Police search and take paint Legal?

[Jon]

i am a artist in maine, i go to a legal wall where artists can practice their skills. i am currently a minor. i was walking down the street with a fellow artist, a cop pulled us over and ran our names, asked us where we live, what were up to, and why were out. nothing came up in the background check, and we did nothing wrong. she called in another officer and asked us to drop our bags and stand against a fence and not put our hands in our pockets, once the other officer got there she dumped out our bags without permission and took out art supplies such as spray paint, Spray paint caps, and sharpies, all brand new just bought and unused. she took all this without my parents knowing and without permission. The officer told us if there is ANY fresh paint in the city we will be to blame, Even though we were not doing anything but walking down the street. There are thousands of graffiti writers in the city if she can really do that i am prosecuted for Graffiti that i did not do, That is Unfair. my mother went into the station to tell them she was picking us up to take us to the legal spot the officer said to come back in the morning to get the paint if they find no evidence, But he was quite rude with her. we took a grievance form, The officer said "it won't do you any good, The officer was doing her job" i feel violated of my rights. Please let me know if what they did was legal. Thank you very much for your time, i appreciate it

 

[Jimbo]

I really hope that they can make some sort of forensic connection between your cans of paint and that of the graffiti that plagues your city. You may feel that you are expressing your artistic abilities but to the rest of us you are defiling private property. To you it may look nice but to the rest of us it is a bloody mess. If you get this urge to decorate something, why dont you spray your own home or your own bedroom wall. If your mother thinks you are so great she will give you permission to spray paint her home. Have you any idea how much it costs to try to remove the mess that you painters make, that money could be better spent by the city in providing more equipment for schools or spending it on salt this winter. From a legal point of view, the police were within their remit to search your bags because graffiti is against the law in your city, so a crime has been committed and you were in the area carrying items that could give rise to the police suspecting that you did the painting. Here is another example, a break-in has occurred locally and you are walking down the street with a bag with a crow bar and hammers etc, you may have had nothing to do with the break-in but you certainly look suspicious with those tools in your bag. Take this incident as a good warning and put your abilities to better use, we have many fine artists here in Maine, why not be one of them.

 

[Zach]

I have a hard time believing you were just walking down the street doing nothing. If graffiti is a problem in your town, and you two are walking down the street with backpacks on in the middle of summer, you may look suspicious and that can give the officer probable cause to believe you were going to be doing graffiti somewhere. This would give her probable cause to stop you as well as search your backpacks, which I am assuming is what occurred. This is probably the scenario and the search was legal.