Supreme Court precedent suggests that this inquiry was reasonable. In Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318, 121 S.Ct. 1536, 149 L.Ed.2d 549 (2001), the Court held that the Fourth Amendment permits a police officer to effect a custodial arrest of someone for a misdemeanor parking violation, even though the offense is not one that permits the violator’s arrest under state law. Id. at 354, 121 S.Ct. 1536. Applying Atwater to the context of a motorist being asked more questions by a police officer than are necessary to issue a traffic citation, the Seventh Circuit has opined: Questions that hold potential for detecting crime, yet create little or no inconvenience, do not turn reasonable detention into unreasonable detention. They do not signal or facilitate o th Cir.1998) (en banc) (<HOLDING>); Childs, 277 F.3d at 954 (upholding the
holding that because the law in this area is unclear an officer who shot a fleeing motorist was not unreasonable in believing that a potential threat to third parties would justify shooting the motorist holding that for purposes of determining whether the roadblock worked a fourth amendment seizure the controlling considerations are whether 1 the motorist was meant to be stopped by the physical obstacle of the roadblock and 2 the motorist was so stopped holding that where police officers had stopped a vehicle because they suspected that the motorist was intoxicated irrespective of whether the deputies were justified in detaining the motorist after he showed no signs of intoxication and even if they had not after approaching the motorist observed conditions raising a reasonable and articulable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot they were entitled to ask the motorist for permission to search his vehicle holding that a fleeing motorist was not seized for fourth amendment purposes until the law enforcement officers were successful in stopping the motorist at a roadblock holding that police officers are entitled to conduct an investigatory stop of a motorist if they have reasonable suspicion that the motorist has committed a traffic violation