Police in the drug-saturated Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan noticed a slowly moving car with out-of-state plates at 5 a.m. The car stopped, the driver popped the hood of the trunk and four men placed two large duffel bags inside. When police approached, the men moved away rapidly in different directions; one ran. Police searched the trunk and found 80 pounds of cocaine. The driver, a Michigan woman, confessed in a 40-minute videotaped statement, saying that this was just one of more than 20 large drug buys she had made in Manhattan. But Judge Harold Baer ruled that police had conducted an unreasonable search. Since many residents in the area regard police as corrupt and abusive, reasoned the judge, it would have been unusual if the men hadn't run away, so fleeing was no cause for a search. Since the confession stemmed from the search, Baer threw that out as well.

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