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Looks like I may be a couple months late on this but these are court views on different aspects of California traffic arrests. My added emphasis is in BOLD
*First, Traffic stops are arrests, and they are "costodial."
P.C. 834. "An arrest is taking a person into custody, in a case and in the manner authorized by law. An arrest may be made by a peace officer or by a private person."
Ninth Circut Court of Appeals Nos. 95-55946,
95-55947. held that:
"Under California law, a traffic citation is considered an "arrest," see Cal. Pen.Code s 853.5 (West Supp.1996), for which an officer must have probable cause. See, e.g., People v. Parnell, 16 Cal.App.4th 862, 875, 20 Cal.Rptr.2d 302, 309 (1993)."
The cicut court however got it wrong. A citation is not an arrest, but a release from arrest.
P.C. 836.5.(c) "In any case in which a person is arrested pursuant to subdivision (a) and the person arrested does not demand to be taken before a magistrate, the public officer or employee making the arrest shall prepare a written notice to appear and release the person on his or her promise to appear, as prescribed by Chapter 5C (commencing with Section 853.5)."
P.C. 853.5. (a) "Except as otherwise provided by law, in any case in which a person is arrested for an offense declared to be an infraction, the person may be released according to the procedures set forth by this chapter for the release of persons arrested for an offense declared to be a misdemeanor."
*The above talks about you once you have been arrested. The following is the the code that police use to claim they have been given the authority to arrest for infractions in California.
P.C. 19.7. "Except as otherwise provided by law, all provisions of law relating to misdemeanors shall apply to infractions including, but not limited to, powers of peace officers..."
Coupled with
P.C. 836. (a) A peace officer may arrest a person ... pursuant to the authority granted to him or her by Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2, without a warrant, may arrest a person whenever any of the following circumstances occur:
(1) The officer has probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has committed a public offense in the officer's presence..."
Now observe what probable cause is
U.S. Supreme Court
BECK v. OHIO, 379 U.S. 89 (1964)
"Whether that arrest was constitutionally valid depends in turn upon whether, at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it - whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had committed or was committing an offense. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175 -176; Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 102 ."
Traffic infractions are not "pulic offenses" which is to say they are not "offenses" because they are deffinitly not private offenses (Although they really probably are offenses against the "state" in private buisness and not the public people but the court can't say that) This is represented in People v. Battle 50 Cal. App. 3rd Supp.1 and was subsequently upheld by the California Supreme Court
"we must conclude that it was not the intent of the Legislature to enact inconsistent statutes and, further, that when it added the term "public offense" to section 16 it was not so categorizing infractions because if it did so, it would have caused inconsistency between sections 19c and 689 of the Penal Code." [People v. Battle 50 Cal. App. 3rd Supp.1]
So no probable cause to arrest exists there. Also the concept of civil arrest was only used historically and only in post judgment circumstances to secure a an adjudicated debt. Civil arrest is also an affront to your privacy. The following case applies to a home invasion but is insiteful.
WELSH v. WISCONSIN, 466 U.S. 740 (1984)
"Held: The warrantless, nighttime entry of petitioner's home to arrest him for a civil, nonjailable traffic offense, was prohibited by the special protection afforded the individual in his home by the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 748-754."
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