Posted on 01/09/2013 9:07:25 PM PST by Zhang Fei
In March of 2012, several New York City residents sued the New York Police Department over alleged overreaches of its controversial stop-and-frisk policy.* The plaintiffs argued that the NYPD “has a widespread practice of making unlawful stops on suspicion of trespass” outside certain buildings in the Bronx, and asked the court for relief from the department’s Trespass Affidavit Program (TAP). On Tuesday, they got their wish. Finding that NYPD officials showed “deliberate indifference” to the unconstitutionality of the relevant incidents, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin issued an injunction prohibiting unjustifiable stop-and-frisk actions outside of certain Bronx buildings.
This is obviously a blow to the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy, and it possibly carries long-term implications for similar policies elsewhere. The TAP case is the first of three stop-and-frisk cases pending in Scheindlin’s court, and this injunction might indicate how she will eventually rule in the other two. Predictive value aside, the injunction is a powerful rebuke to systematic law enforcement excesses, and should be read and studied by anyone with even a passing interest in civil liberties.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Non-criminals are sent on their way AFTER being treated like criminals. 80% of the time they’re stopping innocent citizens, that is wrong.
Everybody with more than half a brain in their head hates stop and frisk because it’s fascist BS that treats all citizens like criminals.
This king of ‘law’ is another brick in a totalitarian wall being constructed by liberal elites.
They’re also the same people when faced with a REAL criminal do everything they can to free him, reduce a sentence, or half way house them before their time.
Liberal elites don’t give a damn about crime - it’s control they’re after ... and not even ‘control’ of criminals - but of citizens.
Laws like this sound good on the surface, but we know who’s behind them - as our founding fathers also knew...
The law/practice at issue in Terry v. Ohio is easily distinguishable from what was/is happening in the Bronx.
DISARMED law abiding tenants and landlords can feel powerless to rid their buildings of drug trafficking and the accompanying disorder.
Maybe New York should re-think its policy of forcibly disarming "law abiding tenants and landlords".
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but in this country, don’t law-abiding citizens have the right to go about their business without interference from the police?”
What are you some kinda gun nut or something? Where in the world would you get such an idea. The security of the state and the masses demands such searches. After all, as so many here have pointed out many time, “If you have nothing to hide then why would you worry about being searched? (or questioned, or forced to take a breathalyzer etc. etc.)
I'm not Chinese, although I have traveled to China to see the stacks of masonry we call the Great Wall (the Chinese apparently call it the Ten Thousand Mile Long Wall) and I have read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms in English translation, so maybe that makes me an honorary Chinese. I can tell you that the Chinese police are nowhere near this conscientious. Petty crime was out of control, to the extent that the local women never carried purses. At least that's the explanation I got from the tour guide. It's the Chinese version of what Sam Harris called anarcho-tyranny.
The average cop doesn't want to waste his time searching people - it's unpleasant, and standards of hygiene vary. All he wants to do is plunk his butt down at the local diner/donut shop and have some coffee to accompany his jelly donut.
I don't understand the sensitivity to this kind of stuff. Cops before the 60's routinely did it and crime was a fraction of current levels, to the extent that people did not lock their doors or their vehicles. Then the Federal courts turfed vagrancy laws and other statutes used to harass criminals, and - lo and behold - crime skyrocketed. The way people today talk about this law enforcement approach, you'd think the country was one big gulag before the unelected tyrants in black robes gave criminals free rein to do whatever they want whenever they want.
Feel free to elaborate.
Sorry FRiend, but that has a strong whiff of boot-licking to it .. "We're only going to search your house for {phobia du jour} and if there's nothing there you have nothing to worry about"
You're constructing a monolith where one doesn't exist. Bloomberg is a law-and-order liberal. Judge Scheindlin is a must not be too hard on the criminals liberal. Bloomberg favors stop-and-frisk. Scheindlin opposes it. Slate opposes it. Heck - most liberals and minorities around the country oppose stop-and-frisk. Because the net result is that too many minority criminals end up in prison instead of earning an honest living on the streets by dealing drugs, stealing from and mugging people. Liberals in this country aren't totalitarians - they're let-it-all-hang-out hippies who miss the 60's or young 'uns who wish they had been teenagers during the 60's (while getting high draft numbers, of course).
A lot of the locals in the affected buildings would see Scheindlin's position as coddling the criminals and a giant middle finger to them. They've got a crisis situation on their hands and stop-and-frisk is the best they can do in terms of getting a reasonably safe environment. For them, it's a hassle to be searched occasionally, but a much bigger hassle to be mugged or shot.
If you consider blatant violation of the constitution to be a criminal act, it sounds as though the criminals got away in every one of these frisks.
Terry allows for:
1) The stopping of suspects when there is a reasonable, individualized suspicion the person did, is, or will commit a crime and
2) Then allows for limited searching of the same person/people for the purposes of officer safety.
Neither of those two elements appear to be present with what the cops were doing in the Bronx.
Random full-out home raids would be another excellent way to prevent crime. They could roll some dice to choose the house, fire flash-bangs into the living room, kick down the door and spend a few hours doing a thorough search and seizure raid! Just think of all the criminals they would round up!
They wouldn't KILL anyone, at least not intentionally, so it should be OK right?
The point is that it's the act, no matter how small, that's wrong. It's prohibited by the Constitution.
Government abuses nearly always start small and grow slowly over time. Stop and frisk isn't as severe as other things they could do, but it is absolutely an abuse of power.
Are those who have been stopped to be frisked free to refuse and walk away? No. If a young mother who had nothing at all to hide, but was in a hurry to get home to a sick child, was stopped by LEOs like this, she would be arrested and thrown in jail for a few days just the same if she tried to refuse and keep running home.
Don't fall for the well-worn tool of incrementalism! Evil administered one teaspoon at a time is STILL EVIL.
It's pretty amazing how conservatives have internalized so much of the leftist pap from Hollywood movies and crime writers. Stop-and-frisk is actually a continuation of the policing practices of the time before Federal court rulings in the 1960's and beyond put a stop to them. Have a look at San Diego crime stats from before the 60's, and you'll see a pretty distinct trend.
If you consider government officials who violate the constitution to be criminals, then I'd argue that NYC's gun-grabbing criminals police are merely leveling the playing field for law-abiding citizens by arresting criminals with drugs, guns or illegal knives by using stop-and-frisk. In for a penny, in for a pound. I'm sure you'd prefer macro level solutions, but those are NYC's parameters. NYC's minorities don't want whites shooting back at their criminal relatives and the average white NYC resident doesn't want to play Charles Bronson's character in Death Wish. So they've settled on stop-and-frisk.
And that is exactly why young guys have sky-high insurance rates. Currently, insurance companies charge black areas higher rates because accident rates there are higher, but in reality, black drivers are probably more accident-prone in the same way that blacks are more crime-prone. I'm surprised Obama's DOJ hasn't launched a disparate impact case against the insurance companies for "discriminating" against majority black areas by charging them higher rates.
"Hey Champ . . . why don't you stop talking for awhile . . ."
Cities are cesspools, and you're welcome to my entire share of all of them.
One of these days, maybe you can keep in touch by tying a note to a rock and lobbing it over the wall those two wannabe nazi pukes are building around NY.
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