I can only guess...and view it through my mind's filter.
> The oversized limo catches everyone's eye. Officers included.
> The occupants, on private property, get out and whiz about.
> The officer thinks, "hmmm...limo full of cocaine? ICE or dope? Partying going on! But, I ain't wasting my time with a silly, piss-on-flowers charge or a "public intoxication" of a solo guy or two, unattached to the vehicle. I want IN that limo, not all around it." The walking drunks and whizzers could be used as partial probable cause for bigger action later.
>This means stopping the vehicle on a public road. Which means, at its best, getting probable cause for a traffic stop - seeing the vehicle make a traffic mistake. No signal light on a turn, etc. Probable cause. Now the vehicle is more legally involved and the officer can start getting his fingers into the car.
As the limo entered the ramp, it may not have signaled, who knows, but if it were me, I'd follow and wait for a traffic infraction. Once that is made, and the patrol car lights go on? Where we stop? has a lot to do also where the vehicle eventually stops.
An officer does have some influence on that stopping spot. Sometimes officers will get on their public address system and tell the stopped car to "pull on ahead , under the set of lights by..." and that is wise in real dangerous stops. That is advice in the textbooks, "pick your spot as best you can."
Officers get REAL use to working in the night. Many times forgetting about daylight and available bright lights. Then, officers get real use to the so-called "routine traffic stop."
If I find nothing suspicious while nosing around the limo? I wouldn't waste my time on flower pissers, and just let the limo go on. As this seems this officer did.
But I really have zero idea about what that officer was really thinking that night. If he were like me, deep down, he probably wished he was leaving in the limo...
Hock