This is a another case of a slippery slope, if law enforcement starts violating civil liberties to obtain a conviction then the United States becomes like other countries that doesn’t have a democratic process. The law is the law and it is not meant to be subverted for what may be perceived for the great good of the community or the country. We set the standard and expectation of the constitution and the laws that are written. Law enforcement enforces law no matter the situation, and these law should not be violated even if it is considered for the greater good of the people.
This case is one that changed the way the United States Police forces will work forever. Every human in the world has natural born rights. Even people who have been arrested have rights, ‘The rights of the accused’. These rights are the main point of this court case.
They Supreme Court found that alternative 1 and 2 were unacceptable. Alternative 1 did not apply at all to street encounters and that people on the street are then subject to what and who ever any officer felt like. Alternative 2 was not in the best interest of the officer and if the officer could not take any action until they had probable cause their crime control would suffer and they may never see the suspects again.
The Supreme Court made it clear with its ruling that, police do have the authority to stop or detain an individual for a questioning for a short-term period without probable cause if he/she make have or about to commit a crime. This ruling is important because it gives police officer the authority to help protect him/herself as well as the community. It also puts steps in place to protect citizens from unreasonable search and seizure that is protected our Fourth Amendment right. In the case of Terry v. Ohio a police detective observed two men walking up and down a street several times and gazing into a store window. The officer observing conduct from the individuals that would lead him or her to suspect that a crime has already happened or about to happen is one of the necessities need to consider this as a valid stop. The officer identified himself as an officer of the law and began to inquire and request identification. The officer in this case followed the required guidelines for a valid stop. In return the Supreme Court ruled that this was a valid stop and frisk. According to United States Supreme Court TERRY v. OHIO, (1968) MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring. While I unreservedly agree with the Court 's ultimate holding in this case, I am constrained to fill in a few gaps, as I see them, in its opinion. I do this because what is said by this Court today
Law enforcement officers are given much power and authority over one’s civil liberties. Not only do they have a duty but also a responsibility to enforce laws and ordinances in their jurisdiction, maintain order and protect its people. In some cases, the only way to accomplish this is through legitimized use of force. Use of force can best be described as "the amount of effort required by a law enforcement officer to induce compliance of an unwilling subject" (nij.gov, 2012). With that said, law enforcement officers have been given the right to apply only enough force necessary to control a situation, while defending others, preventing escape, during self-defense and while a subject is resisting arrest (Pollock, pp. 234). It is not until that force becomes excessive that it becomes say an issue.
The case comes down to this fundamental question: What is the role of the police in protecting the rights of the accused, as guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution? The Supreme Court of the United States had made previous attempts to deal with these issues. The Court had already ruled that the Fifth Amendment protected individuals from being forced to confess. They had also held that persons accused of serious crimes have a fundamental right to an attorney, even if they cannot afford one. (Supreme Court)
Individual states do not need to follow all interpretations of the U.S. Supreme Court in the area of criminal procedure. The states must only abide by what the Supreme Court sets as minimum thresholds for constitutional guarantees. The states are not precluded from developing workable rules governing arrest, searches and seizures to meet “the practical demands of effective criminal investigation and law enforcement.”
In the case Terry v. Ohio, the defendant John Terry argued that his Fourth Amendment right was violated when a police officer conducted a search on him, and found a concealed weapon. According to the officer, he had been monitoring Terry’s actions prior to the stop in fear of his safety, thus, had enough reasonable suspicion to stop and search the defendant. The Supreme Court decided to rule in favor of the state determining that the officer may stop and frisk any suspicious person when he feels that his safety or those of others are in danger. A Terry Stop is when the police are allowed to stop, question and frisk someone they believe is behaving suspiciously (Larson, 2000). I am going to argue how police officers benefit from the Terry Stops even though on many occasions they take advantage of their power and act unethical. Essentially, it is acceptable for police officers to stop and frisk any suspicious person because it enhances the community. Furthermore, from the law enforcement perspective, any officer of the law should have a mandatory right to stop and search for weapons in order to protect themselves at all times. It is obvious that society feels that they cannot trust law enforcement because minorities are more likely to be stopped and frisk. Needless to say, it can be argued that we are one step closer to chaos. I would consider that the Supreme Court clarify and specify a little more on the stop and frisk law because ambiguity. In my opinion, anytime an
There are a lot of incidents that happen between police, and criminals. Always a mix up, confusion, miscommunication, and sadly, police brutality, but police always get the benefit of the doubt because of lack of evidence. A incident happened way back in around 2009, it was actually on January 1st. A twenty-two year old young man named Oscar Grant was shot at Fruitvale Station, by an officer that “thought” he was using a taser, but actually used a gun. If that officer would have had a body camera on, he would’ve been more aware of what he was doing, and he would have been caught sooner because they would have been able to see, and tell that Grant wasn’t being defiant.
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in Staten Island, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in North Charleston and, most recently, Freddie Gray in Baltimore have dominated the headlines this entire school year. These men and their stories provide the basis for claims of racially discriminatory treatment of African Americans at the hands of the police. It is true that each of the stories surrounding these men is different, but the one unifying theme is that police around the country are interpreting our Constitutional rights in a way that is insufficient to protect African Americans and the population in general. This paper will explore one Constitutional right— the 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizures--and examine how one Supreme Court decision that narrowed the scope of the 4th Amendment and unintentionally created a mechanism by which the rights of citizens could be unfairly impeded by police.
North Carolina, the concurrence states, “If the statue is genuinely ambiguous, such that overturning the officer’s judgement requires hard interpretive work, then the officer has made a reasonable mistake.” Based on this statement, it gives us support to consider whether Officer Raymond’s stop was objectively reasonable or not. Also, The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of people to be secure in their persons houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be secured, and the persons or things to be seized.”
But it is proclaimed that stopping people under what that particular officer thinks is reasonable suspicion is effective and brings down crime rate, when there’s no real evidence that it does make up the majority of crime going down and even if it does. Ask yourself this; should billions of citizens lose their rights, over a million deviants. We aren’t the ones that should be looked at as criminals because of what we might look like or where we live that’s racial profiling and discrimination.
Obviously there always is deep rooted racial problem in this country. It occurs every day, in cities and towns across the country, when law enforcement target minority ethnic group especially African Americans and Latinos. It is illegal and a clear violation of the rule of law.
Are the civil rights of a person being respected by the United States’ criminal justice system? Is the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution been violated, which states clearly the protection of individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government officials, meaning that police officers are not allow to search or arrest an individual, unless the police man have a permission or a warrant to do so from a judge. Unfortunately, nowadays one can see that multiple minority groups across the U.S. suffer some kind of discrimination by police officers known as racial profiling. It gives excessive power to law enforcement to misuse it against individuals based merely on their race, religion and color. For instance, police men often
Laws and actions of law enforcement officials must honor the rights of all American citizens, including the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. Regarding this Fourth Amendment right, for example, the doctrine of the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' holds that illegally obtained evidence must be excluded from trial (Fruit of the poisonous tree. 2012, University of Cornell Law School). This reflects the idea that it is better to let a guilty person go free versus putting the maximum amount of persons behind bars to ostensibly keep the state 'safe.'
Even if the police did violate Bob’s constitutional rights, he still committed a crime that should be punished. In the U.S. legal system, police are not directly punished when they violate citizens’ constitutional rights, instead, the evidence they obtained illegally becomes inadmissible in court under the exclusionary rule. Furthermore, all the evidence obtained as a result of the illegal evidence is also excluded. This is called the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. In other legal systems, such as Japanese model, there are penalties for police that violate laws, but all evidence is viable in court. This second method would provide greater incentive for police to follow legal procedure because they wouldn’t want to be punished by the state. It would also result in more criminals being charged for the crimes they committed.