If The TSA Can Ignore The Fourth Amendment, The NYPD Can, Too
Perry Chiaramonte writes on FoxNews about the NYPD's "Stop-and-Frisk":
Baltimore native Chris Bilal was walking through his adopted Brooklyn neighborhood when he was stopped by a police officer. The NYPD officer peppered the 24-year-old with questions about where he lived, requested Bilal's ID and rummaged through his bag."I was coming home from the Laundromat and I was stopped by the police officer. Asking me, 'Let me see your ID. 'Where are you from?' 'Do you live around here?'"
The officer then proceeded to rummage through Bilal's bag of freshly cleaned and folded laundry to see if he was carrying anything illegal. The search produced nothing, and the officer sent Bilal on his way.
"They were searching for drugs. The funny thing was that it was a mesh laundry bag. I'm not sure what I could hide," Bilal said.
Bilal, who is African-American, came to New York to follow his dreams of being an artist, but has felt more suspicion than inspiration since arriving a little over a year ago. He is repeatedly stopped on the street, being asked what he's doing, where he's going and even, on occasion, being frisked.
"I feel guilty all the time," said Bilal, an artist and writer. "I feel like I'm being watched and targeted all the time."
Bilal has been affected by the NYPD's policy of Stop, Question and Frisk, in which officers randomly stop a person to determine if they are up to any wrongdoing or possess weapons and contraband items.
...Backers of the policy say it is an effective tool for deterring crime, which has dropped nearly 80 percent since the Giuliani administration enacted Stop, Question and Frisk in the mid-'90s.
It may be as effective as all get-out, but we don't ditch the Constitution because it's expedient. Oh, well, actually we do -- at airports across America every day -- but maybe if more Americans start squeaking, or even speaking, up about our rights being yanked from us, there's some possibility of our not degenerating any further into a police state.
Oh, and P.S. If the searches are random, they're stopping Mitsy Fairchild on Madison and 68th and rummaging through her Birkin. Tell me that that's happened even once.
Calling something 'Policy' does not make it legal.
You could refuse to answer questions other than who you are, and you could refuse the search. Since this would usually make it worse, most people submit, and therein lies the problem.
The reasons they get away with this at airports (besides some idiot court saying it's not **really** unconstitutional) is that most of us are in a hurry and would just as soon submit and be on our way.
Soon we will have no more Fourth Amendment rights, all in the name of "SECURITY"
DrCos at May 13, 2012 4:40 AM
IANAL but wouldn't anything found get excluded for lack of probable cause?
MarkD at May 13, 2012 7:33 AM
> IANAL but wouldn't anything found get excluded for lack of probable cause?
The Supreme Court shit on your 4th amendment right to walk down the street unmolested almost half a century ago.
The cop just has to lie and say that he had a "reasonable belief" that the person was armed.
So the cop claims that the individual motioned towards his wasteband and - POOF! - the 4th amendment disappears.
Good thing cops never lie, eh?
TJIC at May 13, 2012 8:24 AM
"Backers of the policy say it is an effective tool for deterring crime, which has dropped nearly 80 percent since the Giuliani administration enacted Stop, Question and Frisk in the mid-'90s."
This is at odds with other reports that the biggest reason for this "drop" is the refusal of police to file crime reports.
Radwaste at May 13, 2012 10:16 AM
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