When Is It Legal For Montana Police to Run Your License Plate?

Last week, I shared a conversation I had with Cascade County Sheriff Slaughter regarding flock cameras and privacy in Montana. In that conversation, Sheriff Slaughter mentioned that law enforcement doesn't "randomly run" license plates.

This set off a wave of comments on our social media pages with some calling out the sheriff, accusing law enforcement of randomly running plates.

Sheriff Slaughter Responds to the Community

Sheriff Slaughter joined me on 560 KMON to clear the air and be as transparent as possible about running license plates.

"One of the comments I thought was super interesting and it dovetails into this kind Flock camera conversation too, was that you need a search warrant to run my plate," Sheriff Slaughter said, "You know, 'that's my plate is fourth amendment protected' and so, if you discuss the differences and I wrote some notes here just so I could keep them straight here, there's a difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause."

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Sheriff Slaughter went on to explain how that applies to your license plate.

"Now to run your plate, I don't need probable cause, but I do need reasonable suspicion," he explained, "It's a lower standard. It's basically based on articulable facts. There's a violation or a crime that's possibly connected to that car or a car matching that description."

License Plates Are An Example of Convenience

Sheriff Slaughter explained that things like license plates and even Flock cameras, present a level of convenience that law enforcement simply can't ignore.

Well, they could but it would then be inconvenient to the citizen, right?

"The reason your plates are publicly displayed is convenient," Sheriff Slaughter says, "Now can the people, meaning the citizens of our, of the, of our state lobby our legislature to change the law and make it so you can't see the plates? Sure."

"But it's still not going to stop reasonable suspicion."

Thank goodness for our plates too, otherwise, as Sheriff Slaughter explains, it would be a lot more tedious and inconvenient to citizens.

"So during a reasonable suspicion stop, I can, you know, just simply run your plate. Or if I couldn't run your plate, I could stop your car and detain you briefly to determine what your plate is to see if it was a car we were looking for that might be involved in said crime."

"So it's far more intrusive. I can actually stop you from your affairs, so to speak, right?"

Reasonable Suspicion vs. Probable Cause

For those wondering why officers stop people, in vehicles or on foot, in the first place, it's not random as some contest.

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Sheriff Slaughter provided a very black and white example to make it easier for us to understand:

"Here's an example: You're doing surveillance of a parking lot in which, you know, you're worried about, like, let's just say a car break in, and you catch a person looking in the windows of the vehicles. Can you stop and detain that person and talk to them? Yeah, you could under reasonable suspicion, which means you can't detain them for very long, and if they basically tell you to, you know, pound sand, I'm leaving, then you probably don't have enough.

Now, they break the window out of the car. Can you now go detain them under probable cause? Most likely, yes, right? Yeah. Unless you're in the unfortunate incident where they tell you, oh, I locked my keys out of my car but I can go detain them to determine that because that is a probable reason.

But those are the differences between, if I were to give, like, a real generic example, for example."

You can check out Sheriff Slaughter's explanation below. You can also share your thoughts/questions for the sheriff HERE and I'll do my best to get that question to him for when he joins us on-air next week.