stressful situations, and it is vital for the safety of everyone on the road that drivers do not get behind the wheel when they are not in the state of mind to drive effectively and attentively. That being said, Ms. Montalvo certainly did not deserve to be arrested for her driving mistakes, and it was entirely inappropriate for Officer Reynolds to subject her to this unnecessary amount of additional stress, particularly while she was pregnant. Let us know if there is an interaction or legal topic you would like us to discuss in the comments below. Thank you for watching, and don't forget to check out my second channel for even more police interaction content.