[NJ_gent]

"The problem is you make it sound like officers plant evidence WHENEVER someone gives them a hard time and that is false."

The few and far between cases where it does happen, and the mere potential for it to happen, are plenty to justify the additional safeguards in my opinion. If we're going to err (and we're human, so of course we are), I'd rather we err on the side caution when it comes to police action. I'm with the 'let 10 guilty men go before imprisoning 1 innocent man' crowd, and I think that's the case at every step along the way. The fact is that no matter how draconian we get with our laws, we will never become 100% crime-free. Even if we could, I doubt I'd want to live in a place so heavily restricted that it's impossible to commit a crime. Seems far too 1984-ish to me.

[blueknight]

You make good very good points and I would never advocate or participate in arresting a crowd with the hope that some were guilty, but rather the opposite. However, we have to give cops the tools to do what we task them to do. We have then to hold them to a high standard for how they use those tools.