For the love of ****ing hell people, reading the thread.0
According to the new law, it most certainly is, right? The police are given a fairly wide latitude here, and I certainly saw nothing in the law that put any limit whatsoever on 'reasonable suspicion'.
Yes, but the police officer does not stop me and ask for my immigration papers simply because he suspects I am hispanic. Under Arizona's law, I see nothing that prevents them from profiling, which is why I asked if you could show me specifically where it does so.
But the words 'reasonable suspicion' are. And since there is nothing in the law from preventing the police from doing so, they most certainly can detain you for those reasons alone.
Well defined? Then what is the exact definition? There is no room for it to be interpreted?
"Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard in United States law that a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity based on specific and articulable facts and inferences. It is the basis for an investigatory or Terry stop by the police and requires less evidence than probable cause, the legal requirement for arrests and warrants. Reasonable suspicion is evaluated using the "reasonable person" or "reasonable officer" standard, in which said person in the same circumstances could reasonably believe a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity; such suspicion is not a mere hunch. Police may also, based solely on reasonable suspicion of a threat to safety, frisk a suspect for weapons, but not for contraband like drugs. A combination of particular facts, even if each is individually innocuous, can form the basis of reasonable suspicion."
First, and foremost, reasonable suspicion IS defined. Is it somewhat loosely defined? Yes. Guess what,
so is probable cause. These types of statutes are given a bit of latitude for officers specifically because every situation is not identical and so you can not right out code for every single solitary possible situation or else you're going to wind up with statute law that reads like 4 bibles stacked on top of each other.
Second, there is an issue of the supremacy clause. The U.S. Supreme Court has found that in a direct sense, exercising reasonable suspicion based singularly on the facet of race is unconstituional and thus illegal. Additionally,
U.S. v. Montero-Camargo found that race can't be part of a broader group of reasonings as well. Its currently constitutional only to use race when looking for a
specific suspect. Last I checked the Arizona Law did NOT overturn the supremecy clause so there's no reason to yell and scream about "show it to me where it says they can't ask for papers cause someone's brown" in the law because it would be stupid and wasteful to put it in there because its already made unconstitutional at a level HIGHER than where the states are. This is like saying that if a state does a law regarding funding for abortion clinics that it must include a piece of law that says abortions are legal prior to the 3rd trimester despite the fact that this is the federal constitutional standard.
Third, common sense involves here. Reasonable Suspicion is already on the books and is used for a variety of things. Ask yourself this. Is it legal to frisk someone just because they're black. The answer? No, it is not. Yet I garauntee you if you go to the law and statutes on Frisking that it's not going to have a section that says "It is illegal to frisk a person solely because they are African American". If these kind of idiotic pieces of law that you want shoved in aren't there in other cases reasonble suspicion is used, and racial profiling isn't allowable in those situations by federal law, how exactly are you thinking that its in any way intelligent or legitimate to argue that this law somehow allows it.
Fourth, an officer has to be able to specify and articulate legitimate facts and infrences to his superiors or to a court to justify the use of reasonable suspicion. If they are unable to do so then they'd definitely have a lawsuit and punishment on their hand, as that's what the standard requires. Going "Uh, he looks mexican" is not articulating legitimate facts and infrences that would allow for any action to be taken because its unconstitutional. There would have to be legitimate reasons states for it to be upheld.
Finally, COULD there be racial profiling going on? Yes, yes there could. In an unofficial way, such as an officer seeing a hispanic person that is speeding and deciding to pull him over rather than the white guy he just previously saw speeding. That said, two things on this....
1) Even if the reason the officer is choosing this one is because the violator is hispanic there would still need to be legitimate reasonable suspicion circumstances for it to in any way stick.
2) This kind of racial profiling is still, one, technically illegal and doesn't become magically legal by the legislation and, two, could happen even WITHOUT this legislation present.
As such, the potential for internal racial profiling doesn't magically exist simply because of this law but is always possible and thus is not the laws fault since it in no way magically legalizes it.
You all can keep screaming about "reasonable suspicion" and act like it just came into existance with this law...but it didn't, and it doesn't allow in any way the things you all are suggesting it does.
But that's just my opinion.
That's fine, you're opinion on this issue is not just wrong, its ignorantly wrong as its clear you're not taking the time to educate yourself on the very thing you're forming an opinion on.