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Jun. 4th, 2006 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vicarzI'm studying criminal procedure this summer. What I'm learning is no matter what the issue, the rule seems to be "The cops can do whatever they want." That was before 9/11 - now they can rape you on film while laughing, then go to your home and strip search your family. I can't believe it, but I can.
My current unformed thoughts:
We have a vast majority of criminal laws and enforcement that are not based on either 1) physical harm by a person to another person, or 2) taking property from a person. No, most laws are about things we do consensually - drugs being a hot item.
Also, most of our laws are not believed in by the vast majority of the population. Example? The speed limit. Somehow they are maintained at absurdly low rates that no one believes in or follows, allowing freeform tax on liberty and finances by random cops.
DWB: A study of traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike found "A count of the traffic indicated that 13.5% of the automobiles had a black occupant. A count of the traffic surveyed for speeding indicated that 98.1% of the vehicles on the road exceeded the speed limit. Fifteen percent of the automobiles that both violated the speed limit and committed some other moving violation also had a black occupant...[W]hile automobiles with black occupants represented only 15% of the motorists who violated the speeding laws...35.6% of the race identified stops...involved vehicles with black occupants."
Professor Maclin, Race & the 4th amendment, 51 Vand. L.Rev 333 (1998)
(This shows the driving while black offense, along with the simple stat of 98.1% speeding "violations."
If you think minorities are more likely to have contraband and the cops are just reacting to the "reality" that most blacks are criminals, "Troopers recovered contraband in 28.4% of the balck motorists searched and from 28.8% of the whtie motorists searched." Wilkins v. MD State Police, 1992. Of course, all those stats pre-date the Clinton Executive Order prohibiting racial profiling.
I am hugely biased in this regard, though, having been pulled over for an offense in DC and having the cops ask to search my car alleging "they smelled drugs." Not any particular drug, and no there have never been drugs in my car. I just had stickers on my car and it was a good gamble that I might. I consented to the search because I was trying to minimize the trouble I was in.
We have privacy law based on guilty criminals. It's very easy to shove privacy and civil rights to the side when we're scared of letting a rapist or criminal go free, but using those cases as the basis for law and policy decisions has led to an evaporation of the rights of the innocent. The conservative will bellow that if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from an invasion of your privacy. I find that American is not supposed to be a status so much as a philosophy, a system of government and belief system that binds otherwise unrelated people. I believe that privacy is paramount, but I seem to be in the minority. I'm sickened by ... ugh why go on.
Oh for fun read the last 3 weeks of Dan Savage tracking the destruction of the rights of straight people to have sex, and the hard-core Bush people in control of formerly scientific government agencies.
My current unformed thoughts:
We have a vast majority of criminal laws and enforcement that are not based on either 1) physical harm by a person to another person, or 2) taking property from a person. No, most laws are about things we do consensually - drugs being a hot item.
Also, most of our laws are not believed in by the vast majority of the population. Example? The speed limit. Somehow they are maintained at absurdly low rates that no one believes in or follows, allowing freeform tax on liberty and finances by random cops.
DWB: A study of traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike found "A count of the traffic indicated that 13.5% of the automobiles had a black occupant. A count of the traffic surveyed for speeding indicated that 98.1% of the vehicles on the road exceeded the speed limit. Fifteen percent of the automobiles that both violated the speed limit and committed some other moving violation also had a black occupant...[W]hile automobiles with black occupants represented only 15% of the motorists who violated the speeding laws...35.6% of the race identified stops...involved vehicles with black occupants."
Professor Maclin, Race & the 4th amendment, 51 Vand. L.Rev 333 (1998)
(This shows the driving while black offense, along with the simple stat of 98.1% speeding "violations."
If you think minorities are more likely to have contraband and the cops are just reacting to the "reality" that most blacks are criminals, "Troopers recovered contraband in 28.4% of the balck motorists searched and from 28.8% of the whtie motorists searched." Wilkins v. MD State Police, 1992. Of course, all those stats pre-date the Clinton Executive Order prohibiting racial profiling.
I am hugely biased in this regard, though, having been pulled over for an offense in DC and having the cops ask to search my car alleging "they smelled drugs." Not any particular drug, and no there have never been drugs in my car. I just had stickers on my car and it was a good gamble that I might. I consented to the search because I was trying to minimize the trouble I was in.
We have privacy law based on guilty criminals. It's very easy to shove privacy and civil rights to the side when we're scared of letting a rapist or criminal go free, but using those cases as the basis for law and policy decisions has led to an evaporation of the rights of the innocent. The conservative will bellow that if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from an invasion of your privacy. I find that American is not supposed to be a status so much as a philosophy, a system of government and belief system that binds otherwise unrelated people. I believe that privacy is paramount, but I seem to be in the minority. I'm sickened by ... ugh why go on.
Oh for fun read the last 3 weeks of Dan Savage tracking the destruction of the rights of straight people to have sex, and the hard-core Bush people in control of formerly scientific government agencies.
