A LOT of “conservatives”, like the deluded individuals who supported the “Patriot” Act, think this is a great idea. Stop and check all those minority hoodlums in those bad neighborhoods and keep the crime rate down. FOX was on the badwagon calling in one flatfoot “expert” after another to justifiy it.
But its plain wrong. If there is REASONABLE suspicion to stop and check somebody out that is ONE thing, i.e. if they appear to be involved in illegal activity or resemble a fugitive.
But to give the police the right to profile Americans radnomly on the basis of mere appearance, stop them, detain the, and frisk them is police-state nonesense.
This is the very thinking that has Homeland “Security” checking out little kids and old Swedish-American ladies from Minnesota instead of checking out obvious MUSLIMS at airport terminals.
People who support this just don’t understand Freedom and Liberty or what it means to be an American.
I concur.
I'm waiting for one of those media hacks to come out and say that the problem isn't that too many minorities are being searched, it's that not enough whites are being searched and they need to do more of that. Until it gets turned on them, ala limbaugh with his "not enough white people in prison for drug abuse" spiel that came back around to bite him in the ass.
Yes, it was disturbing to tune in the “The Five” yesterday on FOX and find only Bob Beckle on the side of freedom.
They are only stopping those with what has been defined as reasonable suspicion. They are in a high-crime area, match the description of search/wanted flyers, and are either loitering or acting furtively, at the least:
https://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/privacy/when-can-police-stop
One thing I wish courts would do is recognize that effective protection of Fourth Amendment rights requires not only that before stopping anyone police must have not only "reasonable suspicion", but articulable suspicion. A person who could plausibly believe that the police have no legitimate reasonable basis for suspicion of criminal activity should be not be required to submit to a search unless or until police articulate a sufficient basis for such suspicion that a reasonable person would believe the police suspicion legitimate. Further, even in cases where police might legitimately search a suspect for immediately-accessible weapons, that does not imply a right to "notice" anything else they might find.